Paris at night
Exploring the French and Francophone worlds

French Studies Program

The French Studies Program at Cornell promotes teaching and research on the French and Francophone worlds. It also serves as a resource center for teachers of French in upstate New York. The program also organizes throughout the academic year lectures, colloquia, and other events dealing with various aspects of France and the Francophone countries (art, culture, thought, society).

Program Overview

Gargoyle overlooking Paris, France

Intellectual Exchange

At Cornell, French Studies actively contributes to creative and collective research from all the disciplines. In inviting innovative and distinguished speakers from different countries, the Program favors an atmosphere of intellectual exchange between undergrads, graduate students and scholars on campus.

The French Studies Program, with the support of the College of Arts and Sciences, has been established thanks to a grant from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy designating Cornell University as a “Centre Interdisciplinaire.”

Student outside of Klarman Hall

Undergraduate Study

Are you interested in speaking and writing French more fluently, or are you particularly interested in thinking with the objects that French and Francophone cultures have produced? Our course offerings are designed to have something for virtually everyone: from courtly love to religious violence, from film to theology to lyric poetry, you’ll have a chance to encounter objects that make your world at once more familiar and more strange, objects that pique your curiosity and give you a chance to try out new languages, very much including but not by any means limited to French.

To learn more about the undergraduate program in French, click here to find detailed information on the Romance Studies department website.

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