Course Archive

Spring 2027

Above: The main reading room at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Site Richelieu) in Paris

Course Sequencing

Beginning in Fall 2026, the usual course sequence--after students have satisfied the language requirement--is FREN 3031 followed by any 3000-level course at or above 3140 (formerly 3040), then any 4000-level course (most all courses at the 4000 level require at least one course above FREN 3140). Students may also choose to enroll in one or more applied language French courses numbered 3030 to 3099 (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. See here for a breakdown of our updates course numbering sequence.

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 from 3030-3140: 10-15 pages, typically divided among 4 to 5 papers. Peer editing is introduced during class and practiced outside.

3100-3999 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, culture, 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!

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FRTR 2552 French Culture - Food in French Culture

France is known around the world for its culinary culture, from wine and baguettes to croissants and crêpes. Yet food can tell us much more than what people eat. It can reveal how societies understand themselves and how cultures encounter one another. In this course, students will explore food as a way of understanding France and the French-speaking world. Through discussions of texts, films, and cultural artifacts, as well as regular culinary experiences on Grounds and around Charlottesville, we will examine how French cuisine emerged through encounters between France and the wider French-speaking world, and how food continues to reflect histories of empire, migration, and cultural exchange. Along the way, we will cook our way across the Francophone world, learn from local French-speaking chefs and farmers, and explore the life and legacy of James Hemings, the French-trained enslaved chef at Monticello whose story illuminates the global histories behind French and American food cultures. Designed to be hands-on and experiential, the course will frequently take us beyond the classroom to discover how food reveals the histories, relationships, and identities that continue to shape the French-speaking world today.

Note that this is an FRTR course, meaning it is taught in English and is open to all students enrolled in any undergraduate program (or school). No previous knowledge of French or French culture is required. This course does not count toward the French major or minor.

MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM (Geer)

NAU 242

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FREN 3030 Phonetics

This course is designed for beginners in French phonetics: you will dive into the world of French sounds, mastering everything from vowels to the famously tricky "r." You will also get hands-on experience with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), helping you perfect your pronunciation. Through engaging exercises and interactive practice, you will gain confidence and speak French more clearly and naturally. Prerequisite: FREN 2020.

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

NAU 142

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FREN 3031- 001 Finding Your Voice in French

Engaging with diverse voices from France and the francophone world through short literary texts, film clips, songs, social media sites, and other contemporary media, we will explore how language is used to express identity, narrate the past, communicate opinions about the world’s great challenges, and persuade others to take action. Building on insights from these sources, you will practice both creative and more formal genres of writing (a persuasive essay, for example) with the support of in-class collaborative workshops. Through an informal blog, you will share your individual interests and discoveries with your classmates and establish a regular habit of communicating your thoughts, opinions, and reflections in French. Integrated in all these activities, a semester-long grammar review will guide you to better understand how form and meaning work together in the process of expressing yourself in French.

This course offers you the opportunity to develop your own voice in written and spoken French while gaining confidence in your command of grammar for effective communication and your ability to revise and edit your own written work. Finding your voice doesn't happen overnight, though—not in the language(s) we have been speaking since we were children, and not in a foreign language. Beyond your progress this semester, the main goals of this course are to guide you on this life-long journey, to help you become aware of your own best practices for learning French, and to consider how acquiring advanced proficiency in French intersects with and contributes to other personal, academic, and professional interests and goals.

MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM (Hall)

CAB 064

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FREN 3031- 002 Finding Your Voice in French

TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM (James)

CAB 291

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FREN 3031- 003 Finding your Voice in French

TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM (Lombart)

NAU 142

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FREN 3075 French for Global Health

Designed for students seeking to develop advanced French language skills and cultural competence in the professional context of global health. Assignments and task-based class activities are built around public health studies and current initiatives addressing health challenges in francophone countries. Through engagement with authentic resources and periodic dialogue with French-speaking global health professionals, the class will explore topics such as access to care, prevention of infectious diseases, community health through clean water and sanitation, women’s health, food systems and nutrition, and impacts of climate change on the world’s health.

Requires FREN 3031 or the equivalent. Note that this course is not intended for students who are native speakers of French.

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

CAB 407

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FREN 3081 Cultivating Your Voice in French Through Theater

Building on skills acquired in FREN 3031 (Finding Your Voice in French), this class helps students reflect on and become more confident in their oral use of French. Students will learn key principles of French phonetics, intonation, and rhythm, and practice applying this knowledge by reading aloud and performing plays in a supportive and comfortable atmosphere. Throughout, students will consider the role of the whole body in communication; explore the relationship between identity/character/mood and oral expression; and develop habits of noticing and assimilating new phrases.

Pre-requisites: FREN 3031 must be completed before this class. In Spring 2027, FREN 3081 is the new number for the former FREN 3061: students may not take both classes.

TR 9:30AM - 10:45AM (Ogden)

NAU 241

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FREN 3140 Introduction to French Studies

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.

Requisites FREN 3031.

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

CAB 268

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FREN 3585 Topics in Cultural Studies - Québécois literature

Description coming!

TR 3:30PM - 4:45PM (Ice)

NAU 142

This course fulfills the post-1800 requirement.

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FREN 3680 Choix Goncourt Book Club 2027

Discover what France is reading now, and make your mark on the literary scene, by discussing a selection of books nominated for France’s most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt. Then cast your vote for the French Embassy’s Choix Goncourt USA!

The French Department invites students to earn one credit as they participate in a weekly book club focused on the newest nominated Goncourt Prize novels. The reading list consists of 4 novels, all of which have been short-listed by the French Embassy for this year’s Choix Goncourt USA. Because UVA has been designated a Center of Excellence by the Embassy (along with Duke, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, NYU and other schools), for the last several years our students have been invited to participate in this opportunity to engage with contemporary French and Francophone literary creation and to make their voices heard as they cast a vote that will determine who wins this year’s Choix Goncourt USA.

After reading and discussing the books during our weekly meetings (1 hour per week), students will elect one or two representatives to present the group’s top choice, and select the winner with representatives from other participating schools, at a festive awards ceremony to be held at the Villa Albertine in New York in April. The Department of French will fund travel and lodging for the student representative’s trip.

Students will have free access to the books on the program. The French Department will also order a few physical copies for students to share. While facilitated by a faculty member (Prof. Ari Blatt), this experience—not a “course” in the traditional sense—is primarily student run. Students will, among other things, lead most discussions, establish criteria for evaluating the books, and designate a representative to attend the ceremony in New York.

Faculty facilitator: Professor Ari Blatt (ajb6f)
Reading and discussion in French.
One credit. Counts toward the French major and minor, as well as for general elective credit.
Prerequisite: FREN 3031 or equivalent placement or proficiency.

R 09:30AM - 10:20AM (Blatt)

Since this is not a course in the traditional sense, it does NOT fulfill the period requirement (neither pre- nor post-1800 courses) in French.

NCH 411

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FREN 3888 ASIE-FRANCOPHONIE

Kpop dance in Paris, the Francophone world's love of Japanese manga, Vietnamese-French cuisine, French luxury brands in Shanghai, Chinatown in Sénégal: nowadays, we see the influence of French culture in Asia as much as we see Asian culture become part of the Francophone world. In this course, we will begin with Jesuit missions in Asia and European attempts to acquire commercial products like spices, porcelains, and tea. This contact inspired artistic styles from rococo to art nouveau. We will then study French attempts at colonizing Indochina and parts of China. In spite of political hostilities and humanitarian atrocities, both parts of the world remain fascinated by each others' cultures. Finally, we will discuss how, in the present day, both Asia and the Francophone world share an ambiguous power relation in which one side does not clearly dominate the other. Course materials will include novels, films, graphic novels, music videos, and other media.

This course fulfills the post-1800 requirement.

MW 3:30PM - 4:45PM (Tsien)

NAU 241

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FREN 4410 The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment, or Les Lumières, was one of the most important movements in Western intellectual history. Its proponents fought against superstition and a corrupt monarchy with notoriously witty essays and with fictions that seemed, on the surface, to be about sentimentality, seduction, or exotic lands. In this course, we will consider how famous philosophers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau brought France into a new era and inadvertently inspired the American and then the French Revolutions. We will examine how their writings treated issues such as slavery, blasphemy, the conflict between religion and science, and moral relativism among various countries. We will also focus on strategies used by the authors to hide their provocative ideas from government censors.

This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement.

MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM (Tsien)

NAU 241

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FREN 4585 Eternal Legends

Why are some stories so compelling that they return generation after generation in new retellings? How do different people in different times and places reuse well-known tales for radically different purposes? How do legends become so meaningful that just a word or a name invokes a wealth of cultural references? Focusing on two stories that originated in French culture but have spread globally—the Grail, Robin Hood—this course examines their uses in written works, television, film, and song from the Middle Ages to the present, including versions by some of the best-known writers, filmmakers, and musicians in French.

TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM (Ogden)

CAB 107

This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement.

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FREN 4838 French Society & Civilization - Contemporary France

Édition spéciale élections présidentielles 2027

With the French presidential elections taking place in April and May 2027, this course offers a timely opportunity to explore the politics, culture, and society of contemporary France as a major political moment unfolds. We will follow election coverage and debates while examining the historical context, social tensions, and political institutions that shape France today. By the end of the course, you will have a stronger understanding of contemporary French society and greater confidence in following French-language news, interpreting current events, and discussing political, social, and cultural issues in France.

Cultural literacy—the ability to understand the social norms, historical references, and public debates that shape a society—is an essential part of becoming an informed global citizen. In France, the ability to engage in conversation across a wide range of subjects is also valued in professional and social life. This course will help you develop the knowledge and skills to participate more confidently in conversations about France, whether in academic and professional settings, in encounters with French speakers, or during future travels.

To develop this cultural literacy, we will trace the evolution of French society, politics, and culture from the end of the Second World War to the present. We will examine major issues shaping contemporary France, including gender and the role of women, education, immigration, race, religion, public health, and France’s place in the European Union. Throughout the semester, we will draw on French newspaper and magazine articles, televised news, and other audiovisual sources to explore how these issues are represented, debated, and contested in the French public sphere. The presidential election will provide a focus for connecting these broader historical and social questions to the political choices and debates of the present.

TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM (Horne)

CAB 268

This course fulfills the post-1800 requirement.

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FREN 5520 / 8520 Inventing French America

From Cartier’s Canada to Léry’s Brazil and Laudonnière’s Florida, this course explores how sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French travelers, writers, and colonizers imagined, represented, and ultimately invented a French America. Set against the backdrop of emerging European imperial rivalries and the early development of colonial ambitions and practices, the course examines how French encounters with the Americas gave rise to new forms of writing, knowledge, and ways of understanding the world.

We will trace the transformation of travel writing from its medieval roots in pilgrimage narratives to the increasingly complex literary and epistemological forms developed by writers such as Cartier, Léry, Laudonnière, Lescarbot, and Champlain. Alongside these texts, we will explore cartography as another powerful means of reading and imagining the world, one in which new techniques of observation and representation coexisted with inherited myths, fantasies, and geographical traditions.

More broadly, the course considers how encounters with Indigenous peoples and unfamiliar environments contributed to the emergence of new modes of thought that would profoundly shape modernity: ethnographic observation, comparative anthropology, empirical knowledge grounded in firsthand experience, cultural relativism, and cosmopolitanism. Finally, we will ask how the discovery, description, and imagined possession of American worlds helped reshape French understandings of themselves, and how the invention of a “French America” contributed, in turn, to the invention of France itself.

R 3:30PM - 6:00PM (Lombart)

CAB 042

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FREN 5585 / 8585 - 001 Thinking France in the World

What does it mean to think about France in the world, and how does this perspective change the ways we understand French history and culture? This interdisciplinary graduate seminar explores the global, imperial, and transnational frameworks through which scholars have reimagined France’s place in the world. We will examine how these approaches intersect and diverge, what new histories they make possible, and what they reveal—or obscure—about France and its global relationships.

Our discussions will address the French language as a site of global circulation and cultural encounter, as well as the ways in which “Frenchness” has been defined, contested, and claimed in a variety of contexts. We will consider how individuals and communities have negotiated French cultural, political, and linguistic affiliations across geographic boundaries, and how these encounters have shaped both France and the wider world. We will also examine the intellectual, cultural, and ideological stakes of rethinking French history from a global perspective, beginning with the controversy surrounding the publication of L’Histoire mondiale de la France (France in the World: A New Global History) in 2017 and the appearance of a new edition in 2025. Throughout the seminar, we will ask how France has been shaped by its global interactions and how we might understand their enduring legacies today.

Readings will span the early modern period to the postcolonial present, drawing on scholarship that places France in global, imperial, and transnational contexts. Whenever possible, we will have the opportunity to discuss these works with their authors, who will join the seminar in person or virtually.

The seminar is designed to help graduate students connect these broader historical and historiographical debates to their own research and teaching interests. It will also provide an opportunity to consider how a global perspective might inform the teaching of French history and culture at the undergraduate level. Students will bring different disciplinary backgrounds, research interests, and professional goals to the course; accordingly, the seminar will emphasize collaborative discussion and offer flexibility in written assignments. The professor will meet with each student early in the semester to identify appropriate assignments and establish individual goals. Readings and discussions will take place in both French and English. Written work will be in English, with the option to write in French.

W 3:30PM - 6:00PM (Horne)

CAB 407

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FREN 5585 / 8585 - 002 The Postcolonial Archive

Description coming!

F 9:15AM - 11:45AM (Boutaghou)

French House 100