Global Arc

How have French writers, thinkers, and activists addressed the growing environmental crisis in recent decades? In what ways does their work converge? We look here at how fiction and thought-often inspired by the work of activists-have confronted this challenge. Themes include climate change; agribusiness and factory farming; development and (de)growth; nuclear risk; environmental justice and health; species extinction; the attention economy; and ecofeminist and decolonial thought. Novels, essays, and BDs paired with landmark works by thinkers such as Gorz, Guattari, Serres, Latour, Descola, Zask, Morizot, Pelluchon, and Ferdinand.

FRE 1027 is an intensive double course designed to help students develop an active command of the language. Focus will be on reading and listening comprehension, oral proficiency, grammatical accuracy, and the development of reading and writing skills. A solid grammatical basis and awareness of the idiomatic usage of the language will be emphasized. Students will be introduced to various Francophone cultures through readings, videos, and films. Prerequisite: FRE 101 and permission of instructor. Five 90-minute classes. All classes are conducted in French.

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.

This course will examine the cultural and political events knows as May '68, with a focus on the historical and political context that contributed to its development as one of the watershed events of modern French history. We will study May '68 from a range of perspectives, including film and photographic representations, as well as its historical, sociological, artistic, and philosophical dimensions. Special focus in the second half of the course on 1968 is in a global context, addressing this world changing moment in sites such as Prague, Mexico, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, US, etc.

The course title "Les Combustibles" comes from an Amélie Nothomb play in which three people trapped in an apartment during a war in winter must decide which books they will burn to stay warm. The choice between physical and intellectual well-being serves as an organizing theme for the course, which focuses on prose produced in an age when the latter is often subordinate to the former. Genres: novel, essay, autofiction, autobiography, blog, and philosophical treatise. Themes: representations of the body, metatextuality, the act of reading and writing, global identity, memory and trauma, and consumerist culture.

The religious demand for self-examination and confession reaches back to the 13th century; later, the secular tradition sees confession as a requirement for authenticity. Many modern texts build on these traditions, whether in the introspection of the first-person narrative, or with the analytic attention of an outside observer, and the policing of society also makes a demand for confession from the suspect. The seminar will study a variety of confessional writings, from Rousseau to Patrick Modiano. This course will be taught inside a correctional facility.

An exploration of the concept of hospitality, individual and collective, in French, Mediterranean, and Maghrebi (i.e., North African: Arab, Berber, and Jewish) cultures. Draws on materials from literature and the arts, politics and law, philosophy and religion. Issues studied include immigration, citizenship, alienation, and, more generally, the meaning of welcoming a stranger. Prerequisite: a 200-level course in French or instructor's permission. One 90-minute lecture, one 90-minute preceptorial.

An interdisciplinary study of places, periods, persons, or questions that helped define French cultural identity, from its origins to the present. Areas of study could include courtly love; gothic art; the Enyclopedia; the Belle Epoque; the Figure of the Intellectual from Zola to Simone de Beauvoir; the sociocultural revolution of May 1968; colonization, its discontents, and its aftermaths; France in the age of globalization; Franco-American relations; etc. Prerequisite: a 200-level course in French or instructor's permission. Two 90-minute classes.