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A Small Change in Terminology or a Great Leap Forward? Culture and Civilization in Revolution

I periodically teach an undergraduate course that is part of my department's newly-created major option in "French Cultural Studies." My title for the course, which reflects my sense of what I'm actually trying to teach, is "Cultures francaises de l'Ancien Regime." The first class session is largely devoted to explaining the choices underlying the title: the relative advantages and disadvantages of "ancien regime" and "Early Modern France"; the insistence on the plural during a period when a standardized national culture was first coming into being; finally and most importantly, "culture" rather than "civilization." The students, however, often continue to refer to the course as "French Civilization." That more traditional designation is, after all, how the course continues to be listed in the University course catalogue and on their transcripts. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this sort of terminological change is by no means isolated, and may even be in the process of becoming a new norm.2 Doubtless this trend is merely a local reflection of the general inflation of the concept of culture in the humanities, and in