Courses

French Studies Courses

Course ID	Title	Offered
FREN1108	FWS:Monstrous Forms: Wild Men and Wicked Women Full details for FREN 1108 - FWS:Monstrous Forms: Wild Men and Wicked Women
FREN1210	Elementary French FREN 1210-FREN 1220 is a two-semester sequence. FREN 1210 is the first half of the sequence designed to provide a thorough grounding in French language and an introduction to intercultural competence. French is used in contextualized, meaningful activities to provide practice in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Development of analytical skills for grammar leads students toward greater autonomy as language learners. Students develop their writing skills by writing and editing compositions. Readings are varied and include literary texts. Daily preparation and active participation are required. Full details for FREN 1210 - Elementary French	Fall.
FREN1230	Continuing French FREN 1230 is an all-skills course designed to improve oral communication, listening comprehension, and reading ability, to establish a groundwork for correct writing, and to provide a substantial grammar review. The approach in the course encourages the student to see the language within the context of its culture. Full details for FREN 1230 - Continuing French	Fall, Spring.
FREN2090	French Intermediate Composition and Conversation I This intermediate-level course is designed for students who want to focus on their speaking and writing skills. Emphasis is placed on strengthening of grammar skills, expansion of vocabulary and discourse levels to increase communicative fluency and accuracy. The course also provides continued reading and listening practice as well as development of effective language learning strategies. Full details for FREN 2090 - French Intermediate Composition and Conversation I	Fall, Spring.
FREN2095	French Intermediate Composition and Conversation II This advanced-intermediate course is highly recommended for students planning to study abroad as it aims to develop the writing and speaking skills needed to function in a French speaking university environment. A comprehensive review of fundamental and advanced grammatical structures is integrated with the study of selected texts (short stories, literary excerpts, poems, articles from French periodicals, videos) all chosen for thematic or cultural interest. Students write weekly papers, participate in class discussions of the topics at hand, and give at least one oral presentation in class. Full details for FREN 2095 - French Intermediate Composition and Conversation II	Fall, Spring.
FREN2310	Introduction to French and Francophone Literature and Culture This course, designed to follow FREN 2095, introduces students to an array of literary and visual material from the French and Francophone world. It aims to develop students' proficiency in critical writing and thinking, as well as presenting students with the vocabulary and tools of literary and visual analysis. Each section of FREN 2310 will have a different focus-for example, colonialism and the other, or the importance of women and sexual minorities in French and Francophone history, performance in literature and film, or image and narrative-but all sections of FREN 2310 will emphasize through writing assignments and in-class discussions, the development of those linguistic and conceptual tools necessary for cultural and critical fluency. Full details for FREN 2310 - Introduction to French and Francophone Literature and Culture	Fall, Spring.
FREN2860	The French Revolution In the turbulent and violent years from 1789 to 1815, France experienced virtually every form of government known to the modern world. This course explores the rapidly changing political landscape of this extraordinary period as well as the evolution of Revolutionary culture (the arts, theater, songs, fashion, the cult of the guillotine, attitudes towards gender and race). Whenever possible, we will use texts and images produced by the Revolutionaries themselves. Full details for FREN 2860 - The French Revolution	Fall.
FREN3120	French Stylistics Part theory, part textual analysis, and part creative writing, this course aims to help students develop a richer, more nuanced understanding and command of both the spoken and written language. As students refine their understanding of style and learn techniques for characterizing stylistic varieties, they apply these concepts both to the reading of a singular (and yet very plural) literary text. Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style, and to the writing of new exercices de style of their own. We also consider the relevance of stylistics to translation and of translation to Queneau's text. Seminar-style participation in class discussions and activities is expected. Full details for FREN 3120 - French Stylistics	Fall.
FREN3220	Readings in Early Modern French Literature and Culture This course is designed to familiarize students with works from the Renaissance, the Classical period, and the Enlightenment, as well as the cultural and historical context in which these texts are created, reflecting a dynamic period of significant change for France. Texts by such authors as Rousard, du Bellay, Montaigne, Molière, Marquerite de Navarre, Corneille, Diderot, de Lafayette, Racine, Perrault, Rousseau. Students may read texts in the original languages or in translation. Full details for FREN 3220 - Readings in Early Modern French Literature and Culture	Fall.
FREN3295	Bankers, Gamblers, Hustlers Modern capitalism is intimately connected to the ethics of play. Through French and Francophone literature, this course explores a host of capitalist players and the vexed moral questions they raise from casino gamblers and roulette addicts to bankers who invented speculative finance by domesticating fortune through probability, a middle-class founded on ruinous debts, and hustlers who create an informal economy in order to make their own luck in the capitalist game. Readings may include: Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Guitry, Mabanckou, Carrere, among others. Full details for FREN 3295 - Bankers, Gamblers, Hustlers	Fall.
FREN3460	Intellectuals: A French History The concept of "intellectual" - the writer or scholar who takes a political commitment - was born in France at the end of the nineteenth century. From the Dreyfus Affaire to the recent polemics on French "identity," passing through Vichy, the Algerian War and May 68, intellectuals established a symbiotic relationship between culture and politics, becoming a sort of national brand, object of both admiration and contempt outside of the country. The aim of this course is to revisit some crucial moments of this history, focusing on different attempts to define the nature and function of the intellectual, from Emile Zola to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Simone de Beavoir to Michel Foucault. Full details for FREN 3460 - Intellectuals: A French History	Fall.
FREN3520	(Dis)ability Studies: A Brief History This course will offer an overview of theoretical and historical responses to bodily and cognitive difference. What was the status of people with (dis)abilities in the past, when they were called monsters, freaks, abnormal? How are all of these concepts related, and how have they changed over time? How have we moved from isolation and institutionalization towards universal design and accessibility as the dominant concepts relative to (dis)ability? Why is this shift from focusing on individual differences as a negative attribute to reshaping our architectural and more broadly social constructions important to everyone? Authors to be studied include: Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Lennard Davis, Tobin Siebers, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, and Jasbir Puar. Full details for FREN 3520 - (Dis)ability Studies: A Brief History	Fall.
FREN3540	On Paying Attention In the age of smartphones and Facebook, the competing claims made on our attention only seem to be multiplying. This course is an opportunity to think about and to enact certain practices of attentiveness and concentration, drawing largely from religious, literary, artistic, philosophical and anthropological sources. We'll be trying various kinds of exercises - from reading poems and looking at paintings to eating more slowly - as we read about the ways in which our seneses reach out to the world, and as we think together about how technology may be used in ways that are not, strictly speaking, technological. This course is for students at all levels, from all backgrounds, graduate and undergraduate, with the understanding that we all need an excuse to slow down and observe the world - and ourselves - a little more carefully. Full details for FREN 3540 - On Paying Attention	Fall.
FREN3655	Epidemics, Plagues, Contagions For dozens of millennia before COVID 19, humans lived with epidemics and contagious diseases. Plagues occurred throughout history, and, as we all know too well, viruses do exist. But, until very recently, literary descriptions (often tied to religious considerations and philosophical determinations) also played a central role in the way population faced and envisioned epidemics. Moreover, the notion of contagion is not limited to the medical sphere: fear, ideas, and cultural forms are apt to become contagious, in this class, we will focus on the representation of epidemics in modern French and ancient Greek literary texts, ranging from Homer and Sophocies to Maupassant, Camus, Guibert, or Cixous. In a comparative way, we'll also interrogate other key texts, from authors such as Boccaccio or Mary Shelley. Full details for FREN 3655 - Epidemics, Plagues, Contagions	Fall.
FREN3750	Ecofeminisms and Wonder Stories in the Francophone World This course will introduce students to the contemporary ecofeminist theories which are being developed in the francophone world today in parallel with the analysis of different case studies, using literary, philosophical, scientific French and Francophone works. The course seeks to look at some of the engendered frameworks that have led to political, sociological and ecological impasses and explores how solutions to ethical, environmental and economical problems may require a feminist perspective. The goal of the course is to open a dialogue between these works, as they represent, symbolize, translate the so-called "universal" knowledge of the Western World and the emerging "situated knowledges of the "Other Non Western World." Full details for FREN 3750 - Ecofeminisms and Wonder Stories in the Francophone World	Fall.
FREN3840	Occupied France Through Film The Second World War and the Occupation of France by German forces had a traumatic impact on the nation's identity. We will examine the way France has tried to deal with this conflicted period through a series of films that each deal, directly or indirectly with the major questions posed by history to French "memory" of the Occupation. What was the role of collaboration, resistance, anti-Semitism, of writers and intellectuals during this traumtic period? How has film helped to define and re-shape the ways in which France has come to terms with its conflicted past? Full details for FREN 3840 - Occupied France Through Film	Fall.
FREN4190	Special Topics in French Literature Guided independent study of special topics. Full details for FREN 4190 - Special Topics in French Literature	Fall.
FREN4290	Honors Work in French Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information. Full details for FREN 4290 - Honors Work in French	Fall.
FREN4745	Romantic Quests, Imperial Conquests The course will propose a parallel reading of some of the most famous texts of romantic literature with texts less known in order to develop and challenge both the canon of literary history but also to extend the field of romantic studies beyond purely literary concerns and geographies. Taking as a starting point Harold Bloom's famous definition of Romanticism as "the internalization of romance, particularly of the quest" we propose to scrutinize some of these canonical works. Texts to be read could include Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir, Germaine de Staël's Corinne ou l'Italie, Chateaubriand's Atala, Flora Tristan PéIrégrinations d'une noir, George Sand's Indiana, Suzanne Voilquin, Mémoires d une fille du peuple en Egypte, Louise Michel's L'ère nouvelle. Full details for FREN 4745 - Romantic Quests, Imperial Conquests	Fall.
FREN6015	The Politics of Care in African Literature Confined to the figure of the "care-giver," the concept of care has long been seen as apolitical. This course explores African aesthetic works in the light of recent debates that have taken "care" seriously as an ethical, philosophical, and political category, one with the potential to disrupt conventions conceptions of the modern political subject. In addition to being deeply entangled with questions of race, gender, and class. African works by Traore, N'Diaye, and others, are examined through a host of different philosophical lenses, from the bioethical concerns with reproductive rights and the issue of abortion (Gilligan; Butler), to the tradition of "cura" which extends from Seneca to Kierkegaard, to the centrality of care in articulating an "embodied citizenship" (Fleury; ubuntu). Full details for FREN 6015 - The Politics of Care in African Literature	Fall.
FREN6212	Michel Foucault: Sovereignty to BioPolitics This course will explore the ways in which Michel Foucault's oeuvre transitions from a concern with sovereignty to a preoccupation with biopolitics. Foucault's early work (one understands that there is no absolute Foucaultian division into "sovereignty" and "biopolitics"), such as "Madness and Civilization," attends to the structure, the construction and the force of the institution – the birth of asylum, the prison, while his later career takes up the question of, for want of a better term, "political efficiency." That is, Foucault offers a critique of sovereignty insofar as sovereignty is inefficient (neither the sovereign nor sovereign power can be everywhere; certainly not everywhere it needs or wants to be; ubiquity is impossible, even/especially for a project such as sovereignty) while biopower is not. Biopower marks this recognition; in place of sovereignty biopower "devolves" to the individual subject the right, always an intensely political phenomenon, to make decisions about everyday decisions – decisions about health, sexuality, "lifestyle." In tracing the foucaultian trajectory from sovereignty to biopower we will read the major foucaultian texts – "Madness and Civilization," "Birth of the Prison," "History of Sexuality" as well as the various seminars where Foucault works out important issues. Full details for FREN 6212 - Michel Foucault: Sovereignty to BioPolitics	Fall.
FREN6240	Psychoanalysis and Historical Transmission This seminar will study the problem of transmission in psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on its stakes for political history and theory. Freud's Moses and Monotheism addresses the unconscious and intersubjective dimensions of the act that founds a people, which "imprints" itself on the people in ways that exceed the framework of allegiance. "How", he asks of Moses, "did one single man come to stamp his people with its definite character and determine its fate for millennia to come?" This transmission is further remarkable in being non-linear, discontinuous, distorted by repression, skipping many generations and crossing continents, but imposing itself nonetheless. My hypothesis is that Freud's argument might shed light on one of the central problems of political theory: the status of what Rousseau calls "the act by which a people is a people. "The act as psychoanalysis understands it is not something we can know, interpret, or anticipate, but something by which we are "struck" both psychically and in the body, where it leaves its traces or impressions. What then is involved in being "struck" by the act of another, and how might it help us to understand the stakes of the act for those who receive it? What role do the unconscious and the body play in the subjectivation of the people and the transmission of its legacy? We will read psychoanalytic texts alongside works of political theory by Rousseau, Marx, CLR James, Du Bois, Arendt, Derrida, Rancière, Zizek, and Badiou. Full details for FREN 6240 - Psychoanalysis and Historical Transmission	Fall.
FREN6390	Special Topics in French Literature Guided independent study for graduate students. Full details for FREN 6390 - Special Topics in French Literature	Fall.
FREN6745	Romantic Quests, Imperial Conquests This course will propose a parallel reading of some of the most famous texts of romantic literature with the field of romance studies beyond purely literary concerns and geographies. Taking as a starting point Harold Bloom;s famous definition of Romancticism as "the internalization of romance, particularly of the quest we propose to scrutinize some of these canonical works. Texts will be read could include Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir, Germaine de Stael's Corinne ou I'Italle, Chateaubriand's Atala, Flora Tristan Perregrinations d'une noir, George Sand's Indiana, Suzanne Voilquin, Memories d une fille du peuple on Egypts Louise Michel's L'ere nouvelle. Full details for FREN 6745 - Romantic Quests, Imperial Conquests	Fall.