This module will look at the history and representations of the Second World War in France as a country indelibly marked by its experiences of occupation, liberation and reconstruction. Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources including contemporary written accounts, propaganda and cultural production, this module will examine the legacies of the Occupation and the Liberation. In its exploration of the memories of the events, it will focus on film, literature, crime fiction and comics. It will consider aspects of commemoration and the afterlives of this traumatic period of upheaval which had such a key influence on France’s post-war history. It will seek to explain why this period has such a continuing presence in contemporary French political and cultural life.  

• Explain the socio-historical contexts and creative representations of France and French war experiences in the post-war years;
• Evaluate critically the legacy of the Second World War for France ;
• Draw on French source material (textual, visual and material) to inform their understanding of the topic;
• Construct and analyse arguments for a critical analytical essay and exam answer; and
• Draw on French source material to inform their understanding of the topic.

The course is taught by means of lectures, seminars, workshops, study skills sessions and individual feedback. Students are expected to prepare readings and to contribute actively to discussions in seminars. Essential preparatory reading will be provided on Learning Central. To facilitate preparations, lectures will be complemented by supplementary resources, such as film screenings, and specialist training for use of archival materials.

Students will receive continuous feedback throughout the module. There will be revision sessions (exam preparation) in the final week of the module and guidance on how to write a critically informed essay will be given throughout the year. 

. Personal transferable skills

• Communicate ideas effectively and fluently, both orally and in writing
• Use communications and information technologies for the retrieval and presentation of information
• Work independently, demonstrating initiative, self-organisation and time-management
• Collaborate with others and contribute to the achievement of common goals

2. Generic intellectual skills

• Gather, organize and deploy evidence, data and information from a variety of sources
• Develop a reasoned argument, synthesize relevant information and exercise critical judgement
• Reflect on their own learning and make use of constructive feedback
• Manage their own learning self-critically

The generic skills will be manifest in variety of activities including literature searches on the internet, research and archival training, compilation of bibliographies for essays, and the presentation of written work.

Coursework (essay) - 100%

2,500 words: self-generated titles relating to core texts and reading

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:

In the event of failing the module, the student will be able to re-sit the failed element or elements in the summer resit period.

Possible topics of Lectures and Workshops: (Students are expected to attend all lectures and workshops).

Over the two semesters a number of key themes will be addressed:

1. Remembering the Second World War: histories and legacies
2. Judging the past: writing the Second World War as crime fiction
3. Secrets and lies: fiction and family stories of loss
4. Drawing war: comics and graphic novels as sites of remembering
5. Post-war legacies and memories of France’s war: commemoration, national and transnational perspectives

Further guided reading for student seminar presentations are available on Learning Central. Films will be viewed in supervised sessions and research resources made available in the Special Archives and Collections (SCOLAR) in the ASSL library

Core Texts and Reading

Didier Daeninckx, Meurtres pour mémoire (Gallimard, 1984)

Philippe Grimbert, Un secret (Livre de poche, 2004)

Jérémie Dres, Nous n’irons pas voir Auschwitz (Editions Cambourakis, 2011)

General Texts

Kedward, H.R. Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance 1940-44 (Blackwell, 1985)

Kedward, HR & Wood, Nancy, Liberation: Image and Event (Berg 1995)

Rousso, Henri, Les années noires- vivre sous l’Occupation (Gallimard, 1992)

Azéma Jean-Pierre & Bedarida François (eds) Vichy et les Français (Fayard 1992)

Dominique Veillon, Vivre et Survivre en France 1939-1947 (Payot, 1995)

Vinen, Richard, The Unfree French. Life under the Occupation (Penguin, 2006)

Burrin, Philippe, France under German Occupation 1940-1944 (Arnold, 1996)

Ian Ousby, Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-44 (John Murray, 1997)

Hilary Foottit and John Simmons, France 1943-45 (Leicester University Press, 1988)

Hilary Footitt, War and Liberation: Living with the Liberators (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005)

Julian Jackson, France, the Dark Years (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: in Search of the German Occupation (Pan, 2003)

Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Reconstruction in Western Europe, 1945-65 (Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Matthew Cobb, The Resistance: the French Fight against the Nazis (Pocket, 2012)

Henry Rousso, Le Syndrome de Vichy: de 1944 à nos jours (Seuil, 1990)

Olivier Wieviorka, La mémoire désunie: le souvenir politique des années sombres de la Libération à nos jours (Seuil, 2010)

Pierre Laborie, Le Chagrin et le vénin : la France sous l’occupation, mémoire et idées réçues (Bayard, 2011)

Pierre Tomblaine, La Seconde Guerre mondiale dans la bande dessinée (APJABD, 2015)

Patrick Finney, Remembering the Second World War (Routledge, 2018)