Global Arc

The course will explore the creation, production, and management of pioneering international festivals from France's main historic festivals, such as Festival d'Avignon and Festival d'Automne, to more recent and emerging ones worldwide. It will use Le Festival de Princeton, Princeton French Theater Festival's sixth annual edition, as a case study, and closely follow its offerings at the onset of the fall semester. Leaders in the field will visit the seminar to share their experiences on festival management and missions, and discuss the true role of a festival nowadays.

Major movements and directors in French and French-language cinema. Topics may include: early history of the cinematographe; the Golden Age of French film; Renoir, Bresson, Tati; the "New-Wave"; French women directors of the 1980s; adaptation of literary works.

This course studies the history, theory, and aesthetics of "new media" in France and beyond between 1400 and 1900. We look closely at moments when textual and visual media that are now "old" were first emerging, from the printing press in the Renaissance to the Lumière brothers' cinématographe in 1895. How did early users perceive, adopt, and shape these new media technologies? How did each medium transform the existing cultural landscape? What can this history tell us about contemporary new media? Course integrates regular visits to libraries and archives on campus for hands-on interaction with historical media objects and technologies.

This interdisciplinary course explores the state of French and Francophone Studies today and offers students a variety of methodologies and theoretical frameworks they may apply to their own research projects. Students will receive practical training in digital humanities, archival research, close and far reading, and will study the ways critical race theory, environmental humanities, semiotics, media studies, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, poetics, and postcolonial studies have impacted the academic study of French-language literature and culture.

This course is designed to provide a formal environment for French senior concentrators to refine their command of literature, culture, and thought, as well as to foster their writing skills. In addition, the seminar helps prepare students for the department's final comprehensive examination. Major texts from the French and francophone traditions will be studied weekly, and, in addition to being discussed, will serve as bases for writing workshops. An important part of the seminar will also be dedicated to the art of translation.

This course will study the interrelation of slavery and capitalism in the francophone Caribbean, from the Haitian Revolution to the present. The course will examine a series of classic works that contest French Caribbean colonialism and slavery, from the perspective of the historical transition from late imperialist feudalism to industrial and post-industrial capitalism. Writers addressed will include CLR James, Karl Marx, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Eric Williams, Edouard Glissant, and Maryse Condé.

What is an animal? The "question of the animal" has long preoccupied literature and philosophy, and still informs any definition of what it means to be human. But many accounts also reduce animals to mere symbols, things, or machines in a human-centered world. What is at stake in attributing thought, feeling, and speech to them? What might they say, if they could speak and we could hear? This course looks at the strain of French literature and philosophy which, from Montaigne and La Fontaine to Romain Gary and Derrida, has sought to think seriously about the presence, meaning, experience, and importance of non-human animals in our world.

Comparative readings of canonical theoretical feminist texts in 20th-century France and the U.S., including texts by Beauvoir, Butler, Hooks, Cixous, Kristeva, Lorde, Irigaray, Harraway, Condé, Le Guin, Preciado, Wittig, and Tiqqun. Some topics addressed: first- through fourth-wave feminism, pornography, Riot Grrrl, the veil/burqa/burkini in the public space, the Dominique Strauss-Kahn incident, Femen, abortion, fashion and beauty, race and social class, sexual violence and the campus, French parity laws, street harassment, maternity politics, political correctness, queer politics, ecofeminism. Graduate students encouraged to enroll.

This course traces the problematic theme of rootedness, a metaphor for the genealogical origins of people and their attachment to geographical spaces, in the literature, philosophy, and politics of 20th-century France and Germany. Topics: nationalism and regionalism; word roots (Heidegger's etymologizing metaphysics); Jung and Bachelard on roots and the subconscious; Sartre's abject root and the phenomenologists' efforts to "reground" philosophy; Derrida's negotiation of radicality; the root-to-rhizome shift proposed by Deleuze and Guattari; recent attempts to create a non-anthropocentric philosophy; transplantation and colonization.

Combines a general introduction to literary theory with the in-depth study of a small number of representative original texts. The first element will be taught via a survey of the field and the second via the focused study of works on a central theme, such as "melancholy and spectrality" or "others and alterity," using authors such as Levinas, Derrida, and Kristeva. Prerequisite: 200-level French course or permission of instructor. Two 90-minute seminars.