Courses Offered

* = Pre-1800      # = Francophone      

Seminars Offered

FREN 001-002, 003. Intensive French

Students who start in the 001-002 sequence must complete 002 to receive credit for 001.

For students who begin French in college. Designed to impart an active command of the language. Combines the study of grammar with intensive oral practice, writing, and readings in literary and expository prose.

1.5 credits.

FREN 001: Fall 2009. Moskos, Netter, Dumarest

FREN 002: Spring 2010. Gueydan, Netter, Dumarest

FREN 003: Fall 2009. Blanchard, Rice-Maximin, Dumarest

FREN 004. Advanced French: La France Contemporaine: Culture et Société

Transformations in French culture, literature, and society will be explored through literary texts as well as films, television programs, and the press. Particular attention will be paid to perfecting analytical skills in written and spoken French.
Writing course.
1 credit.

Fall 2009. Rice-Maximin. Spring 2010. Blanchard.

FREN 004A. Advanced French Workshop: The Art of Writing and Speaking French

This course offers supplemental communicative and grammar sessions for students in courses FREN 004 and above. Communication focuses on developing conversational speaking and listening skills and incudes audio excercises for phonetics. Grammar and writing section will consist of formal grammatical explanations, pinpointed exercises for learning grammatical structures and writing assignments which include composition and creative writing.
Prerequisite: Concurrent enrollment in FREN 004 or above.

0.5 credit.

Fall 2009. Netter. Spring 2010. Netter.

FREN 007. French Conversation

A 0.5-credit conversation course concentrating on the development of the students' ability to speak French. May be repeated once for credit.Prerequisite: For students previously in FREN 004 or the equivalent Placement Test score.
0.5 credit.
Each semester. Dumarest.

FREN 012. Introduction aux études littéraires et culturelles françaises et francophones#

This course offers students the opportunity to develop skills in textual and cultural analysis through the study of literary works (including prose, poetry, and theatre), films, and other documents (articles, essays, and images) from France and the Francophone World.
Prerequisite: FREN 004, a score of 675 on the College Entrance Examination or 5 on the AP examination, or the equivalent with permission.
Writing course.
1 credit.
Fall 2009. Blanchard. Spring 2010. Rice-Maximin.

FREN 020. Panorama du cinéna français et francophone#

This course is designed to provide students with a broad knowledge of French literature, from the Renaissance to the present. Among the authors included on the syllabus: Molière, Rousseau, Balzac, Proust, and Yourcenar. Students will read works in their entirety, discuss their significance in class, and listen to short lectures to situate the readings in a historical and cultural context.
1 credit.
Spring 2010. Blanchard.

FREN 022. Panarama du Cinéma français et francophone#

This course provides the groundwork for studying the histories and cultures of French and Francophone film. It introduces students to important historical developments in filmmaking, film movements, questions of auteur, postcolonial cinema criticism and theory, and the economics of production and co-production. In order to study individual films, we will focus on formal analysis of image and sound, aesthetics, and genres. Films will most likely be selected from among the following Francophone countries of production: Algeria, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Mali, Morocco, Senegal, Switzerland, and Tunisia. All coursework and class discussion will be in French. No previous preparation or experience in Film and Media Studies are required. Students must attend weekly screenings.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 024. Service Learning Pedagogy, French

(Cross-listed as EDUC 072)
This course has two elements that are developed together throughout the course of the semester. You can serve the Swarthmore community by teaching your foreign language to local elementary school students in an after-school program that meets two times/week. You must teach for the entire 6-week session, two days/week (M/W or T/Th). During the evening pedagogy sessions held on campus, we will discuss writing weekly lesson plans, foreign language acquisition in children, teaching methodologies and approaches. We use a common goal-oriented curriculum among all the languages. You must register for the language or education studies course that you’ll be teaching and for a service time (A) M/W or (B) T/Th.
.5 credit.
Fall 2009. Yervasi. Spring 2010. Rojavin.

FREN 043. Fictions d'enfance#

Study of the experiences of writers of French expression, as reflected in various coming-of-age texts from Africa, France, the Caribbean, and Vietnam. We will examine the role played by these specific experiences in the construction of the literary identity and subjectivity of the writer/narrator.
Texts by J-P. Sartre, N. Sarraute, J. Zobel, M.Ferraoun, M. Condé, D. Maximin, E. Dongala, N. Bouraoui among others.

This course may count toward an academic program in black studies.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

 

FREN 044. Tyrants and Revolutionaries*

How can one write when facing political adversity? Must historical accounts be read as literary texts? Do books cause revolutions? In this course, we will answer these questions by studying the work of Molière and Voltaire, among others, and the writings of historical figures such as Robespierre. We will also examine the symbolic significance of the French Revolution in contemporary French culture, notably through a comparative analysis of films.
This course may count toward an academic program in interpretation theory.
1 credit.
Spring 2010. Blanchard.

FREN 045. Le monde francophone: Postcolonial cities in the Francophone World#

As a physical and imaginary space, the city is a privileged stage for political and social upheaval. Within cities, cultural and racial divisions are constantly questioned and remade; the local is unavoidably confronted with the global. Francophone cities, in particular, mediate past and on-going conflicts between France and its ex-colonies, and manifest the tensions between local/global cultures and the French colonial legacy.
This interdisciplinary course examines the complexity of the Francophone experience in Francophone metropolises as portrayed in literature, films, artwork, and journalistic articles. Themes examined will include: the aesthetics of the city, the city vs. the nation, racial relations in the urban space, the global village, pop culture and slang in the city.
1 credit
Spring 2010. Gueydan.


FREN 045. Le monde francophone: France and the Maghreb: Postcolonial Writing in a Transnational Context#

This course examines the relationship between France and the Maghreb, two cultural spaces that are simultaneously united and divided by their common violent colonial history. Through the study of novels, films, art work and theoretical texts, we will trace the evolution of this conflicted relationship from the 1950’s to present times. We will focus, in particular, on the following topics: colonialism/post-colonialism and nationalism, diglossia and Francophonie, gender in Islam, exile/ transculturation and globalization.
1 credit
Spring 2011. Gueydan.

FREN 046. Poésies d’écritures françaises#

Study of poetical texts and songs of authors of French expression from the Middle Ages to the present time. Our approach is a thematic one that will allow us to see the place of, among other topics, the social, the political and the personal, in writings from Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, France and Québec. We will read Villon, Ronsard, La Fontaine, Baudelaire, Hugo, Apollinaire, Eluard, Ponge, Dambury, Niger, Tirolien, Maximin, Glissant, Césaire, Damas, Monchoachi, Roumain, Boni, Tadjo, Tati Loutard, Senghor, Diop, Rabéarivélo, Gainsbourg, Brassens, Ferré, Prévert, etc ... Taught in French.
This course may count toward an academic program in black studies.
1 credit.
Fall 2009. Rice-Maximin.

FREN 048. Littératures francophones et cultures de l’immigration en France

This course may count toward an academic program in black studies.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 050. Le Roman du XIXe Siècle

A study of the main themes and technical innovations in narrative fiction as it reflects an age of great sociopolitical change. Based primarily on novels of Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola.

1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 051. Odd Couplings: Writing and Reading Across Gender Lines

This comparative study of texts by 19th-century male authors and 20th-century female authors interrogates the role played by gender-identity construction in writing and reading.
This course may count toward an academic program in gender and sexuality studies.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 052. Le Romantisme

The trauma of the Revolution of 1789 gave birth to the individual even as it put the very concept of individual agency into question. We will interrogate the theater, poetry, and prose of this period as imaginary, sometimes almost magical, solutions to cultural, political, and personal dislocations. This course may count toward an academic program in interpretation theory and gender and sexuality studies
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 054. Cinéma Français: Jeunesse et Résistance

This course explores youth’s dynamic relationship to changes in modern and contemporary French and Francophone societies. We will focus our discussions on representations of youth and how youth culture is depicted in mainstream and independent films from throughout the French-speaking world. Films will most likely be selected from among the following Francophone countries of production: Belgium, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, France, Mali, Senegal, and Switzerland. All coursework and class discussion will be in French. No previous preparation or experience in Film and Media Studies are required. Students must attend weekly screenings.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 056. Ecritures au feminine#

A study of the work of women from Africa, the Caribbean, France, and Vietnam. Material will be drawn from diverse historical periods and genres.
This course may count toward the academic programs in black studies and gender and sexuality studies.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 057. Prose Francophone: Littérature et société#

Close reading and discussion of works from the first and the new generations of writers from the Francophone world. Study of the impact to the oral tradition, aesthetics, politics, identity formation and the role of the writer among other topics.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 058. The Representation of Alterity in French Literature and Cinema#

This course examines differing constructions of alterity in relationship to French national identity as it took shape from the time of the Crusades up through the 21st century. Focusing our attention on the concepts of race, gender, Orientalism, religious difference and narrative authority, we will analyze how French writers have used alterity as a mirror for self-reflection, as an example for social change, and as the locus of a threat to cultural homogeneity. Selected literary texts, paintings and films include works by Montaigne, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Balzac, Delacroix, Matisse, Baudelaire, Gide, Camus, Claire Denis, Didier van Cauwelaert and Matthieu Kassovitz.

1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 059. Le Roman français du XXe et XIXe siècles

This course examines the French novel from literary, theoretical, and historical perspectives. We will focus on both major and minor novelists who participate in important literary movements from the early twentieth-century to the present, but we will also study writers who work outside or alongside these movements and those who write for a popular culture audience. The course will emphasize the history and culture of the novel in France. All coursework and class discussion will be in French.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

LITR 071. French Cultural and Critical Theory#

We will read key texts in French critical and cultural theory (from M. Foucault, J. Derrida, J. Baudrillard, G. Deleuze, among many others) to formulate specific questions about the mediation of violence and its terror effects. There are no pre-requisites for the course, as it aims first and foremost to be an introduction to the subject.
This course is taught in English.
1 credit.
Fall 2009. Blanchard

LITR 073. Postwar France: Revolutionizing Everyday Life (French/Francophone Literature in Translation)

We will focus on French novels and films as they reflect, reinforce, and critique French society from the early 1950s through the end of the 1960s. We will study these texts in relation to modernization, decolonization, and the growing discontent of youth culture in the 1960s. Close readings will allow us to draw conclusions about the relationship of new cultural and social movements—postwar consumer culture, radical olitical movements, and the women’s movement—to France and French society. (Writers and directors include Lefebvre, Godard, Truffaut, Melville, Etcherelli, Rochefort, Varda, Akerman). This course is taught in English.

1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

LITR 075. Haïti, the French Antilles, and Guyane in Translation #

1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

LITR 079F. Scandal in the Ink: Queer Traditions in French Literature

In this course, we will use contemporary lesbian/gay/queer theory to reconsider French literary traditions. Writers will include Nicole Brossard, Colette, Michel Foucault, Jean Genet, André Gide, Hervé Guibert, Guy Hocquenghem, Violette Leduc, Marcel Proust, Monique Wittig, Christiane Rochefort, Renée Vivien, and others. This course is taught in English.
1 credit.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 091. Senior Colloquium: Poétique de la mémoire caraïbe

Through the reading of various works of fiction and essays, we will examine the evolution of Francophone Caribbean societies through some discourses (Western, African, Caribbean) that created the cycles of alienation, resistance and revolts that lead to independence or "départementalisation". Texts will include A. and I. Césaire, M. Condé, L-G Damas, F. Fanon, Frankétienne, E. Glissant, M. Jeanne, D. Maximin, V. Placoly, E.trouillot, M. Vieux, among others. Although this course is required of French/Francophone majors and minors, it is open to other advanced students.

1 credit.
Fall 2008. Rice-Maximin. Fall 2009. Moskos.

FREN 093. Directed Reading

FREN 096. Thesis

FREN 102. Le Monde comique de Moliére

The seminar is designed to acquaint students with the major works of Molière and 17th-century French culture. We will investigate his political relationship with Louis XIV at Versailles, the discourse on early modern feminism of the précieuses and femmes savantes; the critique of religious hypocrisy, and the influence of early modern notions of anthropology (most notably medicine) on Molière’s representation of identity. These aspects will be brought forward through close attention to the poetics of comedy and court spectacles.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 104. Le Roman du XIXe Siècle

A study of the main themes and technical innovations in narrative fiction as it reflects an age of great socio-political change. This course is based primarily on the novels of Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 106. L'Expérience poétique: romance et mélancolie

In this course, we will examine poetry of modernity and the city. We will examine how the city's complexities-its development, cultures, revolutions, and inhabitants-contribute to a poetic vision that is reflected in the texts of 19th and 20th century's major and minor writers of the French-speaking world. Poets include Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and the Surrealists, among others.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 108. Le Roman du XXe Siècle: romans modernes et contemporains

From realism to the nouveau roman to experimental writing, from Proust to Pennac, this course looks at the interconnections between novels and history, visual culture, and theoretical questions of representation. Discussions will center on thematic developments of these intersections, and readings will be taken from a wide selection of writers from throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 109. Le Romantisme

The trauma of the Revolution of 1789 gave birth to the individual even as it put the very concept of individual agency into question. We will interrogate the theater, poetry, and prose of this period as imaginary, sometimes almost magical, solutions to cultural, political, and personal dislocations. Particular attention will be paid to questions of gender and power.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 110. Histories d'iles #

Through the study of poetry, prose, theatre, non-fictional texts and films from and about the French Antilles, Guyane, and Haïti, we will examine the re-writing of the French colonial narratives. Topics will include slavery, the triangular trade, and the slave revolts; the historical, political, social and literary movements and their impact, then and now, on the populations and the former colonial power; the poetics of memory and the identity quest; the styles and techniques used by writers to translate the complexity of the new Caribbean consciousness; and the dialogue with Africa, France, and the Americas.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 111. Espaces francophones

Over the last two decades, while the political scene in France has been mostly dominated by increasingly inflamed debates about the presence of immigrants, the literary scene has witnessed the emergence of a growing number of literary and filmic productions by individuals living outside the bounds of mainstream society. As French citizens but born to immigrant parents, they inhabit the geographical and conceptual periphery of the modern French nation. In this course, we will examine this body of texts and films as they relate to the development of a post-colonial space in contemporary French society and literature. We will trace its evolution and variations since the 1980s and we will explore how these writers and filmmakers elaborate new modes and spaces of representation that reveal and displace socio-political as well as cultural mechanisms of domination and silencing. How do these recent literary and cinematic discourses negotiate between the personal and the political, the social and the individual, the national and the postcolonial?
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 112. Ecritures francophones: fiction et histoire dans le monde francophone #

Historical and literary examination of texts from Africa, the Caribbean, and Vietnam. This course may count toward an academic program in black studies.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 114. Théâtre d’écritures françaises #

A close examination of plays in French, from and beyond the Hexagon. Topics discussed will include representation of collective consciousness, myths and politics in post/neocolonial situations, theater and therapy, rituals and subversion, the different theatrical texts, and staging. Fictional readings by J. Anouilh, S. Beckett, A. Césaire, I. Césaire, M. N’Diaye, Dembele and Guimba, G. Dambury, J. Genet, E. Glissant, O. de Gouges, M. Kacimi, B-M. Koltès, K. Kwahulé, K. Lambo, Marivaux, J. Métellus, V. Placoly, S. Schwarz-Bart, and collateral readings by Shakespeare and Sophocles, and theoretical texts by Fanon, Césaire, Ashcroft, Glissant, Ha, Ubersfeld and others. This course may count toward an academic program in black studies.
2 credits.
Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 115. Paroles de femmes #

Close study of texts of women writers from Africa, France, the French Antilles, and Vietnam. Love relationships being one common theme, we will particularly focus on their cultural, geographical, historical, feminist/womanist, aesthetic, and literary aspects. The question of identity formation in a post-/neo-colonial setting will also be studied.
Texts covered are by Mme. de la Fayette, G. Sand, M. Duras, M. Ba, S. Schwarz-Bart, K. Lefèvre, L. Lê, V Tadjo, among others.
This course may count toward academic programs in black studies and gender and sexuality studies.

2 credits.
Spring 2010. Rice-Maximin.

FREN 116. La Critique littéraire: Racine, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Proust

This seminar’s first and principal goal is to foster a direct and in-depth discussion of the works of four major figures of French literature. Readings include: Racine’s Phèdre, the autobiography of Rousseau titled Les Confessions, Baudelaire’s poetic masterpiece Les Fleurs du mal, and the first tome of A la Recherche du temps perdu. We will also define the principal strands of thought in French literary criticism by supplementing the core readings with a selection of crucial studies on these four authors.

Not offered 2009-2010.

FREN 180. Honors Thesis

FREN 199. Senior Honors Study