Using Irène Némirovsky’s novel Suite Française and Robert Gildea’s Marianne in Chains (Everyday Life in the French Heartland under the German Occupation, 2002) as a springboard, this course examines the novel and its film adaptation in detail, focusing on French society and daily life as perceived by an eyewitness. Discussion will address what it was like to live under both Vichy France and German occupation, how the French adapted to shortages of basic goods such as bread, meat, milk, cheese, eggs, oil, tobacco, soap, and gas, and the loss of free speech and civil rights. The course also considers the strategies used to survive and the response to the growing Résistance.

Required text: Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française, 2007, Vintage International. ISBN-13 : 978-1-4000-9627-5