Courses
FALL 2025
Above: The main reading room at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Site Richelieu) in Paris
Course Sequencing
Beginning in Fall 2025, the usual course sequence--after students have satisfied the language requirement--is FREN 3031 followed by any 3000-level course at or above 3040, then any 4000-level course (most all courses at the 4000 level require at least one course above FREN 3040). Students may also choose to enroll in one or more "professional" or "fine-tuning" French courses numbered 3030 to 3039 (including, for example, 3030 - Phonetics; 3034 - Conversation; 3035 - Business French; 3036 - Translation) at any time after they have satisfied the language requirement, even before taking FREN 3031.
Students entering UVa with strong French skills, including heritage speakers and those with near-native or native fluency, may ask the course instructor and the DUP of French (dup-french@virginia.edu) for permission to waive pre-requisites for advanced courses if they feel they have attained the necessary level of competency elsewhere.
5000-level courses are intended for students admitted to the graduate program. However, undergraduates who have received an A in a 4000-level course may request permission to enroll from the instructor.
Writing Requirements
The following writing requirements apply to most courses courses numbered from the FREN 3030 to FREN 3040: 10-15 pages, typically divided among 4 to 5 papers. Peer editing is introduced during class and practiced outside.
3000-level literature, culture, and civilization courses: 10-15 pages, typically divided among 2 to 4 papers. The content is relatively less sophisticated than at the 4000-level. Peer editing outside of class may be offered to students as an option or it may be required.
4000-level literature and civilization courses: 15-20 pages, typically divided among 2 to 4 papers. The content is relatively more sophisticated than at the 3000-level. Peer editing outside of class may be offered to students as an option or it may be required.
In all courses, the quality of students' written French (that is, the degree to which their use of grammar and vocabulary is correct and appropriate) affects the grades they receive on their papers, since it affects how comprehensible, persuasive, and impressive their writing is. As students move from 3000- to 4000-level courses, they are expected to show greater sophistication in sentence structure, grammar, and use of idioms.
You can declare a major or a minor in French here!
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about enrolling in a French class this semester. We want to hear from you!
FRTR 2084 - 001 French Cinema (or, Great French Films!)
Do you have a passion for cinema, or simply like watching films? Want to spend a semester learning about the rich history of world-renowned, award-winning movies from France? Then this is the class for you!
FRTR 2084 is designed as an introductory survey of some of the most influential works by famous French directors, from Vigo, Renoir, and Méliès, to Varda, Godard, Truffaut, Audiard, and Triet. Screenings and discussions will encourage you to think deeply about works of art that might initially appear abstract, difficult, sometimes bothersome, or simply different; to ask questions about films, and to take pleasure in analyzing them; and to heighten your sensitivity to the visual and aural nuances, structural quirks, ideological positions, and esthetic choices that comprise a form of representation that has become altogether ubiquitous in our 21st-century lives. Of course, while cinema can be very enlightening, and great films usually make for stimulating conversations, FRTR 2084 is built around the simple idea that studying motion pictures, even for a class, can and should be fun.
The course will be taught entirely in ENGLISH and is open to ALL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS from all schools at UVa. All films will be available via streaming with ENGLISH subtitles. No prior knowledge of French, French culture, or film analysis/history is necessary. And there will be no final exam (instead, students will work in teams on a filmmaking project, inspired by films on the syllabus). Other work includes lots of in-class discussion and a few short papers. Note that while French majors and minors are certainly eligible to enroll, this is a 2000-level course that does not count toward French major or minor requirements.
TR 9:30AM - 10:45AM (Blatt)
Nau Hall 141
FREN 3031- 001 Finding Your Voice in French
In this course, students explore and develop their own "voice" in written and spoken French. Through reading and viewing a variety of cultural artifacts in French, and completing a series of individual and collaborative creative projects, students will improve their skills in grammar, communication, self-expression and editing. Prerequisite: FREN 2020, 2320, or the equivalent, or appropriate AP, F-CAPE, or SAT score.
my section: Finding Your Voice in French Contemplatively – This section of 3031 will explore how contemplative practices can help increase our attentiveness to others and to ourselves, leading to greater confidence both in comprehension and in self-expression.
MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM (Ogden)
CAB 291
FREN 3031- 002 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 culture while also developing your voice in written and spoken French through the creation of a series of podcast episodes. 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 fun podcasting project, 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 12:30PM - 1:45PM (Geer)
CAB 291
FREN 3031- 003 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 culture while also developing your voice in written and spoken French through the creation of a series of podcast episodes. 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 fun podcasting project, 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 (Krueger)
CAB 407
FREN 3035 Business French
In this course, students will learn about the major industries, organizational structures, and the primary positions within French and francophone businesses. They will gain experience in business research, will hone their oral and written French for use in a business-setting, will have practice job interviews, and will learn the practical aspects of living and working in French. Prerequisite: FREN 2020 or equivalent.
MW 3:30PM - 4:45PM (Simotas)
Nau Hall 141
FREN 3040 - Introduction to French Studies
This course is replacing FREN 3032. Students who have already taken FREN 3032 may not enroll in this course
An introductory survey of French and Francophone cultural production representing a variety of periods, genres, approaches, and media. Students will read, view, discuss, and practice interpreting and writing critically about a range of works that may include poetry, painting, prose, music, theater, films, graphic novels, photographs, essays, television shows, podcasts, and historical documents.
MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM (Hall)
Nau Hall 241
FREN 3051 History and Civilization of France: Revolution to 1945
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 2:00PM - 3:15PM (Horne)
CAB 107
FREN 3885 Beasts and Beauties
(formerly 3585 Topics, Beasts and Beauties)
Werewolves, vampires, phantoms, and fairies: these are some of the creatures who inhabit the eerie space of French fiction from the Middle Ages to present. In fables, legends, fairy tales, short stories, novels, and film, outer beauty is associate sometimes with virtue, often with hidden monstrosity. We will study the presence of fascinating, sometimes menacing fictional creatures in relation to physical and moral beauty, animality, and evocations of good, evil, comfort, fear, kindness familiarity and the uncanny. Throughout the course we will examine how supernatural tropes bring to light tensions between the self and others, yet also suggest their possible harmonies. The course is designed to deepen our understanding of French literature and how we read it, and to explore how engagement with literature and the arts helps us fine-tune critical thinking skills as we try to better understand ourselves and the world around us. In addition to reading and film-viewing, the course features in-class presentations, discussion, and contributions to the course blog. Via a series of in-class writing workshops, students will be guided to complete the final creative writing project, their own supernatural short story in French.
TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM (Krueger)
CAB 407
FREN 4682 Baudelaire and Poetic Modernity
Taking as our guide the works of the celebrated French poet Baudelaire, we will pursue one overarching question: How can we live in a poetic relationship with the world? For Baudelaire, poetry fulfilled an existential function: the search for lightness, lucidity, and freedom in response to the weight, dullness, and loss of will that plague life. We will read a selection of writings from Les Fleurs du mal, Les Paradis artificiels, Critiques d'art, and Les Petits poèmes en prose to understand how Baudelaire’s poetry opens to both beauty and pain, doubt and certainty, spleen and ideal through a careful shaping of form and content of language. We will proceed thoughtfully, that is, slowly and carefully, with analytic precision, paying particular attention to the craft of language and experimenting with various compositional practices ourselves. The course invites you to discover poetry as power, as a practice of life that honors and makes possible both thought and feeling.
MW 02:00PM - 03:15PM (Lyu)
CAB 291
FREN 4848 - The Good Life?
What is the good life, and what is a good life? How should a person balance ethical responsibilities with comforts and pleasures? Is sacrifice required for someone who wants to be good, and if so, how much and of what kind? How do social expectations help and harm efforts to do the right thing? We might think of saints as people who live perfectly good lives, but stories about them often grapple with all of these questions and don’t always provide clear answers, instead encouraging audiences to think deeply about their own lives in ways that go beyond any one religious or ethical system. Above all, such stories can lay bare both how difficult it is to solve moral dilemmas (even for saints) and how closely extreme virtue can resemble appalling vice. Looking at old and new stories of parent-child struggles, spectacular sinning and redemption, gender transformation, and daily moral predicaments, we will explore a variety of ways to understand what it means to live well.
M 03:30PM - 06:00PM (Ogden)
French House 100
FREN 4854 - Life in Colonial Cities
This course is about imagining life and sensory experiences of colonized subjects witnessing a changing urban environment. For some cities, imagining its past is naturally inscribed in a continuation meticulously informed. For cities that have been victim of a colonial experience, this haunted past needs to be revived to recreate a perception of historical continuity in the space and a sense of spatial belonging.
TR 09:30AM - 10:45AM (Boutaghou)
Nau Hall 241
FREN 4875 - Global Paris: The Complexity of Place
A global city, Paris is more than the capital of France; it holds meaning the world over. How did Paris achieve such iconic status? To answer that question, this course explores a variety of cultural and geographic forms (maps, paintings, architecture, cinema, literature, and music) that illustrate key features of the "city of light" and invite students to "read" the city, unlock its codes, and discover its many nuances.
TR 11:00AM - 12:15PM (Horne)
CAB 107
FREN 5520 Topics in Sixteenth-Century Literature
Les genres de la Renaissance
Topics may include Montaigne, the European novella, poetic recreations of the ancients, literary Lyon, and Rabelais and his world.
W 03:30PM - 06:00PM (Ferguson)
French House 100
FREN 5585 Topics in Civilization / Cultural Studies
An Archipelagic Approach to Postcolonial Theory
Interdisciplinary seminar in French and Francophone culture. Topics vary.
F 9:30AM - 12:00PM (Boutaghou)
French House 100
FREN 7040 Theories and Methods of Language Teaching
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)
French House 100
FREN 7500 Topics in Theory and Criticism
Literary Theory: Classic Thoughts, Modern Texts, Contemporary Debates
This seminar is an introduction to a selection of important texts of the Western critical narrative and to the diverse objectives, revisions, and polemics that have marked its history from Plato's denunciation of poetry in classical antiquity to the reassessment of modes of critique and reading that is gaining momentum in the twenty-first century. We will examine the successive incarnations of what we now call “literature” (e.g., “poiesis,” “hermeneia,” “belles lettres,” “writing,” “text,” “discourse,” etc.) and how it has been approached. We will pay close attention to the philosophical traditions and ways of thinking that have shaped the evolution of the meta-discourse about literature so as to understand how they gave rise to the development of major theoretical movements of the modern and contemporary era: formalism/ (post)structuralism/ deconstruction, reader response theory, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism/ gender studies/ queer theory, eco-criticism/ animal studies. (Due to time constraints, we will not cover various strands of post-colonial theory in the Francophone context, given that several seminars in the department treat the subject.)
M 03:30PM - 06:00PM (Lyu)
Pavilion V 110
FREN 8520 Seminar in Sixteenth-Century Literature
Les genres de la Renaissance
(a) Rabelais. (b) Montaigne.
W 03:30PM - 06:00PM (Ferguson)
French House 100
FREN 8585 Seminar in Cultural Studies
An Archipelagic Approach to Postcolonial Theory
In-depth studies investigations of cultural topics and research methodologies in French civilization and Francophone studies.
F 09:30AM - 12:00PM (Boutaghou)
French House 100