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Émile Zola explicitly worked with contemporary theories of heredity to structure the infamous series of the 20 Rougon-Macquart novels. But he also attempted to use his understanding of the then-new sciences of biology and thermodynamics to re-theorize the cultural and epistemological consequences of literature in general. Starting from his famous text “le roman expérimental,” this course will call on Zola’s polemical and literary corpus to examine the effects of scientific thought on literature. We will consider what led this fundamental author of the late 19th century to undertake such a project and to invent “le Naturalisme”, the widespread movement that had followers in multiple world literatures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This course is open to undergraduates and graduate students. This course is writing intensive and will be taught in French. The very provisional syllabus can be consulted at http://www.wilda.org/Courses/CourseVault/Undergrad/Zola/ZolaSyllabus.html Prerequisites preferred but not required: AS.212.333 or AS.212.334.