Course Descriptions
French and Francophone Studies
FREN 101 - French I
Emphasizing the active use of the language, this course develops the fundamental skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It includes an introduction to the cultural background of France and the Francophone world. Class sessions are supplemented by weekly small group meetings with a French graduate assistant. For students with no previous work in French. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Frequency: Every fall.
FREN 102 - French II
This course continues the development of the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with increasing emphasis on the practice of reading and writing. It includes introduction to the cultural background of France and the Francophone world. Class sessions are supplemented by weekly small group meetings with a French graduate assistant. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 101 with a grade of C- or better, placement test or permission of instructor.
FREN 111 - Accelerated French I-II
This course develops fundamental skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It includes introduction to the cultural background of France and the francophone world. It is designed for students who have had some French prior to enrolling at Macalester or who want to review basic structures. The course prepares students for French III and includes two lab. Sessions. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Frequency: Every semester.
FREN 194 - Topics Course
Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.
FREN 203 - French III
The aim of this course is to bring students to a point where they can use French for communication, both oral and written. At the end of this course students should be able to read appropriate authentic materials, write short papers in French and communicate with a native speaker. It consolidates and builds competencies in listening, speaking, reading and writing and includes study of the cultural background of France and the Francophone world. Class sessions are supplemented by weekly small group meetings with a French graduate assistant. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Frequency: Every semester.
FREN 204 - Text, Film and Media
This course is a content course that presents a study of the language, history, and culture of France and the francophone world through authentic materials including the press, the internet, television, literature and film. The themes of the course will depend on the instructor. At the end of the course students should have attained a sophisticated level of communication in French, the ability to use their skills in French for a variety of purposes including research in other disciplines, and a full appreciation of the intellectual challenge of learning a foreign language and its cultures. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 203 with a grade of C- or better, placement test or permission of instructor.
FREN 294 - Topics Course
Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.
FREN 305 - Advanced Expression: Communication Tools
This course is an intensive training in oral expression and corrective phonetics. Materials include news broadcasts from French TV, films and articles from the French and Francophone press. Grammar patterns that enhance communication will be studied. Class sessions are supplemented by small group meetings with French assistants and small conversation groups with Francophone tutors. Taught in French.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204, placement test or permission of instructor.
FREN 306 - Introduction to Literary Analysis
This course is designed to develop the necessary skills for interpreting literature and for writing effectively in French. Students learn to do close reading and analysis of a variety of literary works and to compose critical essays. The course also includes a study of selected grammatical patterns and stylistic techniques. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204 or placement test or permission of instructor.
FREN 310 - Passerelles: Introduction to French and Francophone Studies
This course is a topics course designed to introduce students to the diversity of French and Francophone Cultures. Through the means of diverse medias: images, music, films, and texts, students will engage with different approaches to the cultural productions of several areas. The course includes aspects of French culture as well to cover how France and the Francophone World engage with each other. Units will include: The transformations of Paris (May 1968, immigration, Paris and its periphery); The Tunisian Revolutions (from one Tunisia to the next); West Africa (modern cultures; emigration; riches); Central Africa (identity; languages; survival); Algeria (web documentaries on several generations, gender, rural/urban); Morocco (youth, tales of women, performances of human rights); Island multiculturalism (Mauritius cosmopolitanism, Caribbean diversity, Haitian riches, French Polynesian artists, Madagascar youth and history); Quebec (identity; language; diversity). The course will be conducted as a seminar. The goals of the course are to introduce students to a rich cultural transnational world in multiple relations with France, French language, changed by this relation and changing France and French as well, through various media. Films will be screened out of class. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 311 - Francophone Cultures of/in America
This course is an introduction to the multiple facets of francophone cultures and heritage, old and new, in the Western Hemisphere. It explores historical connections between France and the United States; Quebec, Acadia and Louisiana; Louisiana, Haiti and creole cultures, from the Caribbean to the Twin Cities; French, Franco-American and Metis heritage and communities in the Midwest and along the Mississippi. The course also explores connections between francophone cultures and the Americas (Hmong, Vietnamese, African and North American). The textbookHéritages francophones: Enquêtes Interculturelles is supplemented with authentic materials (visual, musical, filmic, and print). Visits to different sites and opportunities to meet with different communities of francophone heritage in the Twin Cities are built into the course. Work includes presentations, opportunities to develop small digital projects in French, and short essays.
Frequency: Alternate years.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 320 - Francophone Theater of Exile and Immigration
This course is a survey of francophone theater and film from 1975 to 2014. The plays and films will cover three main topics: the development of colonial and post-colonial subjects, the act of writing and performing while living in exile, and the idea of the Other in francophone film and theater. We will study a variety of plays and films that were written in and take place in all parts of the francophone world, including Quebec, Lebanon, Algeria, Belgium, Cameroon, Senegal, Mali, Martinique, Romania, and France. The form of each work varies widely, from classical French dramatic techniques to minimalist contemporary staging and characterization. Students will study blocking and staging techniques and explore contemporary performance theory in addition to writing literary and cultural analyses. Authors and filmmakers studied include Abla Farhoud, Wajdi Mouawad, Edouardo Manet, Michel Azama, Michele Cesaire, Anca Visdei, Pierre Gope et Nicolas Kurtovithc, and Moussa Toure. Taught in French.
Frequency: Occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): One 300-level French course.
FREN 321 - Introduction to French Cinema
This course provides an introduction to French cinema in a selection of films by a diverse range of directors and that may include examples from the early experimentation of Louis Feuillade and the Lumière brothers through the classic period of Renoir, Cocteau, Buñuel, and Jacqueline Audry; the 1960s French Nouvelle Vague including Godard, Truffaut, Agnès Varda; Resnais and Marguerite Duras; and contemporary cinema from directors including Beineix and Jeunet though to Audiard, Haneke, Claire Denis, Mehdi Charef, and Abdellatif Kechiche. Our objective will be to analyze both the specificity of French cinema as a distinctive art and the way in which French filmmakers have used film to represent and critique various power relations, practices, and institutions in French society, whether in the domains of politics, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, or immigration. We will read some introductory film theory, pay attention to both the formal and thematic dimensions of the works we study, and develop skills in scene analysis and interpretation. The course will be taught in seminar format.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 322 - Introduction to Cinema in Francophone Africa
This introductory course is designed to provide a broad historical overview of cinema in Francophone Africa. We start out with a journey back to Francophone cinema's roots in the colonial past, when film was enlisted to serve various educational purposes as part of the French civilizing mission. Then we do a deep dive into the early postcolonial period to revisit classics such as Afrique 50, Les Statues meurent aussi, Afrique-sur-Seine, Moi un Noir, among a few others. Finally, beginning with Ousmane Sembene's 1963 Borom Sarret (The Cart Driver), we chart the history of film in Francophone Africa, including North Africa (Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, and Algeria), from the early sixties to the present.
Through readings of key texts and critical discussions with filmmakers and film scholars, students will engage a wide range of issues, including censorship, auteur cinema, ethnographic cinema, counter-ethnographic essay films, popular genres, the contested legacies of Pan-Africanist cinema, gender issues, ecocriticism and eco-cinema, and the combined fallouts from the video and digital revolutions that, as elsewhere, have radically shifted the paradigm of film production and consumption in contemporary Francophone Africa.
Through readings of key texts and critical discussions with filmmakers and film scholars, students will engage a wide range of issues, including censorship, auteur cinema, ethnographic cinema, counter-ethnographic essay films, popular genres, the contested legacies of Pan-Africanist cinema, gender issues, ecocriticism and eco-cinema, and the combined fallouts from the video and digital revolutions that, as elsewhere, have radically shifted the paradigm of film production and consumption in contemporary Francophone Africa.
Frequency: Alternate years.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 322 - Introduction to Cinema in Francophone Africa
This introductory course is designed to provide a broad historical overview of cinema in Francophone Africa. We start out with a journey back to Francophone cinema's roots in the colonial past, when film was enlisted to serve various educational purposes as part of the French civilizing mission. Then we do a deep dive into the early postcolonial period to revisit classics such as Afrique 50, Les Statues meurent aussi, Afrique-sur-Seine, Moi un Noir, among a few others. Finally, beginning with Ousmane Sembene's 1963 Borom Sarret (The Cart Driver), we chart the history of film in Francophone Africa, including North Africa (Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, and Algeria), from the early sixties to the present. Through readings of key texts and critical discussions with filmmakers and film scholars, students will engage a wide range of issues, including censorship, auteur cinema, ethnographic cinema, counter-ethnographic essay films, popular genres, the contested legacies of Pan-Africanist cinema, gender issues, ecocriticism and eco-cinema, and the combined fallouts from the video and digital revolutions that, as elsewhere, have radically shifted the paradigm of film production and consumption in contemporary Francophone Africa.
Frequency: Alternate years.
Corequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 323 - A Table! A Culinary Approach to French and Francophone Cultures
France is famous for its cuisine. It is also influenced by the cuisine of its former colonies, that also saw their food resources transformed through the colonial expansion. The course studies the transnational historical and geographical aspects of French and Francophone culinary specificities. From medieval recipes to the globalization of Francophone chefs, the course will focus on the transformations of cuisine from francophone regions and in France, and on their diverse rituals and traditions. From Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, a crossroads of African, European and Asian influences to the gumbos and jambalayas of Louisiana, we will look into the particularities and diversity of fusion foods in Africa, the Caribbean, Vietnam, as well as into the Native American food interactions with the French voyageurs, which will allow us to discuss current events. The course includes some culinary materials (recipes, chefs blogs, scholarly and general articles, literary texts and films --fictions and documentaries), critical material about the sociology, economics, and epistemology of the culinary world and materials about diverse aspects of transnational francophone food - including diversity, sustainability, health, and hunger - as well as meetings with local chefs, bakers, and producers from France and the francophone world, all the way to the Twin Cities. The format of the course is a seminar, based in student discussions, research and presentations, with some Digital Humanities creative aspects and hopefully, will allow for some collective cooking time.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 330 - Towards a Postcolonial Pacific
This course offers a comparative introduction to postcolonial literature and some film from the Pacific region, in particular from Polynesia (Tahiti, New Caledonia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Hawai'i). The course examines recent works by major literary figures through a postcolonial prism, and focuses on representations of the political and social legacy of colonialism in these territories. For each country studied, we begin with a brief historical review of colonization in dialogue with a text written by a colonial visitor or settler. We then examine resistance to colonialism and colonialist discourse in the works of prominent contemporary indigenous authors, in dialogue with current political debates in each territory. Course themes include the social and cultural effects of colonialism and imperialism on colonized peoples in Polynesia; differing conceptions of race, ethnicity and indigeneity in each country studied, and their relation to the histories of British, French and U.S. imperialism in the Pacific; the rise of indigenous nationalist movements, and the challenges they confront in an age of globalization marked by new Pacific power rivalries; questions of language in a Pacific space still dominated by its colonial division into distinct "Anglonesian" and "Franconesian" spheres; and the island as a unit of political organization as opposed to alternative pan-Oceanic conceptions of inter-relationship. Authors studied may include Katherine Mansfield; Patricia Grace; Witi Ihimaera; Victor Segalen; Chantal Spitz; Titaua Peu; Célestine Vaite; Herman Melville; Lee Cataluna; Lois-Ann Yamanaka.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
FREN 332 - Border-Crossings and Immigration in Western Europe Through Literature and Cinema
Global media have long been fascinated with images of migrants from the South enduring perilous journeys in their attempts to enter Europe through land or sea. These images have produced series of standard narratives, especially since the 2010s, rather than a deep understanding. They have also produced series of immigration policy changes as well as humanitarian initiatives. With the help of theorists such as Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Achille Mbembe and Sarah Mekdjian, this course will analyze mass media images of immigration, juxtaposing them with more nuanced representations from migrant and European cinema and literature. From representations and accounts of detention camps, to those of integration, hospitality and success the course materials includes human rights reports, memoirs, fiction, graphic novels, films. The course functions as a discussion seminar. Student work includes presentations, digital work, and short papers.
Frequency: Occasionally.
FREN 336 - Blacks in Paris/Noires á Paris
In his unpublished essay, "I choose exile," Richard Wright declared, "To live in Paris is to allow one's sensibilities to be moved by physical beauty. I love my adopted city. Its sunsets, its teeming boulevards, its slow and humane tempo of life have entered deeply into my heart." Paulette Nardal wrote in her essay "Awakening of Racial Consciousness" that living in Paris in the 1920s had created for Black women the "need of racial solidarity that would not be merely material" and an "awakening to race consciousness" that they had not experienced or understood fully before leaving home and meeting Blacks from other countries in Paris.
This course will look at the relationship that Blacks have had to France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will explore the art, literature, music and political protest that were generated in the "City of Lights." The presence of African Americans has usually been seen, by both themselves and others, as a commentary on race. We will examine the lives of Blacks who left the United States expressly to escape the burdens of discrimination and came to Paris as self-conscious refugees from racism. We will also examine the lives of Blacks who left the French colonies to pursue a western education in France, but who developed broader philosophical ideologies, including the cultural, artistic and literary movements of la Négritude. We will examine their experiences and critique the myth of a color-blind France.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Corequisite(s): FREN 204 or higher
Cross-Listed as: AMST 336
FREN 340 - Voices of the Francophone Mediterranean
This course focuses on Mediterranean francophone literatures and cultures, principally from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania and Lybia) but also occasionally from the Machrek (Lebanon, Syria), and the French Mediterranean, from colonial times to current events, including the post "Arab Spring". The course contains units on orientalist representations, (texts, paintings, photographs and other critical material) diverse colonial and post-colonial European and North African representations of the regional cultures from multidirectional perspectives and theories, multiculturalism in North Africa, gender and sexualities, immigration, religion, and national/post-national cultural productions, including literature and cinema. Texts include major authors, films include a variety of classics and very contemporary films as well as theoretical and critical materials about the regional cinema and film directors. The course also includes graphic novels and music. It functions as a discussion seminar. Students do presentations and several short written assignments. The course is taught in French and satisfies the French Major and Minor requirement.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204 or higher
FREN 341 - The Francophone Caribbean Islands
This course is an Introduction to the visual, musical, literary, philosophical, religious, linguistic, and historical cultures of the francophone Caribbean, especially the islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Haiti, from their colonization to the contemporary period. It explores their commonalities and differences, the richness of their respective cultures, and the diverse challenges they face, whether social, political, or environmental (such as the 2010 earthquake and its consequences in Haiti and the climatic changes affecting the smaller Antillean islands from an oceanic perspective). Through the study of a diverse material including graphic novels, we will explore the islands and listen to their diverse voices, ancient and new, from the sea and the mountains. The course is taught in French as a seminar, with a mix of presentations, short written assignments and digital individual or group projects. It counts for the French Major and Minor.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204 or higher
FREN 342 - Literature and Cinema of Immigration in France
Literature and Cinema of Immigration explores the diversity of France through its immigrant population. The course introduces students to the history and composition of immigration in France and to the current discourses about immigration as well as to the voices of immigrants and descendants of immigrants, especially the recent decolonial voices. The materials for the course include cultural productions (literature, films. music, street art, graphic novels and performances) as well as social documents about the status and rights of immigrants in various parts of France from an intersectional perspective (gender, class, ethnicity, location, language and sexualities). The course is taught in French and functions as a discussion seminar, with student presentations, short written assignments, and individual or group projects. The counts for the French Major and Minor.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204 or higher
FREN 344 - Francophone Islands: An Oceanic Perspective
The course examines the commonalities and differences between francophone islands located in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and French Polynesia. For instance, while the creole spoken in Mauritius is very similar to that spoken in Haiti, the two independent nations have a different history and culture. The archipelagos of the three regions have been subject to different colonization and decolonization processes and some islands are still part of France. Vulnerable to the threats of climate change, military displacement and nuclear testing, they also provide models of resistance, marronage, and resilience. The course will engage with the rich literary, artistic, and other cultural productions (food and music) of the three regions, with the rich diversity of cultures within each area, and explore the complex ecotonic seascapes and trans-island archipelagic networks they create. The course provides the opportunity to look at the world from an oceanic perspective. It functions as a discussion and research seminar, with presentations, short essays and digital work.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
FREN 345 - Censorship in Francophone Africa: Film, Literature and Popular Music
This course provides an overview of censorship issues in Francophone African film, literature, and popular music. Students embark on a historical journey through the colonial period (1934 Laval Decree and its various amendments), the post-independence era of heavy-handed, autocratic censorship (bans, seizures, detention, exile or plain assassination), and the contemporary context of digital censorship (trolling, doxing, internet shutdowns). To supplement course material, students will be given ample opportunity to speak about current censorship issues with filmmakers, festival organizers, writers, editors, musical performers and producers. Assignments and activities include library research on individual or group projects, short presentations in class or on Voice Thread, a Moodle course journal, and a final comprehensive quiz to assess general knowledge of the texts, films, images, and musical records discussed or screened during the semester. Students will also write one short midterm paper on the differential regimes of censorship applied to literary texts and cinematographic images during colonial rule, and, as a final paper, an argumentative essay on a topic of their choice - in consultation with the instructor.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 350 - Contemporary Québec
Québec is uniquely situated in the world: at a crossroads between European and North American cultures, a French-speaking province surrounded by English-speaking nations, and historically both connected and disconnected from its Indigenous peoples. It has also recently been a destination for immigrants and refugees from all over the world. This course examines the distinctive multicultural dimensions of the francophone province of Québec and its interactions with "les autres" (other cultures and peoples), through a study of film and literature published over the past 30 years. Throughout the course, we explore issues of language, identity, exile, and memory to understand the complex negotiations between inhabitants of "la belle province." Taught in French. Pre-requisite FREN 204 or higher. Counts toward Internationalism gen. ed. Counts toward the French minor or major. Counts as a francophone course for the French major.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 370 - Translation Workshop
This workshop is an initiation in the art and craft of translation, in this case the language pair French-English. In the first two weeks, students are introduced to the nuts and bolts of translation, including the seven stock-in trade procedures that any translator, knowingly or not, brings to bear on any source language-target language transfer (borrowing, literal translation, calque, modulation, transposition, equivalence, and adaptation). After this theoretical overview, the focus shifts toward practical matters. Thus, true to the collaborative spirit of a community of practitioners, students workshop their projects in class, peer-reviewing and peer-editing their drafts to achieve the best possible outcome within the completion timelines set by the instructor. Using Kerry Lappin-Fortin's La traduction: un pont de départ (second edition) as our textbook, student assignments will consist of short translations from French into English (versions) or English into French (thèmes), writing exercises, short quizzes, and two exams. Students will also make presentations on translation tools and aids, and their term paper will be in the form of a critical essay introducing their final translation project to a general audience.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): Any 300-level course.
FREN 371 - French Intellectuals in/and the World
This seminar presents an overview of French and Francophone intellectuals who have engaged with issues of social justice, gender, race, class, language, ethics, solidarity work, science and religion across time from the Middle Ages to the present. The course revolves around a period, an intellectual, an issue and how that issue resonates today. The course is about establishing connections between different spaces and times, including colonial and postcolonial periods. Notions of civic engagement and commitment vary and the course engages with with thinkers from all corners of the francophone world, from Christine de Pisan to Boubacar Boris Diop. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): Any 300-level course
FREN 378 - Inventing the Future: Technology, Utopia and Dystopia in French Literary and Visual Culture
Today, we are obsessed with the promise and the perils of technology. We love and rely on our computers and gadgets, yet we also fear technology addiction, electronic surveillance, and the uncertain social and economic effects of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, some thinkers foresee that we will soon arrive at a moment of "singularity" in our relationship to technology with the creation of biologically-enhanced posthumans. In this course, we will consider how our fears and desires have been shaped by a long and often suspicious history of reflection on technology, including a particularly rich French literary and cinematic tradition. We will seek perspective on our contemporary situation through the analysis of French fiction, art, film, and graphic novels associated with the genre of science fiction, and which take as their principal themes speculation on technology and science; travel in time and space; human nature and its limits and our differences from other terrestrial and extra-terrestrial beings; and utopian or dystopian representations of the future. We will consider what these French science fiction works tell us about how we should understand technology as a distinct form of human endeavor, and what they also tell us about what it means to be human or even posthuman? Are French science fiction works a projection or "journey into fear" reflecting only the anxieties of the historical moments that produce them, or can they suggest real possibilities for radical social transformation? How have French science fiction works contributed to the development of the science fiction genre, and to what extent do they reflect a specifically French attitude to technology and science? And how are French feminist authors and writers of color challenging the genre's presuppositions and renewing it for contemporary audiences? Texts and films studied may include works by Cyrano de Bergerac, Mercier; Verne; J.J. Grandville; Jodorowsky and Moebius; Marker; Godard; Laloux; Steward; Denis; and Darrieussecq, as well as short readings of theorists of technology including Haraway, Jameson, Heidegger, Latour, and Mbembe.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 204
FREN 380 - In Search of Happiness and Well-Being
What does it mean to live a "good" life? How are the concepts of well-being and happiness connected to cultural and artistic endeavors? To answer these questions, we will study works of fiction, art, and philosophy from the 17th to the 21st centuries, exploring visions of utopian societies during times when dramatic shifts in political, social, and cultural life changed the ways people defined happiness and well-being from themselves and for their societies. We will also explore how our own views of well-being and happiness are influenced by those of earlier time periods. Taught in French. Counts as the pre-20th century course for the French major.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): A 300-level French course
FREN 394 - Topics Course
Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.
FREN 403 - Voices from the Pacific Rim
This course is an introduction to colonial and postcolonial representations of the French territories in the South Pacific, including French Polynesia and New Caledonia, as well as the former French colonies of 'Indochine.' We will examine the process by which the colonized territories of the Pacific islands and South-east Asia are constructed as objects of desire and difference for a metropolitan French public, and link the formation of these colonialist ideologies to their political and economic underpinnings. We will also explore the interrogation, subversion and displacement of colonial ideology in contemporary postcolonial francophone literature and film by intellectuals in the Pacific and in the Indochinese diaspora. The course will begin with a introduction to the theory of ideology and an overview of the French colonial presence in the Asia-Pacific region. We will then move to examine the conceptualization of the Pacific as an 'antipodes' of Europe beginning in French thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, i.e. as an uncanny opposite or other characterized by its inversion of often corrupt metropolitan social, political and religious values and norms. This section of the course will conclude with a survey of recent work by Kanak and Polynesian writers that confront the realities of the troubled legacy of French colonialism in the Pacific. The last part of the course will begin with an examination of exoticized representations of French Indochina that draw on a long history of European stereotypes concerning the 'Orient.' The course will end with the study of recent work that thematizes the conflicts experienced by the descendants of those former Indochinese colonial subjects who immigrated to metropolitan France. The course bibliography will include texts and images by Rétif de la Bretonne, Pierre Loti, Paul Gauguin, Victor Segalen, Déwé Gorodé, Marguerite Duras, André Malraux, Linda Lê, and Régis Wargnier. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306 .
FREN 420 - French Avant-Gardes in the 20th and 21st Centuries
The course will expose students to some of the most important writers, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, visual artists, and thinkers of the twentieth-century. It will serve both as a survey of the most important literary, artistic, and intellectual movements and as a sampling of the most brilliant and innovative prose, poetry, and performance. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with some of the cultural productions that have been strongly influenced by scientific, linguistic, psychoanalytical, colonial, anti-colonial, post-colonial, racial, and gender-based theories of the century. The course will expose students to intersectional readings of texts and images that represent the long lasting effects of the twentieth-century ruptures on writers and artists in France and the Francophone world through the study of various themes. The course functions as a discussion seminar. Student work includes presentations of relevant materials and short papers. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): Any 300-level course.
FREN 445 - How to Start a Revolution: Revolutionary France and its Legacy
The French Revolution is often viewed as the founding event of the modern French state, but also as an event of world-historical significance that profoundly shaped human social and political history. In this course, we will explore the causes and consequences of the Revolution and its ongoing relevance in the twenty-first century. Questions we will consider include: What is a Revolution? What were the main causes of the French Revolution - ideas; economics; politics? What did the Revolutionaries hope to achieve, and where did they fall short? What was the legacy of the Revolution, in Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, and beyond, from Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines, to Mao and Che, Tiananmen and Tahrir Square? What is "living" and what is "dead" in the concept of Revolution today? We will also examine how the French Revolution shaped our culture and understanding of human rights; our competing conceptions of liberty, equality, solidarity, and secularism; and our sense of the legitimacy of political violence and terror. Readings will include texts by Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, De Gouges, Marat, Robespierre, Burke, Marx, Lenin, Arendt, Fanon, and Žižek. Taught in French.
Frequency: Alternate years.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306 .
FREN 446 - The Animal and the Human in the French Enlightenment
In the French Enlightenment, the animal/human distinction lay at the center of key debates in literature, politics, philosophy, and the natural sciences. In this course, we will explore how writers used new conceptions of animal and human nature to formulate radical political views on the eve of the Revolution. We will critically examine eighteenth-century conceptions of anthropology, race, and human diversity developed in accounts of enfants sauvages and in natural science works. We will examine how new concepts of animality both reinforced and undermined traditional understandings of sex and gender. We will read literary speculations on hybridity and interspecies sexuality, and explore how materialists used the animal/human distinction to promote hedonism and vegetarianism and subvert conventional moral teachings. And we will review the place of companion animals (pets) in eighteenth-century French life, including Marie Antoinette's royal menagerie. Primary works will include selections from authors including Buffon, Diderot, Julie de Lespinasse, Rousseau, Rétif, Sade, and Madame de Hecquet, and some contemporary theory. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306 .
FREN 450 - Money and the Marketplace in the 19th Century
French culture and society underwent sweeping changes with the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution in the 19th century. With these changes, new narratives emerged that we continue to see even in today's culture. They asked questions such as: why do two people fall in love? Why does an individual strive for a better social standing? Is empathy possible in a capitalist society? The answers to these questions are complex, and often relate to what is known as "mimetic desire," a term coined by French theorist Rene Girard in his book Deceit, Desire and the Novel (Le mensonge romantique et la verite romanesque). We will examine the relationships of deceit and desire to money and the marketplace in 19th-century France, and, in the process, learn more about our own society. This course offers a survey of 19th century French literature (novels, plays, short stories, and poetry) linked to the theme of the course, including works by Audouard, Balzac, Desbordes-Valmore, Flaubert, Hugo, Sand, Zola, and others. It will cover several major 19th-century literary movements and styles (Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism). Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306 .
FREN 451 - Environmentalism in the 19th Century
Nature is a temple where living columns sometimes emit confused lyrics - Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal
To hell with civilization, long live nature and poetry ! - Théodore Rousseau, peintre
The Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism had a major impact on the environment in France during the nineteenth century, as it did in other European countries and the U.S. In what ways did the French respond to the environmental crisis in the nineteenth century and how did that set the stage for later developments? In 1854, the same year that Thoreau published Walden, the French created the Société Nationale de la Protection de la Nature. And in 1861 the first Réserve Naturelle was created by the French government to protect the forests of Fontainebleau from clear cutting, due in large part to the well-written petitions by writers and artists such as Victor Hugo, George Sand, and others. In this course, we will look at a number of literary, cultural, and political texts written during the nineteenth century that focus on nature, the environment, and issues related to the rapid urbanization and industrialization of France. We will also study artworks by the Barbizon school, and by later artists including the impressionists of the later part of the nineteenth century. Texts will include works by well-known authors such as Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, and Emile Zola, but also less well-known writers Olympe Audouard and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore among others. We will also study a variety of
contemporary critical theories on the subject, from Claude Brosseau's Romans-Géographes and Bertrand Westphal's La Géocritique to Blanc, Pughe et Chartier's works on l'écopoétique. In the end, we will try to answer the question of why and how the green movement developed in France and why it has been so different (some would say "behind") the ecology movements of other western nations in Europe and in North America. Taught in French.
To hell with civilization, long live nature and poetry ! - Théodore Rousseau, peintre
The Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism had a major impact on the environment in France during the nineteenth century, as it did in other European countries and the U.S. In what ways did the French respond to the environmental crisis in the nineteenth century and how did that set the stage for later developments? In 1854, the same year that Thoreau published Walden, the French created the Société Nationale de la Protection de la Nature. And in 1861 the first Réserve Naturelle was created by the French government to protect the forests of Fontainebleau from clear cutting, due in large part to the well-written petitions by writers and artists such as Victor Hugo, George Sand, and others. In this course, we will look at a number of literary, cultural, and political texts written during the nineteenth century that focus on nature, the environment, and issues related to the rapid urbanization and industrialization of France. We will also study artworks by the Barbizon school, and by later artists including the impressionists of the later part of the nineteenth century. Texts will include works by well-known authors such as Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, and Emile Zola, but also less well-known writers Olympe Audouard and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore among others. We will also study a variety of
contemporary critical theories on the subject, from Claude Brosseau's Romans-Géographes and Bertrand Westphal's La Géocritique to Blanc, Pughe et Chartier's works on l'écopoétique. In the end, we will try to answer the question of why and how the green movement developed in France and why it has been so different (some would say "behind") the ecology movements of other western nations in Europe and in North America. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306.
FREN 452 - Dreams, Drugs, and Demons: The Sacred and Profane in French Literature and Culture
In this course, we will examine representations of the sacred and the profane in France from the early modern period through to the present. We will explore how they embody a human need to transcend or transgress, as well as their social meanings and how they often serve to construct or critique dualities of identity and otherness in the domains of national identity, race, class, and sex/gender. First, we will consider how the sacred is invoked to build national identity in the premodern period, via iconic figures including Joan of Arc; the medieval coronation ceremony; and the carnaval. We will also explore themes of race and gender in texts on witchcraft, demonology, and spirit possession. Next, we will explore the relationship between Enlightenment reason and atheism and the so-called "Super-Enlightenment" in which many leading eighteenth-century figures also dabbled: alchemy, the occult, the secret societies accused of plotting the Revolution, and mysticism. In the 19th century we will examine profanation, excess, and the revolt against bourgeois order in decadent poetry and the literature of the fantastique, and read texts on drugs (opium and hashish) and their relationship to dreams and the unconscious. Finally, we will explore secularization in contemporary France, the relationship of French laïcité to the "religions du Livre" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and French anxieties about the loss of transcendence and the retreat of religion from civic life, as well as about its simultaneous return in the form of Islam, often constructed as the religion of the 'other.' Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306
FREN 475 - Parisian Women, 1730-2010
In this course we examine the lives of "Parisiennes" - women who have lived in or come from the city of Paris from 1730 to the present. We begin with the powerful salonnières of the aristocratic 18th century, intersections of sexism, racism, and colonialism, and the peasant women's march on Versailles during the French Revolution of 1789. For the 19th century, we examine women's roles during the industrial revolution and the modernization of Paris, and the activists of the first wave of French feminism. In the first half of the 20th-century, we study women artists and writers in Paris, including some Americans who lived in Paris during that time. For the second half of the 20th century, we look at changing roles for Parisian women, including the second wave of French feminism, women in politics, and the changing attitudes toward women in French law and society during the 1970s and later. Readings include Claire de Duras' Ourika (1823), Colette's La Vagabonde (1910), excerpts of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949), and Christiane Rochefort's Children of Heaven (1962). We also study recent works by francophone women writers living in Paris today, and view several recent films that focus on the lives of Parisian women. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306 .
FREN 477 - African and French Cinema in Dialogue
This course has for objective to introduce students to French and African Cinema through the prism of colonial cinema and the intimate relationship between colonization and cinema as medium and to establish connections between various well-known French and African filmmakers such as Jean Rouch, René Vautier, Jean-Luc Godard (Swiss), Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Ousmane Sembe, Djibril Diop Mambety, Safi Faye, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Med Hondo, and Trinh-Minh-Ha. How were African cultures represented in French film before the new Wave and the Independences of the francophone African countries? How did French filmmakers of the New Wave respond to the emergence of African Cinema? And how do African filmmakers pioneer in film techniques and content while dialoguing and commenting on French (as well as US and world) cinema? Students should come out of this course with a good understanding of the French and African cinema industries, main trends in cinema since the 1890s up to now, and a good understanding of colonial/postcolonial cinema. Taught in French.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): FREN 306 .
FREN 488 - Senior Seminar
The course is intended primarily for advanced students who have studied in a French-speaking country, and is a requirement for all majors. The themes and theoretical approaches of the seminar will vary depending on the faculty teaching the course. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.
FREN 494 - Topics Course
Varies by semester. Taught in French. Recent offerings have included: Child Soldiers through Texts and Films, Quebec and Others, From the Far East to the Antipodes: Francophone Representations of Asia and the Pacific, and The Animal and the Human in the French Enlightenment.
Frequency: Offered occasionally.
Prerequisite(s): One 300 level course is required depending on content of French 494.
FREN 601 - Tutorial
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 602 - Tutorial
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 603 - Tutorial
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 604 - Tutorial
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 611 - Independent Project
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 612 - Independent Project
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 613 - Independent Project
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 614 - Independent Project
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 621 - Internship
Study abroad is strongly recommended. The internship does not count toward the major.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Four courses in French among those designated for the completion of a major. Permission of instructor. Work with Internship Office.
FREN 622 - Internship
Study abroad is strongly recommended. The internship does not count toward the major.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Four courses in French among those designated for the completion of a major. Permission of instructor. Work with Internship Office.
FREN 623 - Internship
Study abroad is strongly recommended. The internship does not count toward the major.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Four courses in French among those designated for the completion of a major. Permission of instructor. Work with Internship Office.
FREN 624 - Internship
Study abroad is strongly recommended. The internship does not count toward the major.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Four courses in French among those designated for the completion of a major. Permission of instructor. Work with Internship Office.
FREN 631 - Preceptorship
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor. Work with Academic Programs.
FREN 632 - Preceptorship
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor. Work with Academic Programs.
FREN 633 - Preceptorship
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor. Work with Academic Programs.
FREN 634 - Preceptorship
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor. Work with Academic Programs.
FREN 641 - Honors Independent
Independent research, writing, or other preparation leading to the culmination of the senior honors project.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 642 - Honors Independent
Independent research, writing, or other preparation leading to the culmination of the senior honors project.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 643 - Honors Independent
Independent research, writing, or other preparation leading to the culmination of the senior honors project.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.
FREN 644 - Honors Independent
Independent research, writing, or other preparation leading to the culmination of the senior honors project.
Frequency: Every semester.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor and department chair.