Global Arc

This course is meant to introduce students to works of literature in French from a range of historical periods and provides them with methods for literary interpretation through close reading. The course syllabus is organized around common themes and genres. This course is invaluable preparation for more advanced and specialized 300-level literature and culture courses. Classroom discussion and free exchange encouraged. Prerequisites: FRE 107 or FRE 108 or permission of instructor. Course conducted entirely in French.

This media-based survey of popular music in twentieth-century France traces the evolution of music culture through intensive listening to the most influential artists from 1900 to 2012, through recorded and printed interviews with musicians, songwriters, producers, and critics, and through the analysis of music videos and blogs. Beginning with the early music hall performers to contemporary experimentations in electronic music, hip hop, and hybrid forms, the course constructs the genealogy of influence between musicians and raises questions about commercial interests, politics, and authenticity.

Contemporary French Theater will introduce students to the vibrant and diverse scene of contemporary theater in France. Every week we will read a new play by a celebrated or an emerging living playwright, and examine their shared topics of interest and writing styles. A great emphasis will be put on honing the students' speaking and writing skills through staged readings of excerpts of plays in class, and creative play-writing exercises. Some playwrights will join us virtually from France, as well as actors and directors specializing in the contemporary repertoire so as to share their experience creating it in the present times.

This course is designed to improve spoken and written French while exposing students to a number of urgent topics in French environmental politics: climate change, energy politics, food safety, pollution, animal rights, public health, risk management, landscape conservation, and degrowth. What makes the French case unique? How has French history, including Enlightenment and colonialism, shaped current activism, green politics, and the backlash against "ecofascism"? Discussion, debates, and creative projects will center on films, bandes dessinées, literature, art, philosophy, and essays; the course is writing and speaking intensive.

This interdisciplinary course looks at representations of North and sub-Saharan Africa in modern popular culture aimed (supposedly) at a younger audience. Through literature, graphic novels, films, advertising and web-based media, we will see how artistic and more practical goals coexist with didactic intentions. This will lead us to address critical contemporary issues in Africa, such as education, multiculturalism, gender equality, politics, ecology, etc. We'll see how these productions by Europeans, Europeans of African descent, and Africans, do not only perpetuate and transmit stereotypes, but also convey progressive visions.

This course will explore classic French and Francophone cinema from Meliès and Lumière to the Nouvelle Vague. Directors to include Vigo, Renoir, Godard, Truffaut, Rouch, Varda, and Djibril Diop Mambety. The course will investigate both the specific cinematic languages developed by these various directors, as well as the historical and political context in which these films developed.

To improve spoken and written French through attentive study of French grammatical and syntactic structures and rhetorical styles, with a variety of creative, analytical and practical writing exercises, and reading of literary and non-literary texts. Course conducted in French. Prerequisites: A 200-level French course or permission of instructor.

Can images be "read"? In this course, we will study the visual as a reflection of culture and will draw on methodologies from a wide range of fields to examine images that try to persuade, shock, seduce or surprise us, and will learn to identify the various elements that are combined to produce meaning. We will examine different types of images and texts stemming from French culture, ranging from advertising to propaganda, political communication, cartoons, caricatures, and artwork. Topics will include "Representations of Food", "The Other", and "Challenging Political Power".

This course interrogates the ways we read now and in the future, along the cultural, social, and cognitive ramifications of our habits of reading. The course is divided into three sections, past, present, and future of reading, investigated through questions such as: Why do we read? How do we read? What does reading do to/for the individual and the community? We approach reading not as a neutral process, but as a basic cognitive function and a life skill that is determined by many factors (material, cultural, social, and psychological), which can have considerable repercussions on the individual and the society at large.

Advanced French Theater Workshop is a continuation of FRE/THR 211, French Theater Workshop. Students focus their work on three French playwrights: one classical, one modern, and one contemporary. The course will place emphasis on refining and improving students' acting and oral skills. It will culminate in the presentation of the students 'Travaux' at the end of the semester.