Global Arc

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: FRE 207, 208, or permission of instructor.

In Advanced French Theater Workshop, students will focus their work on three main French playwrights: one classical, one modern, and one contemporary. The course will place emphasis on refining and improving students' acting and speaking skills. It will culminate in the public presentation of the students 'Travaux' at the end of the semester. Prerequisite: One 200-level FRE course.

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.

This course is an intensive discussion-based seminar which offers an introduction to sociolinguistics, or the study of language as a social phenomenon. Through readings, films, and documentaries, we will explore contemporary debates related to language, culture, politics, identity, and ideology in the Francophone world. The course includes a series of guest speakers for the discussion of Francophone case studies. Past speakers were from Morocco, Québec, Louisiana, Republic of Benin, La Réunion, and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.

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.

Readings from the works of Rabelais, the Pléiade poets, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, and d'Aubigné in the light of contemporary artistic, political, and cultural preoccupations. Themes will include the rhetoric of love, education, humanism, recurrent mythologies, and utopias. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: a 200-level course in French or instructor's permission.

The continuities of French culture and its preeminence over much of Europe from its 11th-century beginnings through the 16th century. Emphasis on medieval and Renaissance literary works (in modernized versions) in their relationship to topics such as "love'' (fin'amor), saintliness, national identity, humanism, and so on. Prerequisite: a 200-level course in French or permission of the instructor.

From colonization to civil war, Francophone Africa and the Caribbean are little understood beyond such grave issues of urgency and violence. However, no society, its people or their realities are homogenously desolate. Through the study of novels, graphic novels, films and stand-up, this course explores the place of humor in French literature and culture of Francophone Africa and the Caribbean. By the end of the seminar, students will have engaged with different forms of humor and will have acquired the skills to think critically about the capacity of humor in decolonizing French constructions of racial, gender and ethnic alterity.

In the Anthropocene, humanity has become, for the first time, a geological agent transforming the conditions of life on earth, but this power itself gives rise to unprecedented challenges, from air pollution and floods to nuclear fallout and plagues, from agribusiness to petro-imperialism. Literature sheds a unique light on this global crisis, highlighting in each case the lived human experience, the distinct visions of nature, and the complex social conflicts involved. Readings include novels, plays, and journalism about oil extraction, megadams and nuclear fallout from France, Russia, India, Nigeria, Japan and the US.