Courses Offered

* = Pre-1800      # = Francophone      

Seminars Offered

FREN 001B-002B, 003B. Intensive French

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

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 001B: Fall 2007. Rice-Maximin; Boutouba; Dumarest

FREN 002B: Spring 2008. Boutouba; Netter; Dumarest

FREN 003B: Fall 2007. Blanchard; Netter; Dumarest

FREN 004. Advanced French: Contemporary France: Culture and Society

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.

1 credit.

Spring 2008. Yervasi.

FREN 004A. Advanced French Workshop

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 wich include composition and creative writing.

Prerequisite: Concurrent enrollment in FREN 004 or above.

0.5 credit.

Spring 2008 . Netter.

FREN 007A. 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 presently or previously in FREN 004 or the equivalent Placement Test score.

0.5 credit.
Spring 2008. Dumarest.

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

Close reading of various texts (poetry, theater, and prose) from and beyond the Hexagon as an introduction to the central concepts and modes of literature and literary analysis in French.

Prerequisite: FREN 004, a score of 675 on the College Entrance Examination or 5 on the AP examination, or the equivalent with permission.

1 credit.
Spring 2008. Boutouba.

FREN 012A. Service Learning Pedagogy, French

1 credit.
Each Semester . Yervasi.

FREN 013F. 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 political 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.
Spring 2008. Yervasi.

FREN 022. Le Cinéma français: Le Cinéma de la ville

The history of French cinema is closely enmeshed with the development of the city. Films use the city to create setting, mood, tone, and style but also to represent and re-imagine the changing urban spaces in which actions occur. We will examine a history of the French cinematic representations of the city in the culture of the modern urban. This course will focus on film aesthetics and close analysis of film texts.

1 credit.
Fall 2007. Yervasi

FREN 025. Introduction au monde francophone

(Cross listed with black studies)
This Francophone Literature course is designed to give students an insight into the post-colonial cultures of Africa (North and Sub-Saharan), and an understanding of the literary, social, political, cultural, and historical issues that dominate these Francophone literatures. Through novels, poems and films, we will explore concepts and themes such as ethnicity and religion, gender and sexuality, politics and aesthetics, history and memory, discourse and identity, colonialism and postcolonialism.

1 credit.
Spring 2008. Boutouba

FREN 028. Francophone Cinema

(Cross-listed as LITR 028F)
This course is an introduction to Francophone African film. We will concentrate on films from West Africa: Senegal, Cameroon, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burkina Faso. We begin with familiarizing ourselves with the colonial and postcolonial history of this region, before taking on in-depth film analyses of each film. The course will focus on a study of the representations of West African culture and will help students develop their ability to read films.

1 credit.
Not offered 2007-09.

FREN 033. Fictions d'enfance

(Cross-listed with black studies)
Study of the experiences of French-speaking peoples as reflected in various coming-of-age literary texts by Zobel, Condé, Pineau, Maximin, Saint-John Perse, Ollivier, Lahens, Dominique, Ferraoun, Sebbar, Le Clézio, Lefêvre, Carrier, Laye, Bugul, and Salvayre, among others.

1 credit.
Fall 2007. Rice-Maximin

FREN 036. Poésies d'écritures françaises

(Cross-listed with black studies)
A thematic study of poetry with an emphasis on both pre-18th-century hexagonal and contemporary African, Caribbean, Guyanese, and Haitian authors.

1 credit.
Not offered 2007-09.

FREN 037. Littératures Francophones #

In this course, we will focus on literary texts (novels, poems, short stories) and films by Francophone writers and filmmakers from different geographical areas (Caribbean Islands, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Metropolitan France). This course will introduce students to the cultural diversity of the Francophone world and explore how these texts and films come to terms with the conflicts and tensions engendered by the colonial encounter. We will also examine the various theoretical, literary and filmic strategies they elaborate to express their perspectives and to articulate modes of resistance as well as new cultural spaces of representation.

1 credit.
Fall 2006. Boutouba.

FREN 038. Littératures francophones et cultures de l’immigration en France #

(Cross-listed with black studies)
This course focuses on works by writers and filmmakers from the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria) and from contemporary France. We shall consider how this literary and filmic production reflects on the colonial past and the postcolonial condition. Other topics include the way these writers and filmmakers seek to construct identities in the wake of profound cultural changes brought about by colonization, decolonization, and immigration, and how they expose the power conflicts along the lines of class, gender, race, ethnicity and national belonging. Attention will also be devoted to the discursive strategies and filmmaking practices that they elaborate to address these issues in resistant, subversive, and direct criticism.

1 credit.
Fall 2006. Boutouba.

FREN 041. Tyrants and Revolutionaries*

(Cross-listed with interpretation theory)
The course will explore the works of Molière, Voltaire, and Robespierre, among others, to provide a genealogy of the French Revolution. Proposed topics include: How can one write when facing radical political adversity? Must historical accounts be read as literary texts? Can books cause revolutions?
Satisfies the early modern requirement.

1 credit.
Spring 2007. Blanchard.

Spring 2008.

FREN 060. 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.
Spring 2007. Moskos.

FREN 061. Odd Couplings: Writing and Reading Across Gender Lines

A comparative study of texts by men and women interrogates the role played by gender-identity construction in writing and reading.

This course is taught in French.

1 credit.
Spring 2009

FREN 062. 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.

1 credit.
Not offered 2007-09.

FREN 071F. French Cultural and Critical Theory

Cross listed with LITR 071F

1 credit.
Fall 2007. Blanchard

FREN 072. Le Roman du XXe Siecle

1 credit.
Not offered 2007-09.

FREN 073. Roman et cinéma

1 credit.
Not offered 2007-09.

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

(Cross-listed as LITR 075F and with black studies)
Study of literary texts from Guadeloupe, Guyane, Haïti, and Martinique and their rewri[gh]ting of the local colonial history. Writers will include A. and I. Césaire, Condé, Glissant, Maximin, Ollivier, Roumain, Schwarz-Bart, Warner-Vieyra, and Zobel, among others.

1 credit.
Spring 2009.

FREN 076. Ecritures au féminin #

(Cross-listed with black studies and women's studies)

A study of the work of women from Africa, the Caribbean, France, and Vietnam. Material will be drawn from diverse historical periods and genres.

1 credit.
Not offered 2007-2009.

FREN 091. Special Topic: Théâtre moderne: Mise en scène de l'identité

Based on works by 18th- and 19th-century authors (including a novel by Emile Zola, poems by Baudelaire, fashion journalism, and historical documents on costumes), our inquiry will define how French fashions and tastes reveal the relation between texts, economic realities, and gender in the age of the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution. (Satisfies the early-modern requirement.)

1 credit.
Fall 2007 Yervasi

FREN 093. Directed Reading

FREN 096. Thesis

FREN 102. Baroque Culture and Literature: The Comic World of Molière*

(Cross-listed with interpretation theory)

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.

Spring 2008. Blanchard.

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 2007-09.

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 2007-09.

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.

Not offered 2007-09.

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.

Not offered 2007-09.

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.

Not offered 2007-09.

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.

Spring 2007. Boutouba.

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

(Cross-listed with black studies)
Historical and literary examination of texts from Africa, the Caribbean, and Vietnam.

Not offered 2007-09.

FREN 114. Théâtre d’écritures françaises #

(Cross-listed with black studies)
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.

Not offered 2007-09.

FREN 115. Paroles de femmes #

(Cross-listed with black studies and women’s studies)

Spring 2009.

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 2005-07.

FREN 180. Honors Thesis

FREN 199. Senior Honors Study