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.
• TRF 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• MTWR 11:40 a.m.-12:45 p.m.
• MTWR 1:10 p.m.-2:15 p.m.
• TRF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• TRF 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Samuel Skippon
  CULPA: 13 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.

• TRF 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• MTWR 8:50 a.m.-9:55 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 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: Carlos M Malache Silva
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• Instructor: Pascale Crepon
  CULPA: 10 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 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• MTWR 11:10 a.m.-noon
• MTWR 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• TRF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Wesley Gunter
  Info
• Instructor: Sophie Queuniet
  CULPA: 7 Info
• Instructor: Pascale Hubert-Leibler
  CULPA: 12 Info
• Instructor: Wesley Gunter
  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.

• MWR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• TRF 10:10 a.m.-11:25 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.
• TRF 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• MWR 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Luca Pomioli
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• Instructor: Nadrah S Mohammed
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• Instructor: Heidi Holst-Knudsen
  CULPA: 20 Info
• Instructor: Laurence Marie
  CULPA: 3 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.

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Marie-Helene Koffi-Tessio
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Wesley Gunter
  Info
• 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.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Luca Pomioli
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• Instructor: Celia L Abele
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• 2 points

THIRD-YEAR CONVERSATION FR II

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

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra Borer
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 2 points

ADVANCED TRANSLATION WORKSHOP

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Sophie Queuniet
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

FRENCH LANGUAGE THRU THEATER

FREN. LANG. THRU THEATER

The course is taught in French and focuses on learning the French language via the study of theatre (through plays, scenes, theories, lecture/workshops by guests, as well as performing a series of activities). The course offers students the opportunity to have a better grasp of the variety of French theatres within the culture; and to perform the language through the body and mind. Its goal is to both introduce students to theatre and to explore how it challenges us physically and emotionally, as well as in intellectual, moral, and aesthetic ways. No previous acting experience is necessary but a desire to “get up and move” and possibly even go see plays as a class project is encouraged.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Pascale Crepon
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

FREN LANG,SOC,CULTRE THRU PARIS

Prerequisites: 2 years of college French Paris may be referred to as the capital of modernity, as the city of romance and pleasure, as the center of social and political powers, or as a privileged stage for crises and revolutions. Analyzing and researching the meanings of these diverse representations would expose students to key aspects of French and Francophone political, social, and cultural history. This is a proposal for a course intended for students who, having completed their language requirement in French, would like to better their knowledge of French language and society. It would offer students the opportunity to study representations of Paris over the centuries as a way to practice writing, reading, and conversation in French and as a way to deepen their understanding of French and Francophone cultures. Materials for the course would include major literary texts as well as paintings, movies and popular songs, but also museum websites, local newspapers and local ads, brochures from retail and food malls, restaurant menus, postcards... such variety can be utilitarian and intellectually compelling at the same time. It would allow students not only to study language registers and vocabulary contextualization but also work on finding patterns and making connections.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra Borer
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

French Fiction Into Film

An archivist in the French National Library once opined that the average French filmmaker is above all a bookworm and that this is what makes French cinema unique. How does fiction enable filmmaking? And how has film reinvented literature? This interdisciplinary course invites students to learn more about the widespread cultural process of film adaptation that has animated French culture for more than a century now. Students proceed chronologically through novels, novellas, and short stories by major authors such as Diderot, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, Mauriac, Duras, and Sembène, while watching a range of film adaptations based on these works. Directors include Clément, Franju, Ophüls, Renoir, Rivette, and Sembène. These encounters between literature and film are then used as an opportunity to discuss various topics related to the screen adaptation in its social, political, economic, and aesthetic dimensions. Attention will be paid to both French literary history and French film history, and we will be particularly interested in the ways in which they can shed light on each other. The aim of the course is to enhance students’ comparative close reading skills and, more broadly, to reboot their relationship to both literature and film, enticing them to ask new questions about each of the two media.

This is a bi-weekly course consisting of lectures on Mondays and, depending on enrollment, seminar-style discussions on Wednesdays. The class is taught in English, but students will have the option to read and write in French. Films are in French with English subtitles.

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Tadas Bugnevicius
  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.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Marie-Helene Koffi-Tessio
  CULPA: 1 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.  

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Zachary Desjardins-Mooney
  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 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Celia L Abele
  Info
• 3 points

Transgressive Modern French Lit. & Film

Transgress. Modern Lit &

In its widest sense, transgression is the violation of cultural, social, religious, and legal norms or laws. Traditionally, transgression is regarded as being unacceptable, objectionable, and even harmful. Certain behaviors, such as cannibalism or incest (Freud 1913; Lévi-Strauss 1949), are transculturally deemed as taboo. From another perspective, however, transgression holds the potential to rupture and radically reshape the status quo, a conviction perhaps most evident in the realm of art. Transgressive art shocks us, it elicits outrage, paralyzes us in horror, it makes our stomachs turn, our knees weak. It shakes the tenets of our morals, challenges our sensibilities, and interrogates our notions of what is offensive, appropriate, and societally acceptable. What is it about a work of art that makes it transgressive? Do we know it when we see it? Is it derived from a work’s content or is it also a question of its form? How does it interface with questions of authorship, sociopolitical context, and reception? What limit must a work go beyond in order to be deemed transgressive? What is the relationship between subversion and transgression? Can we speak of an aesthetics of transgression? 2 These questions will drive our exploration and critical engagement with French and Francophone literature and film. In addition to offering a broad overview of 20th - and 21st -century French and Francophone literary and cinematic production, this course will focus on the shifting cultural, social, and political contexts of these works. We will consider how these contexts – in conjunction with a work’s content and form – shape what constitutes transgression and how or why a work is shocking. To contemplate a more comprehensive understanding of transgression and its specificities and contingencies, we will cover an array of literary and cinematographic genres (prose narrative, autofiction, nouveau roman, noir thriller, new wave, experimental film, horror), and themes (romantic love, desire, sexuality, colonialism, familial relations, cultural norms, religion, censorship). Along with primary source texts and films, we will read selected secondary sources to gain knowledge of influential theories of transgression and raise additional questions related to race, gender, genre, sexuality, violence, and the construction of the self.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Andre L Pettman
  Info
• 3 points

Violence, Politics, and the Graphic Nove

Violence Politics Graphic

In the 21st century, we are accustomed to seeing historical violence represented in pop cultural forms, like graphic novels, manga, animated film, or even Tik Tok memes… But when Art Spiegelman first published the graphic novel 
Maus, 
he worried about the dissonance between its form and content: “I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest dream. And trying to do it as a comic strip!” Spiegelman alluded to several historical precedents for the novel’s unusual—or even problematic—form. Artists have long experimented with the relationship between image and text: from cartoons to caricatures, from woodcuts to wordless comics, or from 
calligrammes
to 
ciné-poésie
. When are these dual modes of representation complementary or in conflict? How has the language and subject matter of image-texts developed over time? In this course, we will analyze the French-language graphic novel as an important contemporary medium for the representation of history, politics, and violence.In the first half of the class, we will consider various historical modes of image-text forms, in the French context and beyond, including (but not limited to): Scève’s 
emblèmes, 
Hokusai’s
manga
, Goya’s woodcuts, and Töppfer’s proto-graphic novels; Daumier, Nadar, and Doré’s political cartoons; children’s comics (notably 
Tintin, Corto Maltese
); and adult comics (
Hari-Kiri, Charlie Hebdo, Métal Hurlant).
In the latter half of the course, we will focus our attention on iconic and lesser-known French- and Francophone- graphic novels, attending to the particularity of this 
neuvième art
. How does one study a popular medium that has not been canonized or is in the process of canonization? Why have 
bandes dessinées 
become an important site for representing and remembering historical trauma, from the Iranian Revolution and October 17th, 1961? Course is taught in French, with texts in French.

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

Versailles

Along with the Eiffel tower and Notre-Dame cathedral, Versailles is one of the key iconic sites of French history and culture. This course will examine ancient régime court culture through the history of the château de Versailles from Louis XIV’s assumption of power in 1661, when he began building what twenty years later became the seat of the monarchy and center of power, through the reigns of Louis XV to 1789, the end of Versailles as Louis XIV had conceived it. We will concentrate on literature from that period, while also taking a multidisciplinary approach to cultural history through the examination of social, architectural, and artistic aspects of the château de Versailles as concept, mythology, and lived reality. Readings will include memoirs, letters, plays and other contemporary literary accounts of life at Versailles, and we will also watch film treatments from Sacha Guitry’s 1954 “Si Versailles m’était conté” to the recent television series “Versailles.” Students may choose to concentrate on any aspect of the topic for their final project. Authors read will include Sévigné, Saint-Simon, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Montesquieu, and Voltaire.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Caroline Weber
  CULPA: 8 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Medieval Animals, Human and Other

How did medieval people separate themselves from other (non-human) animals? Was it the ability of humans to talk, use tools, exercise rationality or something else? We will consider these questions in the first unit of this class, in which we’ll look at cases of what Agamben calls “the anthropological machine”—the ways in which humans have distinguished themselves from other species. Why do some bestiaries (catalogues of animals) include human animals but not others? How did medieval people understand Genesis and the notion of ‘dominion’ given to humans over the rest of creation? In the next unit, we will turn to talking animals, both in medieval philosophical texts and in literature. Do they speak differently from human animals? Do humans speak differently when speaking of them (for example, do texts about parrots or other bird mimics start to ‘parrot’ other texts?). We next turn to cases of metamorphosis (human to animal or vice versa) and hybridity (in which a single body is both human and animal). What do these texts reveal about what is proper to the human and how does the body play a role in shoring up species identity? In a final unit, we turn to assemblages—conglomerations in which human and nonhuman animals act together. We will look both at chivalry (knight+horse) and at medieval lovers, who are often surrounded by birds.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Eliza Zingesser
  CULPA: 10 h-index: 3 Info
• 3 points

Francophone Romance Love, Sex, Intimacy

The forms of domination and violence that have characterized the phenomenon of empire have always been interwoven with desire and various forms of intimacy. Personal relationships have been vectors of colonial power as well as sites of resistance. In this course we consider various ways in which love, desire and intimacy have emerged as questions in the French colonial context. The course covers a broad historical and geographic span stretching from the age of plantation slavery to the era of decolonization and from the Caribbean and Louisiana to Vietnam and Africa. We consider both the transmission of categories and practices across colonial contexts and historical transitions and regional specificities. The course methodology is interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from history, sociology and law. The primary lens is, however, be that of literature, a medium in which the personal dimensions of empire have often found expression. We consider how recurrent themes and figures of colonial desire and intimacy have taken shape across different genres and registers of writing.

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

FRENCH FOR DIPLOMATS

This course deals with French foreign policy. It is designed for students who have a good French level (the whole course is taught is French, so there are minimal requirements) and are interested by international relations and France. It aims at improving students knowledge of French diplomacy : the vision and values it carries, its history, its logic, its strenghts, its weaknesses, the interrogations and challenges it faces. Though it is not a language course (there will be no grammar), it will also shapren students mastering of French (especially useful for those considering an exchange at Sciences Po, or wanting to work in places such as the United nations where it is useful to master some French diplomatic vocabulary).

• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: William U Kehl
  Info
• 3 points