RSSS 311 - Love for Sale: Fallen Women in Art and Literature

This course examines the portrayal of prostitution in visual and print culture of the nineteenth century. We will determine how writers and artists conceptualized commercial sex in French, Russian, and German contexts. For the era's writers, artists, thinkers, and social activists, the prostitute became linked with urban decay and the disastrous effects of industrialization. In our discussions of works by Alexandre Dumas fils, Emile Zola, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Frank Wedekind, we will uncover how these writers utilize the female body to discuss issues of deviance and attraction. In analyzing paintings by Edouard Manet, Ilya Repin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, we will determine how the courtesan and streetwalker appear as emblems of modernity.