Courses
FREN 111 - Beginning French I
In this language course, students will develop essential listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in French. Students will also be introduced to the French and francophone world by working on cultural materials from the French-speaking world, and learn to use French as it is spoken and written today.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 112 - Beginning French II
In this course, students will develop essential listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in French. They will learn enough language to handle a meaningful conversation, read a short novel, and speak or write about their experiences, thoughts, and opinions. This class also starts to prepare students for ensuing literature and film classes in our curriculum. Students will write several short compositions. Students will also be introduced to the French and francophone world by working on cultural materials from the French-speaking world, and learn to use French as it is spoken and written today.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 211 - Intermediate French I
The primary goal for this course is to increase students' fluency in both spoken and written French, while introducing them to the study of literary texts through in-class discussions as well as writing exercises. The course offers an intensive review of basic French grammar and numerous opportunities for students to develop their speaking skills in class and in informal conversation groups organized by the French language scholars. Students who complete French 211 and 212 will acquire the necessary fluency to follow advanced literature or film classes in French, or to study abroad in a French speaking university.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 212 - Intermediate French II
The primary goal for this course is to increase students' fluency in both spoken and written French, while introducing them to the study of literary texts through in-class discussions as well as writing exercises. The course continues the intensive review of basic French grammar begun in French 211 and offers numerous opportunities for students to develop their speaking skills in class. French 212 progresses from French 211 by placing more emphasis on the spoken and written analysis of literary texts than French 211. Students who complete French 211 and 212 will acquire the necessary fluency to follow advanced literature or film classes in French, or to study abroad in a French-speaking university.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 320 - Advanced French Language
This course is designed to help students develop strong written skills and near-native fluency in spoken French through frequent discussions and composition assignments pertaining to French and francophone texts of various genres, as well as a wide variety of cultural materials and media. Discussion in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 321 - Advanced French Conversation
This course is designed to help advanced students develop near-native fluency in spoken French through pronunciation drills, discussions, and diverse types of oral presentations on a broad corpus of cultural materials and media, such as film, fiction and nonfiction literature, theoretical texts, news articles and videos, and podcasts. Students will be evaluated on spontaneous output (such as discussions and oral exams) and rehearsed output (such as recordings and recitations). Class conducted entirely in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 328 - The Monstrous and the Human in Medieval and Early Modern France
See LIT 308 for description.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 332 - Early Modern French Literature and Culture
This course will take "time and narration" as its principal area of inquiry. We will examine French works of literature from the early modern and Enlightenment periods (as well as a few works from the twentieth century that are inspired by these thinkers) that engage with one of the major philosophic questions of the period: the nature of temporality and its relation to representation. We will look especially at the work of Montaigne, Pascal, Racine, Mme de Lafayette, and Rousseau in an effort to discern how their experiments with representing time and the nature of becoming (rather than just being) inspire later twentieth-century thinkers such as Sartre, Deleuze, and Beckett. Discussion in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 336 - Social Networks in French Literature
Social networks of all kinds, from the court of Louis XIV to 19th-century Paris, foster excitement, competition, glamour, and thrill, but also anxiety and isolation. These societies are built on an intense exchange of messages and information, often corrupted by lies, misinformation, and mutual manipulation. Exposed to compromises of privacy and security risks, what humans create is destroyed daily. Personal credit and reputation are constantly at stake and vulnerable in a market of appearances, which can make its members shine or perish. Among the influencers, sycophants, and fans, there are sociopaths, bullies, and trolls who use harm, humiliation, or ruin to satisfy their own pleasure or interest. We will explore how authors from the 17th century to the present examine these social dynamics through novels and plays by authors such as Madame de Lafayette, Laclos, Balzac, Camus, Sartre, and Genet in works such as La Princesse de Clèves, Le Père Goriot, La Peste or Les Bonnes. We will also ask how literary works contribute to the formation and dissemination of these networks through salons, reviews, and their own apparatus of distribution and reception. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 342 - Novel from Flaubert to the New Novel: The Collapse of Realism and the Undoing of the Subject
The theory and decline of realism in the French novel will be discussed in Flaubert, Proust, Sartre, Robbe-Grillet, and Sarraute. Focusing primarily on the evolution in narrative form from 1850 to 1960, this course will examine the shift in the modern novel from representing social structures or systems objectively to evoking subjectivity and provoking more complex reader-text transactions. Discussion in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 343 - Late Twentieth-Century French Fiction
This course will examine narrative strategies since the late 1950s and their underlying aesthetic theories. The course will focus on several issues or problems, including the autonomy of the literary text, narrative as a space of encounter between objective reality and the creative imagination, and the construction of the subject through autofiction. How do the formal aspects of prose fiction place into question our experience of the self and the world? To what extent are the self and the world disclosed through narrative, and what is the nature of this process? Readings will include Robbe-Grillet, Perec, Duras, Hébert, Barthes, Modiano, Ernaux, and Condé. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 350 - Uncanny Modernity
In this course, we examine the various ways in which the uncanny, a lingering feeling of dread that unsettles not only our sense of self but also our understanding of the world, language, and representation, is bound up with the yearning for certainty reflected in the scientific, technological, and social advances that define modernity. Our exploration of the uncanny will entail delving into a range of literary genres and media from nineteenth-century Romanticism to Surrealism, including short stories, poetry, essays, photographs, films as well as theoretical essays that attempt to define the uncanny and specify the uncanny nature of reproduction and representation. Authors and artists include Balzac, Gautier, E. A. Poe, Baudelaire, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Freud, Roger Caillois, Claude Cahun, Dora Maar, Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, William Pietz, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Clarice Lispector, David Lynch, and Jordan Peele. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 351 - The Art of Deception in Early Modern French Drama
In this course, we will read plays by Corneille, Molière, and Racine that thematize questions of deception, illusion, dissimulation, and dishonesty. We will ask how these playwrights invite both social and literary skepticism in the face of the multiple deceptions they both unveil and create. We will investigate theater's particular strength as a site for exploring duplicity, asking whether theater functions as a skeptical tool for advancing social critique during this and other periods. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 363 - Introduction to Francophone Literature
This course is intended to introduce students to some of the issues (social, historical, and literary) at the core of francophone studies. To this end the syllabus will include literary works and critical essays by authors writing in French from a variety of cultural situations and geographic locations (the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean). It will treat, on the one hand, the thematic presence of the questions of identity, language, resistance to colonial power, religion, race, etc.; and on the other hand, the ways in which these issues become the object of specifically literary or formal analysis. It will seek out the interpenetration of theme and form in francophone works by exploring the ways in which narrative strategies, for example, transpose the problems and struggles of individuals and societies coming to grips with historical and cultural transformations. The authors studied will include Glissant, Schwartz-Bart, Kane, Kourouma, Ben Jelloun, Condé, and Chamoiseau.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 371 - Nineteenth-Century French Poetry and Poetics
This course explores the blossoming of new poetic forms and changing conceptions of poetry and the role of the poet in the years spanning the romantic, Parnassian, and symbolist movements. Through close readings, we will develop a broad understanding of French versification and prosody, but we will also study and discuss various practices and trends that transformed the composition, the diffusion, and even the reading of poetry in this period: the work of translation; the increased circulation of non-Western texts; the dialogue between poetry and other arts such as music and painting; women's effort to undermine the gendering of the canon; the mythologization of the poet as prophet, seer, flaneur, or poète maudit; revolutionary politics; the expansion of the press; and so forth. Works studied include poems by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Gérard de Nerval, Louis Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire, Louisa Siefert, Judith Gautier, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 381 - Twentieth-Century French Poetry and Poetics
This course will focus on poets since Mallarmé and the theoretical, aesthetic, and ethical projects of poetry in the context of modernity. We will explore approaches to reading figurative language and its challenges to representation and referentiality; relationships of poetic language to ordinary speech; the structure of lyric address; selfhood and the modern lyric subject; and the emergence of a poetics of the nonhuman in late modernity. First and foremost, this course aims to develop the skills of close rhetorical reading as the foundation for all analysis and theoretical commentary. Authors studied include Apollinaire, Reverdy, Desnos, Eluard, Ponge, Bonnefoy, Guillevic, Réda, Leiris, and Roubaud. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 382 - Modern French and Francophone Theater
In this course, we explore some of the most thought-provoking expressions of French and Francophone avant-garde theatre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Starting with Ubu Roi, a satirical farce about a gluttonous and cruel autocrat, the staging of which heralded a new era of experimentation in the world of theatre, we will make our way through a variety of plays that draw on all the possibilities of the theatre to question identity, community, politics, spectatorship, and action, to arrive finally at a consideration of contemporary efforts to decolonize theatre. To achieve a more multidimensional understanding of how theatrical texts mobilize not only language but also bodies in spaces, we will study scripts and videos of stage productions in conjunctions with theories of performance, theatrical space, and dramaturgy. Readings include plays by Alfred Jarry, Tristan Tzara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Aimé Césaire, Jean Genet, Hélène Cixous, Marguerite Duras, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Léonora Miano, and Marine Bachelot Nguyen as well as theoretical works by Antonin Artaud, Bertholt Brecht, Frantz Fanon, Hans-Thies Lehmann, and Françoise Vergès, among others. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 384 - Poetics of the Nonhuman
This course focuses on poetic texts in French that figure the nonhuman-for instance, manmade or natural objects or substances, or nonhuman inhabitants of the natural world. By looking in depth and in detail at the poetry by authors preoccupied with this aesthetic goal, we will explore questions that arise at the intersection of literary texts and the world of material things, and potential conflicts or contradictions between the human practice of language and the nature of nonhuman animals and objects that it attempts to capture in poetic figures. What assumptions are expressed by poetic texts about the relationship between the human and the nonhuman, or the place of human beings in the world they inhabit? Can we imagine poetic texts regulating or even reconfiguring the relationship of human beings to nonhuman forms of life or material objects? Among the issues covered will be the logic of fable in La Fontaine, the poetics of the object practiced by Francis Ponge, the modern materialism of Yves Bonnefoy, the poetry of place in Guillevic, the vegetal lyric subject of Aimé Césaire, the terrestrial tropes of Marie-Claire Bancquart, the ethology of Vinciane Despret, and Anne Portugal's interest in technology. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 390 - Postwar French Cinema (1945-1975)
This course examines the testimonial and critical function taken on by French cinema in the second half of the twentieth century. Focusing on films that problematize significant trends or crises in this historical period (the Occupation, the Holocaust, decolonization, the rise of consumer society, student protests in May '68, etc.), we will discuss what formal strategies allow the filmic medium to propose critical alternatives to traditional historical narratives. Additionally, we will read key essays by film critics and theorists that examine the commitment of postwar French cinema to politics and ethics. Films viewed include works by filmmakers Melville, Resnais, Bresson, Tati, Varda, Truffaut, Godard, Marker, Eustache, and Akerman, as well as various cinétracts. Course includes weekly film screenings. Discussion in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 391 - French Literature and Cultural Studies
We will examine how French cultural and social changes are discussed in short narrative forms, and see how fairy tales, fables, short stories, and novellas reflect upon important clashes of class, identity, ideology, and aesthetics. The course will cover texts from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. We will discuss authors including Marie de France, Perrault, La Fontaine, Mme D'Aulnoy, Voltaire, Maupassant, Balzac, Flaubert, Bloy, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Tournier, Gripari. Conducted in French.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FREN 392 - French Connections: The Intertwined Histories of French and American Cinema
This course explores the deep connections between French and American cinema, which stem from over a century of reciprocal influences disseminated through powerful images and intersecting discourses on film as an autonomous language and art form. Structured around exchanges among cinephilic filmmakers, actors, camera operators, composers, and defiant critics from both sides of the Atlantic, it offers an introduction to the parallel histories of two major filmic traditions, while also questioning the very notion of national cinema. As we move in time from the contested origins of moving images and the development of national cinemas to the emergence of successive "new waves" to the transnational film industry of today, we will examine how the dialogue between French and American artists contributed to shaping significant periods in film history (silent film, surrealism, poetic realism, the French New Wave, New American Cinema), distinctive genres (the film noir, thriller, teen pic, musical, comedy of manners, road movie), and common themes (alienation, precarity, urban violence, police brutality, exile) in both commercial and independent films. Filmmakers discussed include Alice Guy-Blaché, Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, Jean-Luc Godard, John Cassavetes, Robert Bresson, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, François Truffaut, Charles Burnett, Mambéty, Eric Rohmer, Spike Lee, Mathieu Kassovitz, Agnès Varda, Kelly Reichardt, and Mati Diop. Conducted in English. No previous experience with film analysis is required. Students taking the course for French literature credit will meet in extra sessions.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).