ELEMENTARY FRENCH I

The aim of the beginning French sequence (French 1101 and French 1102) is to help you to develop an active command of the language. Emphasis is placed on acquiring the four language skills--listening, speaking, reading and writing--within a cultural context, in order to achieve basic communicative proficiency.

• TRF 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• MTWR 8:50 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• TRF 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• MTWR 10:10 a.m.-11:15 a.m.
• MTWR 11:40 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
• MTWR 1:10 p.m.-2:15 p.m.
• TRF 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• TRF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• MWR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• MWR 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Jesus I Suarez Martinez
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• Instructor: Pascale Crepon
  CULPA: 10 Info
• Instructor: Ronald J McIntyre
  Info
• Instructor: Pascale Crepon
  CULPA: 10 Info
• Instructor: Eponine Senay
  Info
• Instructor: Pascale Hubert-Leibler
  CULPA: 12 Info
• Instructor: Carlos M Malache Silva
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• Instructor: Brooke N Habit
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• Instructor: Marie-Helene Koffi-Tessio
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

ELEMENTARY FRENCH II

The aim of the beginning French sequence (French 1101 and French 1102) is to help you to develop an active command of the language. Emphasis is placed on acquiring the four language skills--listening, speaking, reading and writing--within a cultural context, in order to achieve basic communicative proficiency.

• MTWR 8:50 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• MTWR 10:10 a.m.-11:15 a.m.
• TRF 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• TRF 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• TRF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Eric T Matheis
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

INTERMEDIATE FRENCH I

This course will further your awareness and understanding of the French language, culture and literature, provide a comprehensive review of fundamental grammar points while introducing more advanced ones, as well as improve your mastery of oral, reading, and writing skills. By the end of the course, you will be able to read short to medium-length literary and non-literary texts, and analyze and comment on varied documents and topics, both orally and in writing.

• TRF 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• MTWR 9:10 a.m.-10 a.m.
• MTWR 10:10 a.m.-11 a.m.
• MTWR 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• TRF 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• TRF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• MWR 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Nadrah S Mohammed
  Info
• Instructor: Sophie Queuniet
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 4 points

INTERMEDIATE FRENCH II

Prerequisites: FREN UN2121 Intermediate Conversation is a suggested, not required, corequisite Prepares students for advanced French language and culture. Develops skills in speaking, reading, and writing French. Emphasizes cross-cultural awareness through the study of short stories, films, and passages from novels. Fosters the ability to write about and discuss a variety of topics using relatively complex structures.

• TRF 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• TRF 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• TR 11:10 a.m.-noon
• MTWR 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• TRF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra Borer
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

RAPID READING AND TRANSLATION

The course focuses on reading comprehension and translation into English and includes a grammar and vocabulary overview. It also addresses the differences between English and French syntax and raises questions of idiomatic versus literal translations.

• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Katherine M Manansala
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

INTERMED CONVERSATN FRENCH I

We will be working on pronunciation, vocabulary acquisition, listening comprehension, and oral expression. Activities will include listening comprehension exercises, skits, debates, and oral presentations, as well as discussions of films, songs, short films, plays, news, articles, short stories or other short written documents. Although grammar will not be the focus of the course, some exercises will occasionally aim at reviewing particular points. The themes and topics covered will be chosen according to students’ interests.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Wesley Gunter
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• Instructor: Zachary Desjardins-Mooney
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• 2 points

INTERMED CONVERSATN FRENCH II

We will be working on pronunciation, vocabulary, listening comprehension, and oral expression. Activities will include listening comprehension exercises, skits, debates, and oral presentations, as well as discussions of films, songs, short films, news, articles, short stories or other short written documents. Although grammar will not be the focus of the course, some exercises will occasionally aim at reviewing particular points.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Wesley Gunter
  Info
• 2 points

THIRD-YEAR CONVERSATION FR I

Prerequisites: completion of the language requirement in French or the equivalent. Conversation on contemporary French subjects based on readings in current popular French periodicals.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Celia L Abele
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• 2 points

FREN LANG,SOC,CULTRE THRU FILM

Prerequisites: FREN UN2102 French socio-political issues and language through the prism of film. Especially designed for non-majors wishing to further develop their French language skills and learn about French culture. Each module includes assignments targeting the four language competencies: reading, writing, speaking and oral comprehension, as well as cultural understanding.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Heidi Holst-Knudsen
  CULPA: 20 Info
• 3 points

FRENCH THRU CURRENT EVENTS

The course will offer students an understanding of fundamental underlying concepts that structure French society and that are necessary to grasp if one wants to follow current events in France. This course could be of interest not only to CC students but also to students enrolled at SIPA or Teacher’s College.

 

Moreover, this course would allow for a comparative approach to how same events are covered in US, or other foreign media, and in France.

 

Given that this course will deal with current events, the readings will depend entirely on how the news unfolds. Students will be given an introduction to the various media outlets available to them: the press, television and online sources. As the course unfolds, I will adapt the choice of sources that best follow events as they happen. 2022 for example, will be the year France assumes the presidency of the European Union. It will also be the year of the presidential elections. For such events, I will propose specific institutional sources. On the other hand, events that could not be anticipated will require some form of guidance in terms of sources.

 

In spite of the obvious unpredictability of the specific content of this course, certain key concepts necessary to understand current events in France will be presented. These may vary slightly from one semester to another, but would include, without being limited to: the structure of government and public institutions, political parties, unions and “associations”, social benefits and “the welfare state”, public vs. private sector, “Paris is France”, universalism, secularism and “
laïcité
”, cultural exceptionalism, the figure of the intellectual, national identity, immigration, geography of France and demographics, relation to Europe, geopolitics, globalization and sovereignty. Of course, the choice of themes and concepts in a given semester would be influenced by dominant topics in the French news.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Samuel Skippon
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 3 points

Read, Think, Write in French

THIRD-YEAR GRAMMAR & COMP

UN3405 enables students to hone and perfect their reading and writing skills while improving their ability to express and organize thoughts in French. In this engaging advanced language class, students are exposed to major texts in fields as diverse as journalism, sociology, anthropology, politics, literature, philosophy and history. Stimulating class discussions, targeted reviews of key grammatical points in context, and an array of diverse writing exercises all contribute to strengthen students’ mastery of the French language. This course also works as a bridge class between Intermediate French II and courses that focus on French and Francophone cultures, history and literature (such as 3409 and 3410). Students who take this class will be fully prepared to take advanced content classes or spend a semester in a Francophone country. This class is required for the French major and minor.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra Borer
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO FRENCH & FRANCOPHONE HISTORY

INTRO FREN FRANCOPHONE HI

 

This class provides an introduction to the history of France and of the francophone world since the Middle Ages. It initiates students to the major events and themes that have shaped politics, society, and culture in France and its former colonies, paying special attention to questions of identity and diversity in a national and imperial context. Modules include a combination of lecture and seminar-style discussion of documents (in French).

This course is part of a two-course sequence and is a core requirement the French and Francophone Studies major.  

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Thomas Dodman
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

Intro French & Francophone Literature

Intro French Francophone

This class offers a survey of major works of French and francophone literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Emphasis will be placed on formal and stylistic elements of the works read and on developing the critical skills necessary for literary analysis. Works will be placed in their historical context.

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Laurence Marie
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

What is this Trash?: French Cinema and B

Postwar Fren Cine & Bad T

This course will chart a history of French cinema through exemplary films of
mauvais goût
or bad taste
.
Whether they were explicitly banned or censured, deemed too grotesque, pornographic, or violent, cult classics or quite simply panned or labeled unwatchable, these films challenge received expectations of what a film should be. Beginning in the 1920s and ending in the present, this course will track major movements of French and Francophone cinema (surrealism, impressionism, realism, New Wave, Situationism,
cinéma-vérité, cinéma du look
, the New French Extreme, etc.) and seminal directors (Painlevé, Dulac, Vigo, Carné, Malle, Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Ozon, Kechiche, etc.) along multiple axes of “bad taste.” Since its inception in the 1890s, viewers have continuously questioned cinema’s relationship to morality, sexuality, and youth audiences, as well as its political dimensions. What qualifies as “bad cinema” is dictated as much by the technical evolution of the new medium, as it is by larger historical contexts: the First and Second World Wars, the decolonialization of the French empire, French Maoism, feminism, the AIDS crisis, the globalization of media, and so on. On the one hand, this course explores cinematic form and viewers’ reception, in both Europe and abroad, as the global industry itself changes. On the other hand, it addresses unique aspects of the French cinema industry, notably the French State’s outsized role in financing and promoting cinema. We will necessarily consider the history of film censorship, as various political, anti-Vichy, or anti-colonial films are routinely banned, and sometimes screened decades later. We will also investigate, however, more subtle questions of uncomfortable form and subject matter, especially in the unwatchable avant-garde of the 1960s and ‘70s and the grotesque, genre- and gender-bending works of the 1980s to 2020s. While this class leans heavily on cultural studies, it does not adhere to a strict interpretive framework and secondary readings engage with psychoanalysis, sociology, Marxism, material culture, feminist theory, and so on. Class taught in English with films in French with English Subtitles. Secondary materials in English.
French majors and minors must submit papers in French.
This class will also involve a few class field trips (TBD), likely to the Museum of the Moving Image and the Lincoln Film Center, as well as in-pe

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Aubrey A Gabel
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

SENIOR SEMINAR

Prerequisites: completion of either FREN UN3333-FREN UN3334 or FREN UN3420-FREN UN3421, and FREN UN3405, or the director of undergraduate studies' or the instructor's permission. Required of all French and French & Francophone Studies majors. Usually taken by majors during the fall term of their senior year. Critical discussion of a few major literary works along with some classic commentaries on those works. Students critically assess and practice diverse methods of literary analysis.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Antoine M Compagnon
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

THEORY OF LITERATURE I

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Madeleine Dobie
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 3 points

Sociology of Literature

This course introduces the students to a growing subfield of both literary studies and sociology as well as history: sociology of literature. It is particularly developed in the French-speaking countries: The course and discussions will be in French, and many of the texts will be in French when an English version is not available.

After two classes centered around theories that form the basis of most of current sociology of literature, the course will explore empirical case studies, which all have also a theoretical aspect. This will be organized into three parts. Part one will be dedicated to the social conditions of literary production and of being a writer. Part two will focus on inequalities in the literary field, depending on “identity” factors (gender, race, nation, language). Part three will be centered around the reception of the literary text and its afterlife, in particular its process of consecration.

Typically, one class consists of a discussion around two texts (chapters of a book, and one article). It is introduced by a student who will compare both texts: they will also introduce the other students to a text that they would have picked within the “additional texts” (they can also propose a text outside of this list). Each class will bring together empirical case studies that have a temporal and/or geographical scope: in general, one will concern the Francophone world, and another one will concern another linguistic area. Sociology of literature always try to go beyond the particular to try and find patterns across time and space: this course is henceforth also a class of comparative literature.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Tristan Leperlier
  Info
• 3 points

PRACTICUM IN FR LANG PEDAGOGY

Designed for new Teaching Fellows. An introduction to the conceptual and practical tools of French language pedagogy.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Pascale Hubert-Leibler
  CULPA: 12 Info
• 3 points

Passing/Transfuges:on being someone else

This course pursues a comparative analysis of situations in which people pretend to be someone else, or something other than the identities that they are assigned at birth or by prevailing social norms. It considers three typical forms of this plasticity of self and other: the phenomenon of racial passing in post-emancipation US history; attempts to import the notion of passing in the context of gender identity; and the related concept of the transfuge - who tends to be a transfuge de classe - in contemporary France. Drawing from a range of theoretical perspectives (sociological, psychological, philosophical…) and close readings of literary texts (novels, autobiographical writings…) we will explore similarities and differences between these different forms of being as constant becoming, seeking answers to a range of broader questions relating to authenticity and performance, to self-fashioning and social reproduction, to outer cues and inner feelings, and to how class, race, and gender align and intersect, in domination and subversion, at different points in time and in different places. Authors and theorists examined include: Nella Larsen, WEB du Bois, George Sand, Philip Roth, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, Didier Eribon, Kaoutar Harchi, and Annie Ernaux. Course open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students. All readings in English (in French for French majors/MA&PhDs where relevant).

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Thomas Dodman
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

The Politics of Memory. Remembrance, Eth

This seminar will explore the multidimensional interplay between collective memory, politics, and history in France since 1945. We will examine the process of memorializing key historical events and periods – the Vichy regime, the Algerian War, the slave trade – and the critical role they played in shaping and dividing French collective identity. This exploration will focus on multiple forms of narratives – official history, victims’ accounts, literary fiction – and will examine the tensions and contradictions that oppose them. The seminar will discuss the political uses of memory, the influence of commemorations on French collective identity, and the role played by contested monuments, statues and other “
lieux de mémoire
” (“sites of memory”). We will ask how these claims on historical consciousness play out in the legal space through an exploration of French “memorial laws”, which criminalize genocide denial and recognize slave trade as a crime against humanity. These reflections will pave the way to retracing the genesis of the “
devoir de mémoire
” (“duty to remember”), a notion that attempts to confer an ethical dimension to collective memory. The seminar will examine the multiple uses of the French injunction to remember – as a response to narratives of denial, as an act of justice towards the victims, and as an antidote to the recurrence of mass crimes and persecutions. We will examine how amnesty is used to reconcile conflicting collective memories and will evaluate the claim that the transmission 

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Emmanuel Kattan
  Info
• 3 points

Colette vs. Proust

Two anniversaries give rise to this confrontation. We commemorated the centennial of the
death of Proust (1871-1922) in 2022, and celebrate the 150 th birthday of Colette (1873-
1954) in 2023. They belong to an exceptional generation born around 1870, the “Modern
French Classics,” with Valéry, Gide, Claudel and Péguy. They met in fashionable salons in the
1890’s, when Colette, just married to Willy, arrived in Paris, and they did not much like each
other: he was a snob, she was outrageous. But Colette read Du côté de chez Swann as soon
it came out in 1913, and was strongly impressed by the evocation of the village of Combray.
Proust congratulated Colette warmly after reading Mitsou in 1919, a brief romance between
a dancer and a lieutenant during WWI. During the last years of Proust’s life, Proust and
Colette were the two most visible and popular authors on the postwar literary scene.
Among the “Six of 1870,” common to Proust and Colette is the focus on sensations, memory
and time, as well as a curiosity for sexual transgressions. “Combray” and La Maison de
Claudine explore the lost paradise of childhood; Le Pur et l’Impur is a response to Sodome et
Gomorrhe; Le Temps retrouvé and La Naissance du jour the autofiction as a genre. We will
read the two authors as serendipitous counterparts.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Antoine M Compagnon
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

DISCOVERING EXISTENCE

A study of the theme of human existence confronted with the infinite universe of modern science (Descartes, Pascal), with the proliferation of existence (Sartre), with the absurd (Camus), with the other (Levinas).

• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Souleymane B Diagne
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

INTRODUCTION TO HISTORY AND LITERATURE

INTRO TO HISTORY AND LIT

An exploration of the interconnections and intersections between history and literature, both as categories of cultural production and as scholarly disciplines.  In the past thirty years the boundaries between history and literature have become usefully blurred, as literary scholars pursued the historical aspects of their texts and historians recognized the literary aspects of their narratives.  The result is a propitious intellectual moment, which enables scholars to address new methodological horizons that combine close reading of texts with expansive attention to historical context.

 

The course treats the subject in terms of both theory and practice. Theoretical readings address the relations between history and literature, with a focus on texts relevant to scholars working in the field today.  Exemplary recent works of English-language scholarship highlight the kind of creative blending of literary and historical approaches that the students might pursue in their M.A. essays. 

• T 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael F Stanislawski
  CULPA: 66 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism 1789-PRE

NATIONALISM & COSMOPOLITA

This course analyzes the ideologies of nationalism and cosmopolitanism from 1789 to the present.

• R 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael F Stanislawski
  CULPA: 66 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Sexualities : Medieval and Modern

Sexualities Medieval & Mo

In this class, we are interested in how gender and sexuality have been constructed in the past and present. The class will be divided into four units, for which our guiding questions are as follows: 1. How should one teach and write about the history of sexuality? In a time when queer people remain under threat in much of the world, including this country, is it better to look for readily identifiable queer forebears in past periods? Or should we, on the contrary, seek to avoid any kind of anachronism in looking for queerness in the past, hewing strictly to the non-normative or deviant categories labeled explicitly by past thinkers? Is there a third way? 2. How have gender and sex been constructed in the past (as a binary, a spectrum, or something else?). Are they a function of sexual ‘orientation’ (if one can even speak of such a thing before the 19th C) or the other way around? How have they been constructed recently? 3. How do social and political factors condition our sexual desires? Should the bedroom be a battleground for a political agenda, as some anti-porn feminists (and others) claim, or should we decide that sexual desires are outside the bounds of morality and/or politics? Can we interrogate the conditions surrounding our sexual desires without imposing moral norms around them? 4. What are some of the recent debates in queer theory? How do issues of race and disability intersect with gender, sex, and sexual orientation? How has the category of ‘trans’ involved a rethinking of sex and gender? Has queer theory strayed too far from sexuality?

 

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 3 points

DISSERTATION WORKSHOP

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Emmanuelle Saada
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 3 points