FREN 3031- 001 Finding Your Voice in French

In French the words voix (voice) and voie (way) are homonyms. This is perhaps a happy linguistic coincidence. Or, perhaps, it reminds us that finding your way in the world is often also a process of finding your voice. Keep this homonym in mind as you set out to find your voice in French, because as you become more fluent in the French language you will discover new ways of experiencing the world and new pathways for personal and academic growth. This course will offer you the opportunity to explore and develop your voice in written and spoken French through the creation of a podcast. You will cultivate your own sense of style, tone, creativity, and expressiveness, by drawing on a variety of cultural artifacts as inspiration for a series of writing and recording activities. Whether it means starting to feel more like yourself when you write and speak in French, or enjoying sounding wonderfully different from yourself, this course will encourage you to deepen your appreciation for the profound and transformative process of starting to think in French and to think of yourself as a Francophone person.

Course conducted in French.

MWF 10:00AM - 10:50AM (Simotas)

CAB 107

FREN 3031- 002 Finding your Voice in French

In French the words voix (voice) and voie (way) are homonyms. This is perhaps a happy linguistic coincidence. Or, perhaps, it reminds us that finding your way in the world is often also a process of finding your voice. Keep this homonym in mind as you set out to find your voice in French, because as you become more fluent in the French language you will discover new ways of experiencing the world and new pathways for personal and academic growth. This course will offer you the opportunity to explore and develop your voice in written and spoken French through the creation of a podcast. You will cultivate your own sense of style, tone, creativity, and expressiveness, by drawing on a variety of cultural artifacts as inspiration for a series of writing and recording activities. Whether it means starting to feel more like yourself when you write and speak in French, or enjoying sounding wonderfully different from yourself, this course will encourage you to deepen your appreciation for the profound and transformative process of starting to think in French and to think of yourself as a Francophone person.

Course conducted in French.

MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM (Simotas)

CAB 107

FREN 3031- 003 Finding your Voice in French

Finding your voice doesn't happen overnight. Not in the language(s) we have been speaking since we were children, and not in a foreign language. The main goals of this course are to guide you on a life-long journey of self-expression, and to help you become aware of your own best practices for learning French. You will be encouraged to take reflective notes in class on your reactions and thoughts about the materials with which you interact. Who are you when you read, speak, listen, and write in French? What are your strengths? How can you convey your ideas in French without translating your words directly from English or other languages you already know? How does improving your writing in French help you to better understand how you write in English? How does engagement with French influence your connections in other courses and in the world around you?

Students in this course co-construct the syllabus, based on their own interests, by assigning and leading discussion of articles in French. They hone listening skills with songs, podcasts, and other audio sources, and explore visual culture via works of art and advertising images. Students practice both creative writing and more formal genres ( a film review, a persuasive essay) during in-class writing workshops and individual assignments. Integrated in all activities, a semester-long grammar review guides students to better understand how form and meaning work together.

TR 02:00PM - 03:15PM (Krueger)

CAB 107

FREN 3031- 004 Finding your Voice in French

Are you looking for a class that is focused on making things and doing creative projects in French?? Ready to put on your headphones and discover the thrilling new voices and perspectives within the French-speaking world of podcasts??  This course will offer you the opportunity to explore the world of French podcasts while also developing your voice in written and spoken French through the creation of your own podcast episode. Over the course of the semester, you’ll tell stories, conduct field recordings and interviews, and find your way through important questions about language, identity, power, and politics.  Come for the podcasts, and stay for the ways you’ll cultivate your own sense of style, tone, creativity, and expressiveness in French!  Whether it means starting to feel more like yourself when you write and speak in French, or enjoying sounding wonderfully different from yourself, this course will encourage you to deepen your appreciation for the profound and transformative process of starting to think in French and to think of yourself as a Francophone person. 

TR 11:00AM - 12:15PM (Geer)

CAB 291

FREN 3032 – 001 Text, Image, Culture

In this course, students will discover and engage critically with a broad sampling of French and Francophone cultural production representing a variety of periods, genres, approaches, and media. Students will read, view, write about and discuss a range of works that may include poetry, painting, prose, music, theater, films, graphic novels, photographs, essays, and historical documents. Prerequisite: FREN 3031..

TR 11:00AM - 12:15PM (Boutaghou)

NAU 242

FREN 3032 - 002  Text, Image, Culture

In this course, students will discover and engage critically with a broad sampling of French and Francophone cultural production representing a variety of periods, genres, approaches, and media. Students will read, view, write about and discuss a range of works that may include poetry, painting, prose, music, theater, films, graphic novels, photographs, essays, and historical documents. Prerequisite: FREN 3031.

MW 02:00PM - 03:15PM  (Lyu)

French House 100

FREN 3032-003  Text, Image, Culture

 In this course, students will discover and engage critically with a broad sampling of French and Francophone cultural production representing a variety of periods, genres, approaches, and media. Students will read, view, write about and discuss a range of works that may include poetry, painting, prose, music, theater, films, graphic novels, photographs, essays, and historical documents. Prerequisite: FREN 3031.

TR 03:30PM - 04:45PM (TBD)

NAU 242

FREN 3034  Advanced oral expression in French- Au cinéma: Film, Culture, Conversation

A focus on speaking, listening, and pronunciation. Activities include guided conversation practice, discussion leading, and other oral activities related to authentic materials in French. Work may include quizzes, presentations, reports, interviews, exams , and projects. Prerequisite: FREN 3031 or concurrent enrollment in FREN 3031. Not intended for students who are native speakers of French or whose secondary education was in French schools.

TR 09:30AM - 10:45 (Rey)

WIL 244

FREN 3036 Introduction to Translation 

This course will provide a practical and theoretical introduction to methods of translation from French to English and from English to French. Topics covered may include an introduction to translation studies, application of translation tools and practices, grammar review, and cross-cultural analysis of a variety of both literary and non-literary texts. Pre-requisite: FREN 2020 or FREN 2320 or equivalent placement.

MW 02:00PM - 03:15PM (Hall)

CAB 407

FREN 3043 French-Speaking World III

Rather than focus on any single theme, movement, motif, or overarching problematic, this seminar will examine a few of the most admired and influential novels in the history of modern French literature. Special attention will be paid to the potential uses (and to the ultimate uselessness) of literature. How might reading fiction (and learning how to read it well) inform our understanding of the world and our place in it? Texts may include, but are certainly not limited to: Balzac’s tale of a young law student’s drive to make it in the big city in Le Père Goriot; Flaubert’s portrait of the original desperate housewife in Madame Bovary; Robbe-Grillet’s scandalously puzzling colonial novel, La jalousie ; Georges Perec's critique of consumer society in the 1960s (Les Choses); and Maylis de Kerangal's mesmerizing, polyphonic novel about love, loss, and the rhythms of our beating hearts (Réparer les vivants). We might also end our semester with an "extremely contemporary" novel published during the last several years.

Required work may include: active participation in class discussion, weekly ruminations on the readings posted to a forum on Collab, an oral presentation, and two or three short, analytical essays. Course conducted entirely in French. Prerequisite: FREN 3032.

TR 12:30PM - 01:45 (Blatt)

NAU 142

FREN 3051 :  Histoire et civilisation de la France contemporaine

Beginning with a study of the French Revolution and ending with World War Two, this course focuses on the cultural and historical influences that have shaped Modern France. We will explore the relationship between culture and political power, the changing role of government, and how ordinary men and women experienced social change. Readings will be drawn from primary documents, memoirs and secondary historical texts. Visual elements will be incorporated in this course as well as selected films. Readings in this course will be done in both French and English. All lectures, discussions, and writing will be done in French.

TR 02:00PM - 03:15PM (Horne)

WIL 244

FREN 4560 - Entre pensée et émotion: sensibilité dans le romantisme français

Ce cours vous invite à explorer la triple quête––du moi, de la sensibilité authentique et du bonheur––dans laquelle s’engage la jeunesse romantique française de la première moitié du 19ème siècle où de nombreux facteurs culturels, sociaux, historiques et politiques (y compris la tombée de Napoléon Ier) concourent à façonner un courant artistique et littéraire à la fois complexe et contradictoire.

Nous découvrirons l'épreuve de l'âme sensible qui, en essayant de se libérer des contraintes et d'aspirer à un idéal, bute contre le réel et erre sans répit entre l’émotion et la pensée, la mélancolie et l'exaltation, le spleen et l'idéal. Nous dégagerons la pertinence de l'expérience romantique du passé pour notre époque contemporaine tout aussi préoccupée par le moi (ou son image), la mélancolie (ou la dépression) et le bonheur (ou le succès). Ce faisant, nous évaluerons les vestiges de la perspective romantique envers la nature, la conquête du "nouveau monde", la figure de Napoléon et la question du genre dans les soucis majeurs du 21ème siècle—par exemple, le réchauffement planétaire, le traitement des peuples indigènes, le débat sur l’héritage de Napoléon et le mouvement "Me Too"—pour apprécier la distance et la proximité entre l'époque romantique et la nôtre. Une étude approfondie des poèmes, récit, roman et traités/ manifestes nous permettra de mener ensemble un projet collectif de concevoir et de bâtir un Musée du Romantisme..

MW 03:30PM - 04:45PM (Lyu)

French House 100

FREN 4585 - 001 Adv Topics Cultural Studies - History of Paris

A global city, Paris is today so much more than the capital of France; it holds meaning the world over. A real city of grit and struggle, it is also symbolic of lofty and complex ideals. A crossroads for people from every imaginable background, Paris has always been a transnational city of immigrants, students, political exiles, formerly colonized peoples, artists, writers and people just trying to make a living. The principal theater of the French Revolution, it earned a reputation for insurrection and protest. The vibrant heart of artistic life and intellectual debate, Paris became the model of a19th-century city. How did Paris achieve such iconic status on the world stage? What myths and historical moments have defined it? Why did James Baldwin or Ernest Hemingway go there and what did they find? What might you hope to find there?

Together, we will explore maps, paintings and film that illustrate key features of the history, topography, architecture, and neighborhoods of Paris. We will discover the imagined city in art, literature and song. In particular, we will interrogate the “American dream” of Paris, Black Paris, its promises and mirages. By the end of this course, Paris will be a familiar place and you will have a good understanding of how the traces of the past remain inscribed on the modern urban landscape. You will be able “to read” the city, unlock its codes, and hopefully find personal enrichment there, even from a distance.

TR 11:00AM - 12:15PM (Horne)

CAB 107

FREN 4585 - 002 Adv Topics Cultural Studies - Portraits

An exploration of human portraits in France from prehistoric cave art to the selfie. Students will examine a variety of genres and media including paintings, drawings, film, photography, autobiography, autofiction, poetry, essays, and journals. We will focus in particular on narrative believability (in text and image), on the e creation of self-image and public persona, and on the mediated self. Coursework includes a final autobiographical, autofictional, or biographical audio-visual project.

TR 03:30PM - 04:45PM (Krueger)

CAB 107

FREN 4585 - 003 Adv Topics Cultural Studies - Life in Colonial Cities

Who did not project him/herself in a city when reading a history book or a fiction representing the city in the past? For some cities, imagining its past is naturally inscribed in a continuation meticulously informed by historians, art historians, creative writers, literary scholars, and archeologists. For cities that have been victim of a colonial experience, this haunted and traumatic past needs to be revived to recreate a perception of historical continuity in the space and a sense of spatial belonging, with a new reparative dimension. “Life in Colonial Cities” is mainly about imagining the life and the sensory experiences of colonized subjects witnessing a changing urban environment.

TR 09:30AM - 10:45AM (Boutaghou)

NAU 242

FREN 5011 Old French

Introduction to reading Old French, with consideration of its main dialects (Ile-de-France, Picard, Anglo-Norman) and paleographical issues.  May be taken in conjunction with FREN 5510/8510 or independently.  Weekly reading exercises, a transcription and translation exercise, and a final open-book exam.  Prerequisite: good reading knowledge of modern French, Latin or another romance language.  Taught in English.

M 01:00PM - 01:50PM (Ogden)

NAU 142

FREN 5510/8510 Topics in Medieval Literature 

African saints.  Trans saints.  Saints’ Lives as media.  Saints in material culture and literature and history.

 Recent academic enthusiasm for medieval saints’ Lives has begun to uncover the usefulness of this genre for gaining deeper understanding of both medieval and modern attitudes toward a variety of topics, from sexuality and sentiments to materiality and foreign cultures.  Reading Lives written between 880 and the late thirteenth century, together with the work of some of the most engaging scholars in the field of hagiography studies, we will investigate a variety of issues that resonate with current interests in the broader fields of medieval and French studies.  Readings include the Lives of St. Mary the Egyptian (a courtesan turned hermit), St. Catherine of Alexandria (known for her wisdom), St. Alexis (who abandoned his family), St. Louis IX (king of France), St. Euphrosyne (a woman who became a male monk), and St. Moses the Ethiopian (a brigand turned abbot).

MW 02:00PM - 03:15PM (Ogden)

GIB 142

FREN 5540/8540 Topics in 18th-Century Lit - Monarchy, Tyranny, Revolution  

This course will cover some of the classics of Ancien Régime France, including Le Cid, Le Mariage de Figaro, and Candide, along with less canonical works by women writers and Haitian revolutionaries. These will be presented within their historical and political context, with an emphasis on the troubled relationship between writers and the king of France, in France and in the colonies.

R 03:30PM - 06:00PM (Tsien)

French House 100

FREN 5585/8585  An Archipelagic approach to Postcolonial Theory

As we strive to articulate decolonial vocabularies that would enable us to think intersectionally and beyond linear divides, we are thus constantly confronted with a series of methodological questions: How does one conceive of non-essentializing mental, geographical and temporal networks that account for the overlapping of multiple histories and temporalities and for the crisscrossing of cultural folds connecting heterogeneous and wide continental territories like Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa or the Middle East, and oceanic systems, maritime regions and archipelagoes often thought of as more fluid and permeable spaces? Focusing on the multilingual, transcultural and multidimensional dynamics of the Francophone world, this Seminar draws on such questions of knowledge production, interpretive methodologies, epistemic justice, and academic ethics, in view of tackling some of the challenges which the persistent geographical and historical partitioning of the field has long kept invisible.

F 09:30AM - 11:30AM (Boutaghou)

French House 100

FREN 7040 Theories & Mthds of Lang Teach

Introduces the pedagogical approaches currently practiced in second-language courses at the university level. Critically examines the theories underlying various methodologies, and their relation to teaching. Assignments include development and critique of pedagogical material; peer observation and analysis; and a final teaching portfolio project.

TR 02:00PM - 03:15PM (James)

PV8 105