This course explores the complex interactions of poetics and politics in the films of Jean-Luc Godard, from the French New Wave, through the experimental phase of the Dziga Vertov group, to the recent Histoire(s) du cinéma and Film socialisme. Drawing on a wide range of literary and philosophical texts (Merleau-Ponty, Althusser, Deleuze, Rancière), this seminar situates Godard's work within its intellectual and political contexts, investigating how developments in French culture and thought since 1950 have been reflected in - and sometimes anticipated by - Godard's films. In English with preceptorial available in French.