French and Francophone Studies (FREN)

Introductory French I (FREN 1001) is the first course in the non-intensive Introductory French sequence and is intended for students with little to no previous background in French. This course covers the basics of French grammar and conversation through lectures, cultural readings, pronunciation drills, oral and written exercises, and conversational practice. Course materials include the Introductory French textbook En Avant, as well as various French-language audio, visual, and written materials.

Introductory French II (FREN 1002) is the continuation of Introductory French I (FREN 1001) and is aimed at preparing students for the Intermediate French sequence. Students who enroll in this course have typically taken Introductory French I (FREN 1001) or have placed into this course by means of the Department of French & Francophone Studies' online French Placement Exam. This course continues with the basics of French grammar and conversation through lectures, cultural readings, pronunciation drills, oral and written exercises, and conversational practice. Course materials include the Introductory French textbook En Avant, as well as various French-language audio, visual, and written materials.

This course is designed as an accelerated introduction to French for students with an advanced proficiency in Spanish. Meeting three days a week, the course covers in one semester the material usually taught in two semesters of Introductory French. The course will cover the basics of French grammar and conversation, and present selected aspects of French-speaking culture through readings, music and other audio, videos, and films. By exploring the similarities and differences between the two languages, the course is designed to allow Spanish-speaking students to take full advantage of their prior language experience, reinforcing their knowledge of Spanish while working towards rapid proficiency in French as a third language. Full working proficiency in Spanish is a necessary prerequisite, since both in-class activities as well as the required text at times rely on Spanish as a pivot language to help students access more easily certain French grammatical forms. As such, students should have either been certified as a Heritage Speaker by the Spanish Department or passed the Oral Proficiency Exam in Spanish.

This sequence is designed for beginners who desire intensive instruction in oral communication as well as in basic grammar and writing skills. Pronunciation drills, grammatical patterns, aural comprehension exercises, acquisition of common vocabulary, and conversational practice are integrated within an audio-visual introduction to French culture.

French Floor Experiential Learning is a course for students living on the Dorothy M. Betz Memorial French Floor LLC. To complete the one-credit course, students will organize, attend, and participate in a series of events and will write reviews about their experiences in order to assess their progress.

Non-Intensive Intermediate French I (FREN 1501) builds on the Introductory sequence (Introductory French I and II) and its initial presentation of French and Francophone cultures, the study and practice of basic and functional vocabulary, and essential grammatical structures. The Intermediate sequence (FREN 1501 and FREN 1502) provides students with a solid foundation for pursuing further study of the language and culture at the Advanced level (FREN 2001 or FREN 2011). The prerequisite for this course (FREN 1501) is the successful completion of Introductory II (FREN 1502) or Intensive Basic (FREN 1011) or French for Spanish Speakers (FREN 1009) at Georgetown U., a score of 41-55 on the French Placement or Confirmation Exam (see the departmental web page), or a recommendation from a Georgetown University French Department instructor.

Non-Intensive Intermediate French II (FREN 022) builds on Non-Intensive Intermediate French I (FREN 021) and its presentation of French and Francophone cultures through various themes, the study and practice of fundamental vocabulary to explore these themes, and essential grammatical structures. FREN 022 provides students with a solid foundation for pursuing further study of the language and culture at the Advanced level (FREN 101 or FREN 111). The prerequisite for this course is the successful completion of Intermediate French I (FREN 021) at Georgetown, a score of 56-65 on the French Placement or Confirmation Exam (see the departmental web page), or a recommendation from a Georgetown University French Department instructor.

This sequence is designed for intermediate language learners who desire intensive instruction in phonology and oral communication as well as in basic grammar and writing skills. Pronunciation drills, grammatical patterns, aural comprehension exercises, acquisition of common vocabulary, and conversational practice are integrated within an audio-visual introduction to French culture. Prerequisite: Basic French (FREN-011 or FREN- 002) or placement.

A general survey of French civilization is integrated with continued work on mastery of all requisite language skills. Readings and compositions focus on material from the French media.

A general survey of French civilization is integrated with continued work on mastery of all requisite language skills. Readings and compositions focus on material from the French media.

This is an accelerated, one-semester intensive advanced French course. Students make take this course after completing either FREN 1511 or FREN 1502. For French majors and other students seeking intensive advanced training in the language, this course provides rigorous and comprehensive work on French speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills as preparation for upper-division offerings.

Course offered in Paris, France. Students may enroll by application only. For more information and to apply, please visit studyabroad.georgetown.edu.

FREN 2551 trains students in various styles of written expression and argumentation, including journalistic, literary and analytical. Individual modules are structured to help students with the use of French in the situations that will be most relevant to them (formulating an argument, creating a narrative, analyzing and producing journalistic writing, etc.), combining the study of primary source texts with targeted training in the writing skills and grammatical concepts needed to write persuasively and effectively. FREN 2551 provides essential preparation for classes at the Gateway level (FREN 3350) and beyond; for SFS students, it also provides preparation for the linguistic, reading, and analytic competencies targeted by the SFS Proficiency Exam in French.

Guided conversations, discussions, and student presentations based on contemporary material from the French media. Does NOT count toward major or minor.

This course aims to improve students’ oral proficiency in French. The course covers a variety of current events, with a focus on Francophone African politics, culture, and society. May count toward the minor only if the student has previously taken FREN 151 (Advanced Grammar and Writing). Does not count toward the French major.

This experiential course explores the enduring French influence on the design, identity, and cultural life of Washington, D.C. The syllabus integrates urban history, political philosophy, and Francophone cultural studies to examine the city’s original blueprint as envisioned by Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, its neoclassical architectural heritage, and the dynamic cultural exchange reflected in French art within national collections.

Through guided tours, class discussions, and independent research, students will uncover how French aesthetics and Enlightenment ideals shaped the capital. In the latter part of the course, the focus shifts to the present day, exploring the ongoing cultural dialogue between France and Washington through soft power, cultural institutions, gastronomy, language, and communities.

This course is taught in English. It does not count for the French major or minor. It is a "City Seminar" - a CALL signature course that uses Washington, D.C. as a living classroom to explore city issues through interdisciplinary perspectives.

This course is designed to accommodate students of varying levels of French language proficiency to improve their language skill areas in preparation for direct matriculation study abroad programs.

FREN 3001 is a one-credit class that can only be taken in conjunction with a three-credit French class at the Gateway level (3350 or 3351) or above. Students will come prepared to discuss - in French - current events in the French and Francophone press. Students will also watch news on French and Francophone media. FREN 3001 can only be taken once.

Required of all French majors and open to other qualified undergraduates, 3350 is a post-advanced level course designed to meet two goals. First, it prepares students for upper-division French courses and for direct matriculation overseas study programs by focusing on the development of critical thinking and advanced writing abilities. Second, it enhances students’ capacities to perform close reading and analysis by introducing them to a variety of texts and documents selected to increase their content knowledge of the culture, geography, history, literature, and artistic media of the French-speaking world. Individual sections of this course will emphasize specific approaches to French and Francophone cultures and literatures, such as the anthropological, the historical, the thematic, the formal (including notions of genre) and/or the rhetorical, depending on instructor expertise. Study and analysis will be carried out in class discussion, as well as through specific writing formats (such as explication de texte, dissertation, research paper) for which students will receive structured training, including systematic procedures for organization, drafting, and rewriting, as well as an introduction to research materials and methodology in the discipline. The final paper for each course will be designed to mobilize the reading, analytical and research competencies developed over the course of the semester. Prerequisite for this course is FREN 2551 (Composition and Style, formerly called Advanced Grammar & Writing) or FREN 2012 (Intensive Advanced French II) or direct placement through formal placement test results. FREN 3350 offers a broadly-defined introduction to the rich and varied literatures and other art forms of France and the French-speaking world, as well as to cultural documents. Course materials may include texts, from all historical periods and French-speaking regions, that might be categorized as “fiction”: among them, works of literature (novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays), “popular” narrative forms (comics, detective stories), films, music, and art, as well as those that might be categorized as “documents”: among them, essays, ethnographies, political and historical tracts, life writing and testimonials, journalism, studies, literature, documentary images, and films. In what context were these texts created, how were they crafted, and what impact have they had? What issues and problems do they illuminate within and beyond their communities of origin, and how do we appreciate their documentary or aesthetic value? In order to address such questions, students will be given methodological tools and techniques that will allow them to approach texts in a systematic, cogent, and critical manner, both for their content and their form. Key notions such as genre, ideology, autobiography and autofiction, (self-)censorship, and frame will be explored and applied to multiple readings of works selected.

General Description of the Sequence: French 250 and 251, required of all French majors and open to other qualified undergraduates, is a post-advanced level sequence that can be taken in any order and is designed to meet two goals. First, the sequence prepares students for upper-division French courses and for direct matriculation overseas study programs by focusing on the development of critical thinking and advanced writing abilities. Second, it enhances students’ capacities to perform close reading and analysis by introducing them to a variety of texts and documents selected to increase their content knowledge of the culture, geography, history, literature, and artistic media of the French-speaking world. Individual sections of these courses will emphasize specific approaches to French and Francophone cultures and literatures, such as the anthropological, the historical, the thematic, the formal (including notions of genre) and/or the rhetorical, depending on instructor expertise. Study and analysis will be carried out in class discussion, as well as through specific writing formats (such as explication de texte, dissertation, research paper) for which students will receive structured training, including systematic procedures for organization, drafting, and rewriting, as well as an introduction to research materials and methodology in the discipline. The final paper for each course will be designed to mobilize the reading, analytical and research competencies developed over the course of the semester. Prerequisites for these courses are Intensive Advanced French II (112) or Advanced Grammar & Writing (151) or direct placement through AP, SAT II and/or formal placement test results. FREN 251 Reading Texts in the French-Speaking World: Literatures French 251 offers a broadly-defined introduction to the rich, varied literatures and other art forms of France and the French-speaking world. This course focuses on texts, from all historical periods and French-speaking regions, that might be categorized as “fiction”: among them, works of literature (novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays), “popular” narrative forms (comics, detective stories), films, music, and art. In what context were these texts created, how were they crafted, and what impact have they had? What issues and problems do they illuminate within and beyond their communities of origin, and how do we appreciate their aesthetic value? Where do the boundaries of “fiction” lie and what formal characteristics and vocabulary help us describe different genres? In order to address such questions, students will be given methodological tools and techniques that will allow them to approach texts in a systematic, cogent, and critical manner, both for their content and their form. Key notions such as genre, narrative structures and strategies, rhetorical techniques, reader response, and “horizon of expectations” will be explored and applied to multiple readings of works selected.

MOLIERE, also known as " le grand Poquelin ", is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English, ie. the founding -- but ever young -- reference for theatric accomplishment and endless source of dramatic interpretation. This semester, in keeping with a tradition here at Georgetown going back nearly twenty years, we are going to do scene study from three famous plays by this 17th century master : L'ECOLE DES FEMMES, LE MISANTHROPE and TARTUFFE. This course is resolutely performance-based, meaning : " up-on-your-feet " acting, under the guidance of a very experienced teacher and director. You will be expected to participate on a regular basis in scene work with other actors, maintain a " journal de bord " ( personal theater diary ) and perform in a small-scale production at the conclusion of the semester. For each of the above theater performance workshops, students will present at least two live interpretations and write a paper or theater diary (journal de bord) in French based on their scene interpretation. Both majors and qualified non-majors are invited to enroll. Both French 263 and 270 are cognate courses with the Department of Art, Music, and Theater, and also fulfill the upper-division post-advanced language requirement for the French major.

For this theater performance workshop, students will rehearse and give at least two live public performances of Parades, short comedies that were originally played in Parisian fairgrounds stages of the early 18th-century. Lively and irreverent, Parades combine verbal and physical humor to create a frenzied, fanciful universe where real-life problems receive very unusual solutions. Class work will include rehearsal of the plays to be performed (Léandre Eunuque and Le Mauvais Exemple), as well as a full array of vocal and gestural exercises in pronunciation, intonation, posture and movement—an excellent way to improve one's command of spoken French. Students will also keep a rehearsal diary. This workshop is open to all students, with or without previous acting experience, who have completed Advanced French II or equivalent. FREN 264 is listed as a cognate course with the Program in Performing Arts, and also fulfills the upper-division post-advanced language requirement for the French major.

From the late 16th century until WWII (1939-45), there existed a consensus on the basic features of drama in Western culture: it had a fairly linear plot and verisimilar characters (that is, plausible rather than realistic), all predicated in the belief that the world and human life made sense. After the horrors of the war, however, a powerful trend emerged towards regarding the world and human existence as absurd, and nowhere was this movement more developed than in 1950s France. New playwrights emerged who would dramatize the absurdist view of human existence through comedy; in so doing, they also completely reinvented the genre with a focus on deconstructing conventional dramatic form. Initially, spectators were often puzzled, frustrated, sometimes even infuriated when confronted with such plays; but in time, avant-garde writing and performing would become the new norm, and these "scandalous" plays turn into revered classics. Today we can really only understand plays from this period through performance, by studying the conditions in which they were staged, by seeing them staged or, better yet, by performing them ourselves. Yet performing these plays still poses an interesting challenge since they essentially ignore the logic of plot (a sequence of events that are somewhat connected by rationally determined links, such as causality) and characterization based on psychological motivation.

FREN 267 - Theater Workshop - French 19th century comedy: Jokers and Criminals T-R 12:30-1:45 Walsh BlackBox In this course, students take on a part in a production of a French comedic stage play of the 19th century. In so doing they not only improve their skills in spoken French through various techniques and strategies (diction, tempo, breathing, posture), but they also learn more about post-Revolutionary French drama, and about comedy as both a literary and performative genre. Whereas literary studies tend to envision the 19th-century French stage as dominated by the Romantics (Hugo, Musset, Vigny) and, at its opposite, by the realistic Drame bourgeois of Alexandre Dumas fils, Émile Augier, Henri Becque and Octave Mirbeau, the most numerous and successful plays belonged to the genre of Vaudeville (a hybrid form with both spoken and sung lines) and Mélodrame (which focuses on heart-wrenching situations and the stark opposition of Good and Evil), with authors like Scribe, Labiche, Feydeau, Courteline and Pixérécourt. Today we can really only understand plays from this period through performance, by studying the conditions in which they were staged, by seeing them staged or, better yet, by performing them ourselves. Most of class time in FREN 267 is devoted to rehearsing a stage play and on various short performative exercises to develop students' ability to communicate expressively in French (using intonation, body language, gestures and movement). The teacher will provide constant suggestions and feedback on acting techniques as well as on French diction. Students also reflect on the work being done through complementary readings of other 19th-century French comedies, and engage in a continuing conversation using BlackBoard's Discussion Board feature. See full syllabus at http://faculty.georgetown.edu/spielmag/docs/FREN267_S2015.htm

FREN 267 - Theater Workshop - French 19th century comedy: Jokers and Criminals In this course, students take on a part in a production of a French comedic stage play of the 19th century. In so doing they not only improve their skills in spoken French through various techniques and strategies (diction, tempo, breathing, posture), but they also learn more about post-Revolutionary French drama, and about comedy as both a literary and performative genre.

How dependent upon language is our experience and understanding of the universe around us? How do we "make sense" of language? This course offers an exploration of the human linguistic condition through the analysis of authentic documents in French (brochures, articles, print and TV commercials, speeches, clips from movies, objects, etc.), which bring to life some of the most important concepts in language-related studies. This course fulfills the linguistics requirement and the post-advanced language requirement for the French major and satisfies one semester of the College's social science general education requirement.

This course is aimed to students who already have a good command of the French language, are interested in improving their language skills in the field of business, and in learning about how business is conducted in France and other francophone countries. Students will have the opportunity to improve not only their oral proficiency in French (comprehension and expression) through presentations, discussions and play roles, but they will also enhance their written skills (reading and writing) through summaries of specialized press articles, memos, minutes, emails and business letters. The course is entirely in French and is taught in a very interactive way, mostly based on the case study method - analysis of real life situations. Students will learn how to communicate orally and in writing with business partners, to become entrepreneur themselves and how to develop a business plan. There will be three tests during the semester and a final project based on the business and marketing techniques learned during the semester. This course fulfills the upper division post advanced language requirement for the French major.

The goal of this course is to hone students’ abilities to understand, analyze and discuss French politics through the overview of central/essential/core themes (les régimes politiques, les systèmes électoraux, les courants politiques, ...) analyzed through their historical evolution since the French revolution.

FREN 3703 (French Phonetics: Theory, Practice and Performance) aims to expose students to multiple aspects of French sounds. Starting with the basics of Speech Production, students learn the different dimensions of speech in general and specifically in French. Students then get to practice their pronunciation through the reading of prose, classical and modern poems, and songs. Students also fine-tune their appreciation of French sounds through the study of phonetic language games, register levels and regional varieties.

During the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, French steadily supplanted Latin as the universal language and the language of diplomacy in most European Courts. From the seventeenth until the nineteenth century, the dominant usage of French in negotiating and writing treaties was so pervasive that numerous expressions, such as the tête-à-tête with…; the chargé d’affaires, ad interim; the rules of étiquette; the principle of pêle-mêle; the note verbale of…, became commonly used expressions in diplomatic circles. Theses expressions were readily understood in other languages and consequently, there was no need to translate them, whether it was Benjamin Franklin presented to the Court of Louis XVI or John Adams presented to the Court of George III. This course will examine issues related to good manners that regulate our private lives and contrast them with those related to protocol when the latter is understood as “the set of rules prescribing good manners in official life and in ceremonies involving governments and nations and their representatives”. A careful reading of the French version of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations will provide sufficient Diplomatic French terms and expressions for the students in the course to easily mingle with Francophone members of diplomatic missions in Washington, DC. Textbook: Guide du protocole et des usages par Jacques Gandouin, Septime édition revue et augmentée, Paris, les éditions Stock, 1995; www.livredepoche.com ISBN : 2-253-06394-0

This course is intended for those with a strong command of French, seeking to improve cultural and linguistic proficiency through the lens of global health. Using authentic documents, in a variety of media—text, images, and audiovisual content—students will deepen their understanding of historical and current issues within Francophone communities, from France to Canada, Africa, and beyond. They will also build specialized vocabulary, strengthen grammar, and develop communication strategies through active, task-based learning activities based on real-world scenarios in the fields of medicine and public health. Through both targeted and open-ended exercises in speaking, listening, reading, and writing, students will acquire the tools necessary to engage meaningfully with health-related topics in a range of settings, including personal, local, national, and international contexts. Themes explored will include individual health, mental health, preventative health, nutrition and food systems, access to care, humanitarian initiatives, and more. No prior study of public health, medicine, or related fields is required. Prerequisite: successful completion of FREN 3350 or 3351.

This course focuses on the dialogues between French and Francophone intellectuals by exploring some of the main philosophical currents, concepts, and texts of French and Francophone 20th century thought. Throughout the semester, students will build a solid background in theoretical analysis as well as a deeper understanding of French and Francophone intellectual history. Among various theories, we will explore the dialogues between Sartre, Césaire, and Fanon; the rereading of Bergson by Senghor; Edouard Glissant’s understanding of Deleuze’s philosophy; and the work of African philosophers such as Achille Mbembe and Souleymane Bachir Diagne. Among the questions that we will ask are: What does existentialist or vitalist philosophy become for African or Caribbean philosophers? Can francophone thinkers rely on French philosophers and theories to free themselves from inherited postcolonial power relationships? What are the epistemological and political implications of thinking in French? How can we understand the discipline of philosophy through the lens of empire as delineated by this linguistic grouping? Throughout the course of the semester, students will continue to develop their abilities to reflect and comment upon theoretical texts and expand upon their writing skills. The course offers two tracks: one in English and one in French. Students who choose the French track will read the material and complete written assignments in French.

A series of in-depth studies of selected topics in French-speaking African history, politics, economics, societies, and mass-media: the Berlin Congress, assimilation and indirect rule, African socialism, modernization, conflicting social structures from French family-run monopolies to government-run daily newspapers, and media broadcasting trends. Cross-listed with the African Studies Program. This course fulfills the upper-division culture requirement for the French major.

A study of the major intellectual and cultural trends in French-speaking African societies. Topics will include features of the varieties of French spoken in Africa, main trends in neo-African literature in French (Kateb Yacine, Malick Fall, Mariama Ba, Valentin Mudimbe, etc.), central ideologies ("negritude" versus African personality), arts and recreation, sports, crafts, African influences on French artists, philosophies, and cosmogonies (Tempels, Ndaw, Houtoundji, Griaule). Cross-listed with the African Studies Program and Comparative Literature. This course fulfills the upper-division culture or post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

Every year, bandes dessinées outsell all other kinds of books on the French-language market. Public and school libraries stock a large selection, and so do the most serious bookstores—as well as supermarkets and newstands. France has a national museum for bandes dessinées (the CNBDI in Angoulême), whose first director, T. Groensteen, defended a doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne analyzing the "ninth art" as an original and complex system of communication and expression. Successful Bédéistes in France are as famous as rock stars and leading movie actors, and an anticipated new album may have a first printing of over a million issues (several milllions in the case of Astérix). Yet bandes dessinées are not just a sociological and economic phenomenon: they also enjoy a remarkable presence in the culture at large through citation, allusion, references and pastiche, while quotes from Tintin, Astérix, Iznogoud, Lucky Luke and many others have become idiomatic phrases in the French language. In other words, one cannot pretend to seriously understand the culture of contemporary France without a significant engagement with bandes dessinées. This survey of French language bandes dessinées from 1929 to the present will give students a solid grounding in understanding the social, cultural and economic importance of this medium. It will both provide an introduction to "the classics" and a critical approach to the various ways in which bandes dessinées can be read and appreciated: as a form of expression on a par with literature and film (but unlike either of them), as vehicle for content (notably history), as a cultural artifact, and as a vector for adaptation.

In this course, we will first study the most important events of Belgian history and politics since World War II. (The period of the Occupation, the Decolonization in Central Africa, the federalization of the Belgian State). We will then move to the analysis of the foremost modernist artistic movements in Belgium, with a special emphasis on both Surrealism (Magritte, Noug?, Scutenaire) and the Cobra Group (Dotremont, Alechinsky). In particular, we will stress the ongoing relationship between literary and pictorial expression for these movements. We will then read works of fiction by Michaux and Luc Sante and pay attention to the essential role played by avant-garde artist Marcel Broodthaers in the development of conceptual art in Belgium since the nineteen sixties. Our class discussions will also be illustrated by several slides projections and by the screening of two contemporary movies. Required readings: Paul Noug?, L'Exp?rience Continue; Jean-Clarence Lambert, Cobra Po?sie; Pierre Alechinsky, Lettre Suit; Henri Michaux, Passages; Luc Sante, The Factory of Things; Rosalind Krauss, A Voyage on the North Sea. Films: Lumumba (Raoul Peck); La Promesse (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne). This course fulfills the upper-division culture requirement for the French major.

This course offers students an introduction to the history of football in the French-speaking world, with a particular focus on issues of national identity. The course progresses thematically though the topics of colonialism, anti-colonial movements, decolonization, emigration, and immigration, seen through the lens of Algerian, Senegalese, and other African football teams, as well as France’s national team. A primary focus of the course will be on the sporting event as a “spectacle of belonging,” as we examine crucial moments where players and fans performed either their adhesion, or refusal to belong, to their national team. Readings will include several foundational texts on the links between sports and nationalism, in addition to novels and comic books that focus on football. We will also examine critical moments in sporting history as seen through the media, documentary films, and ethnographic studies.

In this course, we will study the lives of women of different classes in nineteenth-century France. We will look at topics from marriage, divorce, and adultery to motherhood, fashion, and prostitution. Through the study of historical, cultural, sociological, and literary texts, we will gain an understanding of how the lives of women changed and developed over the course of the century. The course will be conducted entirely in French.

The course is focused around a core of novels that focus on childhood and coming-of-age in North Africa. The texts all feature young narrators who, by their own admission, see themselves as linguistic or cultural “outsiders” in their home countries of Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia. Using the idea of the outsider as a point of departure, the course will explore the twin themes of individual identity formation and national identity formation, and ask how these themes are intertwined in North African francophone literature. The narrators of these novels are a Jewish child in protectorate Tunisia, a young gay Moroccan man, an Algerian child questioning her gender identity, French-educated students in the Arabized Algerian education system, and an Amazigh (Berber) student in Morocco. Through a discussion of coming of age and feelings of “otherness,” students will be introduced to the cultural diversity of North Africa, as well as the linguistic, social, and personal complexity of narrating childhood.

By examining a range of materials (fiction; TV show; street art; etc.), students will learn about the diversity of pathways and challenges faced by Caribbean migrants since the second half of the 20th century with a focus on Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Some themes include: the brain drain of Haitian intellectuals, activists, and artists during the Duvalier regime; migration from French overseas departments to Hexagonal France between the years 1963 and 1981; US policy towards Haitian “boat people” in the 1980s and early 1990s; and the Caribbean diaspora history and cultures in France, the Caribbean, and North America in the early 21st century. Course taught in French.

Translation is an obvious but often implicit component in language learning, whose ultimate goal—theoretically—is for learners to avoid translating altogether, and function independently in two (or more) languages, as true bilinguals and polyglots do. Yet learners frequently find themselves in a position to translate from one language to another, without having been taught how to perform translation in a reasoned, systematic manner. As a result, they tend to proceed with a hit-or-miss approach that rests on a fundamentally flawed procedure that favors a word-for-word equivalency system. Effective translation, on the other hand, requires applying a variety of strategies that need to be understood and mastered, leaving very little to guessing. Moreover, at this point, the ability of humans to perform a "simple" translation is far exceeded by that of AI software, at least quantitatively (it operates much faster). That has redefined the purpose of learning how to translate, shifting the focus on qualitative rather than quantitative issues, and on the heuristic value of translation in understanding how language works. Ultimately, students will realize that each language is a self-contained system, so that translation produces something that may never be completely equivalent to the source (the famous "lost in translation" effect). This course involves both theoretical elements on the nature of language and of the translation process, and guided practice on a range of text types, from the technical (the least figurative and ambiguous) to the creative. Sources will be drawn from several francophone cultural settings (Québec, West Africa, North Africa), in addition to standard French. Although French-to-English translation will remain dominant, students will also practice English-to-French translation, so as to gain a better sense of the different challenges involved. In September 2023 a new AI app was launched, HeyGen (https://app.heygen.com), which makes it possible to dub a video in a variety of languages, even creating avatars of original speakers whose lip movements synch with each language version. In 2024, Antoine Ménager, a 23-year old French engineer released a Beta version of Lipitt (https://www.lipitt.com/fr/), an even more powerful and less expensive app ("Un simple clic suffit pour traduire tes vidéos avec des sous-titres, des voix clonées et une synchronisation labiale."). In light of such developments, the purpose and objectives of teaching human beings how to translate have radically changed—a situation which powerfully affects how this course was conceived and designed. Translation, now more than ever, appears as a humanistic (rather than purely practical) endeavor, which increases students' awareness of irreducible linguistic and cultural differences that must be negotiated in order to make mutual understanding possible.

King Arthur in Medieval France: Politics, Magic, Desire

The most influential narratives of the legendary King Arthur – with famous characters and settings like Lancelot, Guinevere, Perceval, Morgana, Merlin, Camelot, and Avalon – were composed in medieval France between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The tales involve a unique blend of fantasy and realism: on the one hand, they imagined narrative worlds populated by fairies, monsters, sorcery, magic, and marvels of all kinds; on the other, they held up an honest and frequently unflattering mirror to the problems and impasses that characterized the French culture of the day, with particular attention to the politics of feudal power, controversies over inheritance, and gender relations. This course will provide a survey of the most famous and influential medieval French Arthurian texts (and in the process, an introduction to the history and culture of medieval France).

Instruction will be conducted in French. All texts in this course will be read in modern French translation, and no prior experience studying the literature or culture of the Middle Ages is required.

This course is an introduction to French literature of the 12th-15th centuries. The literary texts you will read are the medieval equivalent of bestsellers: the epic Chanson de Roland, Marie de France’s Lais (short stories), Chretien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette (novel), the unique Aucassin et Nicolette (romance), love songs of the Mediterranean “troubadour” poets and “troubairitz” poetesses, extracts from the anonymous Lancelot en prose, and extracts from Christine de Pizan’s philosophical Livre de la Cite des Dames. By exploring the issues they raise and enriching these with critical articles, we can see the texts as windows on the society in/for which they were created. Texts are provided in “bilingual” editions (medieval French and modern French on facing pages), but you will also capture the literature as products of its medieval context by viewing it in manuscript form online, in the university Rare Books Collection, and at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. You will also be able to engage with this aspect of the literature by making your own medieval manuscript sampler. The course is taught in French and fulfills the upper-division pre-1800 literature requirement for the French major. Cross-listed with Medieval Studies.

From a wolf who gets flayed alive as part of a treatment prescribed by a phony fox ‘doctor’ to a lion who decides to commit suicide by balancing a sword against a tree and charging it, the beastly Middle Ages are full of surprises--some funny, some bizarre, others downright horrifying. Through the lens of these unruly beasts and the myriad contexts in which they appear, this course will offer an introduction to medieval culture. No prior knowledge of the Middle Ages is required.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are often described as "the golden age of spectacle"; this course will offer an introduction to a wide variety of genres (comedy and tragedy, commedia dell'arte, court festivals, opera, fairground shows) and focus on performance as well as on the literary aspect of texts, including questions of acting, staging, and use of machines. We will also examine issues pertaining to spectacle in social, religious, and political terms. Class materials will consist of scripts and librettos, illustrations, music and films about the period, as well as theoretical essays from the seventeenth century to the present. This course fulfills the upper-division pre-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

This course reflects the trend in historical research to revise the standard narrative that monarchic absolutism “triumphed” unequivocally and culminated in France’s Golden Age, the “Great Century” (Le Grand Siècle). Such revision rests not on some radical theoretical or ideological platform, but rather on a more complete and impartial examination of the evidence at our disposal. While it remains undeniable that creative works from the Early-Modern period were produced by an extremely narrow social elite, they frequently expressed non-conformist views, usually in a subtle enough manner to avoid serious trouble for the author: dissenters, malcontents and transgressors of all kinds risked not only the suppression of their activities, but exile, jail or worse. While giving students a solid grounding on what French culture has enshrined as its works of reference (“les classiques”), this course also provides them with an intellectual toolkit for a critical (re)examination: how to look beyond established categories of “high” and “low,” how to evaluate the cultural impact of social groups who did not enjoy a prominent status—notably women, and how to detect non-conformist views in works that may not appear particularly militant at first glance, such as fairy tales, fables, farcical comedies, “genre” paintings or fanciful travel narratives. Even in some of the “classics” that appear to fully support the reigning social order, such as tragedies, they will learn how to look for evidence of underlying tensions between patriarchal authority and yearnings for emancipation or simply a more equitable distribution of agency.

This interdisciplinary course will examine the theme of pleasure in eighteenth-century French literature and art. We will analyze the uses of pleasure in texts by Rousseau, Voltaire, Marivaux, and Prevost as well as in paintings by Watteau and Fragonard. Through our readings and visual analyses, we will interrogate the role that pleasure played for some of the most important cultural figures in eighteenth-century France, and we will discuss such themes as intellectual pleasure, philosophical pleasure, courtly privilege and pleasures, and all pleasures sensual and textual. Our discussions will also lead us to formulate questions about 18th-century ideas of gender, class, and identity in the Ancien R?gime, and their importance for our own time. This course fulfills the upper-division pre-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

What does it mean to come of age in eighteenth-century France? How does this rite of passage change in the course of the century? What is the role of rites, initiations, and education for the eighteenth-century French subject? Is it different for women and for men? What role might love, seduction, or even esthetic experience play in the process? In this interdisciplinary course students will analyze these themes in literature and art, asking what it means to move into young adulthood in Ancien Régime France. Through readings of fictional memoirs, travel journals, tales of seduction, and the (true) dossier of an eighteenth-century feral child, students will examine the role played by language, education, and love in coming of age, while asking questions about the nature of exclusion, privilege, and marginality. Students will gain a greater understanding of coming of age as it functions in literature from other centuries, as well as a deeper understanding of the complex codes and rules governing eighteenth-century French life. Readings include texts by Prévost, Graffigny, Crébillon fils, Bastide, and two films. This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the French major.

This course offers students a sampling of texts examining the political, philosophical, and aesthetic thought of the period from roughly 1720-1793, in order to help them gain a deeper understanding of the origins, impact, and development of the Enlightenment in France.

A study of important French novels of the nineteenth century (Balzac, Stendhal, Sand, Flaubert, Zola). Focus will be on close readings of plot, character, thematics, and style, as well as on historical and ideological questions raised. While there will be a lecture component, this is primarily a discussion course. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

In this course, we will read many of the most widely-sold (but not necessarily the most well-received) works of the nineteenth century; learn about how they were published, marketed, and received by critics and readers alike, and locate their place in today's literary canon. Our inquiry will be framed by essays on developments in print technology, literacy and the culture of publishing in the nineteenth-century. Some of the questions that will guide us during the semester are: How did drastic changes in primary education, print technology, literary patronage and publishing in nineteenth-century France affect the kind of books that were sold? Did high sales in one century translate into literary value in the next? Is there a correspondence between negative nineteenth-century criticism and critical importance in the twentieth? Was there a social difference between those who were reading and those who were evaluating this literature? How does the notion of literary value respond to the pressures of mass media markets? Readings with include Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris (excerpts) and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (excerpts), la Comtesse de Ségur's Les Malheurs de Sophie, Jules Verne's Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, Emile Zola's L’Assomoir and a 21st century bestseller, Muriel Barbery’s L’Élegance du hérisson. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

The purpose of this course is to expose students to major works, writers, and literary movements of the first half of the twentieth century. Readings include texts by Colette, Proust, Mauriac, Sartre, Camus, and Sarraute. Our discussions will address the intellectual and philosophical issues raised by their novels, such as proto-feminism, existentialism, notions of the absurd, memory, and forgetting. We will likewise study the narrative and stylistic innovations that make their works classics of the twentieth-century French tradition. By the end of the semester, students will have acquired better skills for close textual analysis, writing, and oral expression. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

The purpose of this course is to expose students to important works and writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Readings include novels by Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Marie Redonnet, Patrick Modiano, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, and Annie Ernaux. By the end of the semester, students will have acquired better skills for close textual analysis, writing, and oral expression. Class discussions will address the sociological, ideological, philosophical, and narrative issues raised by these novels. Specific themes we will discuss include: the rise of consumer culture, morality and responsibility, personal loss, death, personal and national memory, cultural marginality, and the absurd. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

Film is the seventh art, and a form of creative expression and entertainment that is unique to the past century. It portrays our society, even as it distorts that portrait, magnifying certain questions while it elides others. The study of film can give insights into not only what was and is, but also what could be or could have been, in a given society at a chosen time. It is a medium of vision, in all senses of the word. In this discussion-based course, the focus is on films that reflect (on) Québec society: its individual and collective identities, its history, its conflicts and its cultural vitality. Students will view and discuss feature films, documentaries and animated shorts that are seldom seen in the United States, by directors as varied as Denys Arcand, Claude Jutra, Jacques Godbout, Frédéric Back, Robert Lepage and Paule Baillargeon. Attention will be paid to the specialized vocabulary of cinema, and to various critical approaches to film analysis. Students will be encouraged to "read" films in a similar fashion to the way we "read" literature at the university level, that is, with an active critical mind, rather than just for passive enjoyment. In all instances, films will be discussed as both expressions of and contributors to their specific culture as well as "works of art" in their own right.

How are the mobility and experiences of migrants and their descendants represented and shaped by cinema? Filmmaking by and about migrants and their descendants in hexagonal France has expanded from the documentary and socio-realist vein to encompass increasingly diverse subjects and genres, such as comedy, historical drama, road movies, police movies, coming-of-age films, romance, “banlieue films,” ghost movies, and even science fiction. This cinematic production has gained visibility, commercial viability, mainstream recognition, and critical acclaim, signaling that filmmakers and actors of immigrant descent have gained an undeniable degree of access in the film industry. How can the social and cultural impact of these productions be assessed in light of continued police brutality in the banlieues, overt racism and implicit bias, as well as anti-immigrant sentiment in public discourses? As cultural representations, commercial commodities, and cinematic works, these films perform cultural interventions through storytelling; we will explore them together to examine the strategies and aesthetic choices these films and their makers adopt to make their voice heard, establish their place in the national narrative, and potentially reframe it.

This course provides students with a foundation in the applied research pertinent to French language pedagogy and use of technology in language teaching. Development and critique of teaching techniques for French language, culture, or literature. Some background in linguistics recommended. This course fulfills the linguistics requirement and the post-advanced language requirement for the French major, and satisfies one semester of the College's social science general education requirement.

The purpose of this course is to give students both some basic theoretical grounding and opportunities to practice speaking in a variety of formats, in order to help them improve in a systematic manner the quality of their spoken French. More specifically, students work on their understanding of the basic phonological and prosodic rules of French; the accuracy of their perception and pronunciation of individual sounds (phonemes); their prosodic accuracy, which includes correct syllabation, word stress, and intonation; their ability to read prose and poetry aloud and to deliver semi-scripted oral presentations with clarity, phonological and prosodic accuracy, and effective use of emphasis. This course fulfills the linguistics requirement and the post-advanced language requirement for the French major.

This course is intended to introduce and examine the idea of power in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Our modern conceptions of power are in many ways rooted in the tumultuous events of the nineteenth-century, the site of numerous articulations of this phenomenon, whether political or cultural, commercial or industrial, colonial or metropolitan. Writers, artists, musicians, and philosophers grappled with these changes in works that resonate to this day. We will consider major works of nineteenth-century French narrative, along with such cultural documents as legal and sociological writings. This course is designed in conjunction with the 2020 Nineteenth-Century French Studies conference, also on the theme of power.

This course enables students to become conversant with important theory on class structures, social reproduction, colonialism and post-colonialism in contemporary France, understood to encompass overseas territories and ex-colonies. These themes include the interplay between language, culture, and nation; the nature and reproduction of class relations; immigration, ethnicity, and race; human rights and the law. Several examples will be studied in depth: 1) the rise of diasporic youth vernaculars and cultural forms 2) the passage of the controversial 2004 law banning religious symbols in state institutions 3) language and culture issues in the postcolony 4) illegal immigration and the humanitarian exception 5) youth crime, the juvenile justice system, and the 2005 riots.

In this course, the focus is on films that reflect (on) Québec society: its individual and collective identities, its history, its contemporary issues and its cultural vitality. Students will view and discuss feature films that are seldom seen in the United States, by directors including Jeff Barnaby, Tracey Deer, Sophie Deraspe, Mathieu Denis, Xavier Dolan, Christian Fournier, Catherine Martin, Léa Pool, Jean-Marc Vallée, and Denis Villeneuve. The specific theme for this semester will focus on the symbolic role of young protagonists (children, adolescents, young adults) as prisms for social unrest and as harbingers of change. By examining the art of cinema for its social, political and aesthetic contributions to human understanding, and by engaging with difference through the diverse perspectives presented by the films we will study, this seminar satisfies the HALC requirement. Methodologically, attention will be paid to the specialized vocabulary of cinema, and to various critical approaches to film analysis. In all instances, films will be analyzed in the context of Québec society, as both expressions of and contributors to their specific culture as well as "works of art" in their own right.

In this seminar, we will explore the treatment of the Nazi Occupation in post-war French literature and film. We will concentrate class discussions on the narrative mechanics and the ideological implications of the variety of forms chosen to depict the "Dark Years," such as allegorical representation, testimonial narrative, autobiographical narrative, and documentary cinema. We will also investigate the complexity of the construction of remembering and forgetting in selected works. Readings will include works by Sartre, Camus, Perec, Modiano, and Duras. Films to be studied include L'Oeil de Vichy, Le Chagrin et la piti?, Lacombe Lucien, and Au revoir les enfants. This course fulfills the upper-division culture requirement for the French major. Cross-listed with Comparative Literature.

This course explores the work of Albert Camus in a historical, cultural, and political context. As one of the world’s preeminent literary figures and public intellectuals, Camus was profoundly engaged in political events and debates before, during, and after the Second World War. Through his career and work, we can gain a deeper understanding of the interwar period, the Nazi occupation of France, the early Cold War period, and the Algerian War. We will read a broad selection of Camus’s texts, covering the novel, the short story, essays, speeches, and journalism. We will analyze these works in relation to historical events and phenomena, in addition to the work of Camus’s contemporaries, including Jean-Paul Sartre, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, and Arthur Koestler.

This course explores how the production, consumption, and circulation of specific crops, foodstuffs, food technology, cuisines, and recipes were essential to the establishment and maintenance of empire in France and its colonies, from early colonization to the post-independence era. Through the study of texts from various genres and disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences, we’ll examine how ubiquitous food brands such as Banania and Picon advertised for the empire and normalized systemic racism, while the production of commodity crops such as rice, cacao, and wine put in place enduring systems of exploitation. Food branding and advertisement shaped French discussions and perceptions of empire as resource, while racializing food in ways that continue to contribute to how race itself is socially constructed through food in various contexts to this day. The main premise of this course is that the colonial legacy and its racial constructions continue to be fed to eaters via food in ways that require examination.

This course will take as its focus the urban underworld of 19th century Paris, in both the literal and figurative meanings of “under world.” Divided into three units – crime; prostitution, and public works – this class will explore literary and sociological representations of nineteenth-century France’s urban underbelly, as well as the public works projects below Paris that shaped the city and its inhabitants above. Using a literary and cultural studies approach to the topic, we will examine canonical and popular works of fiction alongside nineteenth-century social studies as well as visual representations of the underground. On occasion these primary readings will be supplemented with twentieth and twenty-first century historical and literary criticism on relevant topics.

This course will explore the issues that confront Francophone Africa in its transformation from tradition to modernity. This theme and the problems surrounding it will be studied through magazine and newspaper articles, critical theory, literary texts (novels, drama and poetry), films, and even songs. However, literature will remain our predominant tool for examining these issues. Cross-listed with African Studies and Comparative Literature. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

One of the goals of this course is to introduce students to an unfamiliar form--that of oral literature. At the outset this term poses a problem and it will be necessary to explore how literature can be termed "oral." The course will lead students to consider redefinitions of literary terms beginning by the term "literature" itself. Another goal of the course--certainly linked to the first--is to introduce students to African culture. Orality is not a simple aspect of communication but a complex system. There is an oral culture just as there is a culture of the written word. Key elements of orality such as memory, the status of the word, creation, re-creation, performance, and the power given by linguistic mastery will be examined. We will study epics, hunters' songs, initiation songs, tales, proverbs, and riddles. The course will therefore flow from culture to literature and from literature to culture. Cross-listed with African Studies and Comparative Literature. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

In an era where human rights activism is considered the domain of political protest, journalism and social media, what role does literature play? Through the novels that we read and through class discussions, students will discover the historical and cultural contexts that have made certain human rights issues particularly controversial in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Issues discussed will include: language rights as an aspect of human rights, the freedom to practice religion, laws against torture and inhumane treatment in prison, the equality of men and women before the law, and the right to work and to social protections while unemployed. Throughout the semester, we will discuss the contribution of literature to raising awareness and imagining change. Readings will include: Ahmed Marzouki Tazmamart, cellule 10 Maissa Bey Surtout ne te retourne pas Abdellah Taïa L’armée du salut Mohamed Nedali Triste jeunesse Tahar Ben Jelloun Par le feu And others Prerequisites: FREN 151 and 1 course between FREN 161-262, or FREN 250/FREN 251, or instructor's permission

Nineteenth-century Paris was the site of five World’s Fairs (1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900) which brought products, technological innovations, arts, architecture, culture and, most of all, people from around the world to the capital city. They also spurred the construction of many of Paris’s most famous monuments: the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, and what is now the Musée d’Orsay, among others. In this course, we will focus our study of modernity, nationalism, politics and culture through the lens of each of these five Parisian expositions universelles. We will examine the political movements and regime changes that spanned the forty-five years of the expositions and pay careful attention to the project of colonialism contemporary to and on display at the expositions. We will also explore the artists and musicians depicting and inspired by these events, art criticism devoted to the works on display during the expositions, advertisements for the events, and journalistic articles reporting on them. Finally, we will study the reactions of prominent literary and cultural figures to the expositions, both in essays and manifestos, as well as guidebooks.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, France saw seismic evolutions in understandings of the human self and, more precisely, of what sort of control people could exert over their own lives. Secular and scientific modes of reasoning came to replace religion, which diminished as a form of social organization and control diminished. At the same time, the rise of bourgeois capitalism introduced paths to financial and social mobility that had previously not existed. Along with these elements, massive political upheavals and abrupt reversals in discourses and ideologies gave people a sense of constant volatility. Broad opportunity combined with looming meaninglessness. Through study of the major works of nineteenth-century French realism (Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola), we will analyze the development of the self as a modern idea, as well as the parameters of individual agency. Topics will broadly include: the role of political ideologies in individual understandings of the self; the weaponization of religion and its decline, the role of the narrator in creating impressions of fate and arbitrariness; social definitions of femininity and endeavors to surmount them; marriage as aspiration and as limitation; the rise of industrial production and capitalism; the growth of consumerism; genetics, psychiatry, and medical notions of destiny. The course assumes no prior familiarity with these topics or with nineteenth-century French literature. It will be conducted entirely in French, and all written work will be composed in French. Prerequisites: Either FREN 3350 or FREN 3351 must be completed prior to taking this class. Learning Goals: Students will develop a broad understanding of the self as a psychological, moral, political and economic phenomenon, one developed and shaped through nineteenth-century narrative. Students will also become familiar with the best-known writers and novels of the French nineteenth century. Through close reading work and through analytical practice both in class discussions and presentations and through a variety of written assignments, students will improve both their fluency in French and their skills in literary interpretation and critical thinking.

This course explores the articulations and intersections of French colonial history and the ecological impacts of colonialism to this day in the wide Francophone world. As early as the seventeenth century, European colonial powers expanded their influence, exploiting both colonized populations and the land, seeking ecological domination, and committing environmental injustice against local populations. What were the characteristics of land inequality and exploitation during colonial rule? And in a contemporary context, what are the enduring effects of colonial rule on the land and local communities? We will first analyze the ways in which text and image reflect colonial land-use practices and the legacies of environmental, social and political exploitation. When examining literature and visual media, we will also pay particular attention to ways of imagining ecological solidarity and sustainability between the human and non-human worlds. Topics broadly include: plantation society; forms of colonial dispossession; human-produced ecological disasters (e.g. deforestation, plastic pollution, water poisoning); humanitarian aid; and forms of environmental sustainability and resilience. The course assumes no prior experience with the topics highlighted in the description.

In August, 2023, Dakar, Senegal witnessed a tragic yet all-too-familiar situation that garnered significant media attention. A group of migrants embarked on a perilous voyage aboard a pirogue, with the goal of reaching the shores of Spain. Tragically, their overcrowded boat capsized, resulting in the loss of many young lives and once again leaving Senegalese society in shock. In West Africa, hundreds, if not thousands, undertake this hazardous journey each year, driven by an unyielding determination encapsulated by the Wolof phrase Barsa Wala Barsak, which translates to "Barcelona, or Death." The experience of migration, whether coerced or voluntary, has been a central theme in the cultural production of Francophone Africa south of the Sahara. It serves as a compelling gateway to delve into the examination of African diasporic subjectivity and experience as depicted in the literature, cinema, and art of the region.

This course aims to investigate the plural motivations behind people’s decisions to migrate, whether by choice or out of necessity, as well as the tangible and subtle consequences of these journeys on their self-perceptions, identities, cultures, and on the societies they leave behind. It also delves into how history and memory exert influence on individual and collective experiences of displacement and migration. To achieve this goal, the course will provide a thorough examination of the historical, political, and societal factors that contribute to a nuanced understanding of the diverse and distinct narratives of migration, displacement, and the resulting feeling of alienation or unbelonging often associated with such journeys in Francophone African contexts.

Students will engage with a curated selection of post-independence Sub-Saharan African literature, including novels, short stories, and poetry. Additionally, they will explore cinematic productions, photographic installations, music, and various artworks that grapple with themes such as voluntary mobility, the (dis)illusions of coveted migration, or traumatic displacement. Moreover, students will be introduced to a collection of scholarly and theoretical readings, as well as a number of contemporary news articles, to equip them with the necessary tools to refine their understanding of diasporic experiences and identities, as well as the crucial role of crossings (broadly understood) in their shaping. Together, we will thus critically analyze the mechanisms and forces that have molded the contemporary Francophone African diasporic subjectivity, exploring the diverse modes of its expression through art, film, and literature.

This course will explore African self-perceptions through an in-depth study of primary sources, such as oral and written literature, cultural theories and political discourse, arts and crafts, and film and other media. This series of analyses will enable students to observe how Africans make sense out of their human and natural environment, as well as to discern trends and patterns of change and areas of social tension and conflict in the lives of Africans today. The course will conclude with a critical appraisal of the contribution of non-African Africanists to the study of African cultures and world views. This course fulfills the upper-division culture requirement for the French major. Cross-listed with African Studies & International Affairs.

In Visions of Empire, students will explore and analyze the diverse, sometimes contradictory, visual representations of French imperialism. Specifically, we will examine how the French colonial empire, its colonized populations, landscapes, and architecture were depicted in France and within the colonial space during the 19th and 20th centuries. We will explore the political, cultural, economic, and social implications of these representations. Throughout the semester, we will collectively reflect on the role of visuality and the meanings and practices of imagery in (post)colonial French history. What role did photography, posters, caricatures, and cinema play in the French colonial expansion? How did the French perceive their empire and how did colonized populations respond to, challenge, or oppose these perceptions? How were French conceptions of race influenced and negotiated visually? How is French colonial history represented today? Through the study of various (post)imperial visual productions and drawing on the works of postcolonial thinkers and theorists, this course will introduce students to disciplines such as visual studies, media studies, and propaganda studies. Additionally, Visions of Empire will encourage students to deconstruct images and representations productively, identifying the different mechanisms that constitute what Roland Barthes aptly termed the rhetoric of the image.

This course proposes to explore a series of contemporary texts, films, and cultural productions (such as Rap and Ra? music, comic strips, coming of age novels, TV documentaries, immigration laws, newspaper articles, etc.) in the context of the recent emergence and coming of age, in metropolitan France, of a generation born of (North) African immigrants. These cultural productions challenge notions of national identity and culture from within. Is culture something we own? Something that owns us? How then does cultural change occur? What contestations, what statements, what struggles are at stake in these "texts"? We will examine the historical and social background of this emergence; the resonance and significance of the notion of ethnicity in France; the role of some key spaces, mainly schools (for example, in the infamous "affaires du voile") and urban spaces ("les banlieues" and their representations in the media) in the process of culture change. Finally, we will explore how this emergent production puts into question the border between high culture and popular culture. Cross-listed with Comparative Literature. This course fulfills the upper-division culture requirement for the French major.

This course offers the opportunity to study texts by some of France’s most important women writers from the mid-seventeenth century through the final years of the Revolution. The selection of novels, plays, poems, and political and philosophical writings will be read in the context of the historical, literary, and philosophical movements in which they were created, allowing students to appreciate these texts in their context, and gain a greater appreciation for the literary, historical, and cultural framework in which they appeared.

This course will offer students the opportunity to read nineteenth and twentieth century fiction by women authors from the Francophone world. Given the comparative approach of the course, students will be encouraged to pursue discussion of questions of transnational importance, including common themes and images (especially gender and sexuality), address questions of geographical, historical, and socio-cultural specificity. Where appropriate, feminist theory and writing practice may also be explored. Regions to be represented may include French-speaking Europe (not including France), the Maghreb, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean basin, and Quebec. Authors to be considered may include Mariama Ba, Calixthe Beyala, Nina Bouraoui, Nicole Brossard, Marie Chauvet, Andree Chedid, Maryse Conde, Assia Djebar, Louise Dupre, Aminata Sow Fall, Madeleine Gagnon, Jacqueline Harpman, Anne Hebert, Malika Mokkedem, Madeleine Monette, Gisele Pineau, Monique Proulx, Simone Schwartz-Bart, and Leila Sebbar. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major. Cross-listed with Comparative Literature and Women's Studies.

Through an examination of early modern narrative works in the context of the Renaissance worldview and Western literary and philosophical traditions, we will explore how each writer under consideration addresses love, exploits humor, critiques society, or interrogates the act of writing in establishing his or her authorial voice. In addition, the course provides students with training for improvement in the skills of close reading and textual analysis. Writers to be studied include Rabelais, DuBellay, Louise Lab?, Des Periers, Marguerite de Navarre, and Montaigne. This course fulfills the upper-division pre-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

In this discussion-based course, the focus will be on individuals and movements central to understanding the history and arguments of feminist thought, from the French Revolution to the contemporary Francophone world. The struggle to achieve greater justice and equality for women has taken many forms and has emerged repeatedly in the past two centuries, partly because the ground gained does not always remain so in a given society and its laws (as the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade demonstrates). This seminar will give students the opportunity to discover French and Francophone voices and tendencies that can help inform and even inspire us in our current historical moment, because they offer tools and strategies for thinking through and tackling situations of injustice experienced by women and a variety of other marginalized groups in Europe, North America and Africa. While focused on feminist thought specifically, this course will also include fiction, non-fiction, and cinematic texts that explore Afro-feminisms, Quebec feminisms, intersectional theory, and reactions to feminism’s gains.

Caring in Crisis provides a general assessment of the meaning and place of care in contemporary thought. This course is also an exploration of care in all its different manifestations, as well as its ambivalence through the prism of literature, film and visual arts from the French-speaking world. Students will investigate the complex dynamics contained in the different interpretations of care: caring about, taking care of, caregiving and care receiving. In effect, care has historically and culturally been made invisible, undervalued, and relegated to women and minorities – more generally to economically vulnerable populations – within a capitalist, colonialist and extractivist world economy. By tracing the multiple dynamics of caring along issues of gender, race, class, and ecology, this course asks about the relations of power and structures of inequality the perspective of care reveals.

Intercultural emphasis on literary and historical documents on war and its repercussions. Wars waged by knights, professional soldiers, nations, and technologies, considered across various periods. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

In this course, we will study various critical texts written by some of the most important 19th and 20th century French poets on modern and avant-garde art (with an emphasis on Dada, Surrealism and Cubism). We will analyze works by Baudelaire, Valery, Breton, Reverdy, Ponge and Michaux in order to stress the ongoing and profound aesthetic relationship between the literary project of the poet and the artistic project of the painter in modernity. This courses fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

This course will be based upon the close readings of books and articles written by 20th Century French writers that all deal with Latin American cultures. It will stress the special esthetic and philosophical relationship that surrealism developed with these cultures in the course of the Twentieth Century. The purpose of this course is two-fold. First, it intends to analyze the essential role played by the indigenous cultures of Latin America in the construction of a supernatural and magical worldview. Secondly, this course will demonstrate the preeminence of Latin American cultures in the surrealist discourse on cultural otherness.

This course will study the development of lyric poetry from the age of the Italian genius Petrarch through the period of the great 16th-century French lyric verse–a period that established key themes, conventions, and psychological perspectives for modern poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the context of the Renaissance world view and its related philosophical and literary traditions, we will examine how each poet defines his or her erotic, artistic, and/or cultural identity, and from it creates an original lyric speaking voice. Poets to be studied include Petrarch, Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Joachim DuBellay, and Pierre de Ronsard. Cross-listed with the Comparative Literature Program. This course fulfills the upper-division pre-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

This course explores the ways in which women's literary and cinematic production in French engages with contemporary social issues, like racism, sexism, environmental violence, and other forms of oppression. This course aims to highlight the role of women's fiction as a vehicle for advocating social justice, challenging norms, and inspiring meaningful change. Moreover, in this course, we will investigate what artistic activism means and looks like in contemporary contexts, away from reactionary assumptions and unsupported delegitimization. The focus will therefore not be on whether women writers and directors we study define themselves as activists, but rather on how the fictional worlds they create help formulate the tools essential for cultivating activist thinking. How, then, can the formal and stylistic elements of fiction shape activist thought and fuel political and social imaginaries? What forms of solidarity and transformative change emerge from women's voices in fiction? Restrictions: Include Level: undergraduates

As a point of departure, this course establishes the relationship between medical culture, health, and colonialism, exploring how Western medical discourses have shaped colonized bodies as "other," reinforcing racial inferiority, invisibility, and marginalization. Therefore students will explore the making as well as the legacies of physical and psychological hegemony, but also practices of refusal and resilience against historical and ongoing colonial violence. Although the primary focus of the fictional and non-fictional documents in this course will be on the wider, diasporic Caribbean, they will be paired with selected excerpts from thematic essays to enhance students' contextual, conceptual, and theoretical exploration of these topics. Topics broadly include: medical racism and the racial prejudice; (neo)colonial pollution; mental health and racism; racialized minorities' experience in health care; humanitarian aid and racial violence; and practices of cultural and ecological resistance. The course assumes no prior experience with the topics highlighted in the description. Finally, the course will be conducted entirely in French, and all written work will be composed in French.

This seminar is designed to examine a particular aspect of nineteenth-century French intellectual and religious history--the evolution of the idea of God--through literature. Drawing from novels, stories, and essays by Stendhal, Flaubert, Lamennais, Barbey d'Aurevilly and Zola, we will consider how these writings represent questions of God, religion, and sacred order. We will also focus on the relationship between literature and the secularization of French culture and on the author figure as representative of and substitute for God. Theoretical works will sometimes be used to situate the primary readings within a critical context. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

This course will provide an introduction to the role of women and questions of gender in medieval French society – and in the process, a survey of the major literary works and figures of the French Middle Ages. With the exception of a few short texts presented for the sake of contrast, every work discussed in this class was either written by, or written at the request and financing of, a woman. The themes of these works span the magical/otherworldly, the amorous, and the political/religious; they address the distinctive problems faced by medieval women within their marriages, as well as within their social positions more broadly. No prior experience studying the literature or culture of the Middle Ages is required.

A detailed study of three great myths of love fundamental to the development of French literature and thought: Narcissus, Tristan, and Don Juan. The course will help students to understand better just what a myth is, how it is structured, and how it can be transposed in French literary texts from one set of historical, cultural, and artistic circumstances to another. Readings will be selected from classic narrative, poetic, and dramatic texts from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Cross-listed with the Comparative Literature program. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

This course examines the portrayals of disease, medicine, and public health in major nineteenth-century French novels. France was the recognized leader in nineteenth-century medicine; it is also the nation whose literature deals most luridly with themes of disease and recovery. In this class, we will pay attention to the roles of class, gender, race, and religion in modern thinking about health and illness. We will think critically about health care in relation to individual responsibilities, as well as in relation to income inequality and questions of human rights.

This interdisciplinary course will examine the theme of transgression in literature, visual and plastic arts, and cinema, and will focus on works from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. By way of encounters with the libertine, the seducer, the dandy, the aesthete, the prostitute, and the criminal in these works, we will evaluate the role and potential merit of transgression as a force for political, societal, or artistic change. By analyzing the notion of transgression through the lens of the breaking (or exalting) of taboos, unstable or shifting alliances, and duplicitous behaviors, students will be encouraged to examine transgression in terms of legal, ethical, and moral systems, and to formulate questions about sexuality and identity. Authors and texts to be studied include Laclos (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), Baudelaire (Le Spleen de Paris), Huysmans (A Rebours), Gide (Les Caves du Vatican), Genet (Les Bonnes), and by Marcel Duchamp (selected works). Cross-listed with Comparative Literature. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement for the French major.

This course offers students an introduction to francophone Maghrebi speculative fiction, and its relationship to postcolonial literary studies. Class readings will draw broadly from across the genre of speculative fiction, including science fiction novels, YA fantasy, dystopian narratives, and fairy tales, all written by authors either from the Maghreb or of Maghrebi descent. As we read, we will examine the relationship between the speculative mode found in these works, and issues in postcolonial literary studies. As Jessica Langer argues in Postcolonialism and Science Fiction,“The figure of the alien – extraterrestrial, technological, human-hybrid or otherwise – and the figure of the far-away planet ripe for the taking are deep and abiding twin signifiers in science fiction… [and] these two signifiers are, in fact, the very same twin myths of colonialism.” Taking these “twin myths” as a point of departure, this course will ask how authors have used what is often assumed to be a “Western” or even “colonial” genre, and repurposed it to explore questions of revolution, decolonization, postcoloniality, and globalization.

The objective in this course is to offer students an opportunity to read and study the astonishing wealth of outstanding literature published in Québec and French-speaking Canada since World War II. Representative texts will be selected based on thematic, generic and/or theoretical considerations. Discussions will focus on questions of cultural and linguistic specificity, of form, and, where appropriate, of gender as it relates to these other questions. Attention will be paid to developing close reading as well as analytical skills, through classroom and online discussions, and essay assignments. Theoretical readings will be used to assist students in securing a critical context for their readings, as well as a broader historical understanding of the various important moments and movements in modern Canadian literature in French. For the Spring of 2013, course content will be based on the extraordinary tradition of women’s fiction in Québec, beginning with Marie-Claire Blais and the Quiet Revolution, and spanning the latter half of the 20th century up to and including texts participating in feminism and postmodernism, and concluding with a novel from the first decade of the 21st century. The fiction chosen will document the changes in Québécois women’s lives during the period, even as it reflects women’s evolving political, personal and creative aspirations and possibilities.

This course will analyze the historical, political and cultural situations that led to the Algerian War as well as the roles of the various groups that emerged from the colonial system and the war itself. The Algerian war remains a traumatic event for the French and Algerian populations, as well as a defining moment for these States. Following the war, partial amnesia was hastily constructed through a series of laws of amnesty in France, and through a series of officially-sponsored commemorations in Algeria. This course proposes to explore the resistance and the efforts displayed to come to terms, or not, with this trauma, and the role played by fictions and films to understand this ever present past and put it behind, in both France and Algeria. Cross-listed with MAAS. This course fulfills the upper-division culture requirement for the French major.

This course, Médias et Société: La Presse française face à l’histoire, explores the evolution of the French press and its central role in shaping political, social, and cultural life from the French Revolution to the present day. Students will examine how newspapers, magazines, caricatures, radio, television, and digital media have reflected and influenced key historical events such as the Dreyfus Affair, the World Wars, Decolonization, May 1968, and recent social and political movements in France. Through the analysis of authentic media sources, the course encourages critical thinking about journalism’s ethical responsibilities and ideological impacts, including issues of privacy, public information, and political expression. Conducted entirely in French, the class also aims to strengthen students’ language skills through discussion, writing, and collaborative projects, while deepening their understanding of French society and contemporary media landscapes.

This course will present the historical and contemporary visages of Montr?al as a way to understand the cultural evolution of contemporary Qu?bec. The goal of this new course is to allow students to discover and explore the world's second largest Francophone city through literature and films that highlight its role as the cosmopolitan cultural and economic heart of Qu?bec society. The course will be divided into three, chronologically ordered sections: the first will be an introduction covering the history of Montr?al; the second part will examine the role of the city as a symbol of Qu?bec's modernization and aspirations in the years following the Quiet Revolution; and the final, most substantial section will focus on the socio-cultural and political issues that affect life in Montr?al today. Topics to be covered include rural migration to the city, cosmopolitan diversity and the question of Qu?bec identity, symbolic buildings and public spaces, current economic realities, and metropolitan consolidation. Texts may include works by Gabrielle Roy, Jacques Godbout, Nicole Brossard, Louis Hamelin, Monique Proulx, and Sherry Simon, and films such as J?sus de Montr?al, Montr?al vu par . . ., and Cosmos. This course fulfills the upper-division post-1800 literature requirement of the French major.

This course is intended to introduce students to the lively and varied genre that is French crime fiction, and to French history and culture through the lens of that literature. Students will read representative crime fiction texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as critical articles. Focus will be on plot, narrative structure, the character of the detective, questions of national and cultural identity, wars of the twentieth century, representations of law, justice, and social order, and connections among legal, moral and narrative authority.

The history of the French language is the story of a language evolving within concrete situations to meet the needs of its users. We trace its emancipation from Classical Latin and its gradual transformation into a recognizable French language by the thirteenth century. Colonialism, migrations, invasions, geographical location social, and ideological systems leave their imprint on the language. By the end of the course students will be able to read aloud and translate selected passages of Old French. Through the language, they will also have an historical and linguistic understanding of why France's cultural identity today is predominantly "Latin." Some acquaintance with Latin is desirable but not essential. Cross-listed with Linguistics. This course fulfills the linguistics requirement and the post-advanced language requirement for the French major, and satisfies one semester of the College's social science general education requirement. (Not offered 2004-05)

In a tutorial, a student works independently, under the guidance of a faculty member, on an in-depth research project. The research topic and the format of the work to be produced–usually, but not necessarily, a formal annotated paper–are determined by agreement between the student and the professor. Typically, the tutor and the tutee are expected to meet on a regular basis to discuss the work being done and make sure that the student is progressing satisfactorily.