FREN 3030 Introduction to French 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.

TR 11:00AM - 12:50PM (Rey)

PV8 102

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 1:00PM - 1:50PM (Geer)

CAB 368

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 9:30AM - 10:45AM (James)

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 12:30PM - 1:45PM (James)

CAB 291

FREN 3036 Introduction to Translation 

This course will provide a practical and theoretical introduction to methods of translation. We will translate literary and non-literary texts such as news articles, ads, songs, essays, poems, and short stories from French to English and from English to French. Classes will be in the form of workshops as we take on the role of the translator and collaborate on translation projects using different practices and methods of translation, all while undertaking a comparative review of French (and English!) grammar and analyzing various cultural topics. Course conducted principally in French. 

Requisites Students must have taken FREN 2020 or FREN 2320 

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

CAB 211

FREN 3040 - 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 

MWF 11:00PM - 11:50AM (Bellal)

Nau Hall 142

FREN 3043 The French-Speaking World III: Modernities 

How do we make something new out of what already exists? How do we nurture originality in amidst mounting pressures to conform? How can we learn from the past without becoming subservient to it? By examining the works of modern and contemporary writers, artists, and intellectuals who engage in explicit dialogue with their predecessors, we will explore different ways in which innovation stems from tradition. We will read the French writer Colette who, in writing a memoir of her parents, comes to discover how her identity is shaped by what she has inherited from each of them; the French-Chinese writer Cheng who, elected to the French Academy, writes in a French imbued with Chinese language and thought; the Belgian-Rwandan musician Stromae who rewrites in the 21stcentury, the aria of Bizet’s 19th-century opera Carmen, which, in turn, was inspired by a short story published earlier by Mérimée. 

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

Nau Hall 142

FREN 3061 New Course in French and Francophone Cultural Topics: / 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 

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

PV8 102

FREN 3882 Loving Words: A Poem a Day in French 

In this course we will read poems in French from a variety of writers and time periods, taking into account their stylistic features, emotional impact, and cultural resonance. Each day will be structured around the study of one key poem.Through in-class readings of related poems, writing workshops and secondary readings, we will explore how poetry brings us closer to words, language, knowledge, sensations, emotion, ourselves, and others. 

Requisites FREN 3031, This course fulfills the French Department post-1800 major/minor requirement. 

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

CAB 291

FREN 4123 Medieval Love and its Modern Uses 

Affection for family members, deep and casual friendships, maybe even passionate romance—everyone exists within a network of loving relationships.  We probably don’t often think about where our expectations for these relationships come from, and most people would be surprised that a lot of our ideas about love come from twelfth- and thirteenth-century France.  Marrying for love?  Soul mates?  Top Ten Tips for Attracting a Mate?  BFFs?  Parental devotion?  All have foundations in medieval French culture.  

Reading surprisingly modern stories of adventure and thoughtful (and sometimes funny) essays about emotions—all in modern French translation—and listening to soulful songs of the past, as well as to their modern counterparts, we will explore medieval ideas about love that continue to shape our modern understandings and assumptions about emotions and relationships. 

This course fulfills the French Department pre-1800 requirement. 

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

CAB 315

FREN 4559 - « Philosophes noires »  

Black philosophers from the Caribbean adopted a critical perspective in French. They have questioned for decades aporias and blind spots of our history. Historically many of them are from the Caribbean. We will read together in French texts by : Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Edouard Glissant (1928-2011), Patrick Chamoiseau (1953-) and see how they paved thinking of race and colonialism. We will analyze their system in light of the debate about race in the US and in France. 

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

Nau Hall 241

FREN 4744 - The Occupation, and after… 

While in 2014 the French spent a year commemorating the centenary of the start of the “Great War” (“la Der des Ders,” the so called “war to end all wars”), in the summer of 2015 the nation marked another important anniversary: namely, seventy years since the Liberation of Paris during World War II. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the libération. The German occupation of France, which lasted from 1940 until 1945, was one of the most consequential periods in the nation’s history, one that left an indelible mark on the French national psyche that continues to rouse the country’s collective memory to this day. After an initial examination of the political and social conditions in France under the Nazi regime, this seminar proposes to explore the enduring legacy of those “Dark Years” by investigating how the complex (and traumatic) history of the Occupation has impacted French culture during the last half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty first. Discussions will focus on a variety of documents, events, historiographical essays, and artistic sources—short stories, novels, and films, mostly, though we will also explore photography and the graphic novel—that attest to what historians refer to as contemporary France’s collective “obsession” with the past. 

Readings and films may include (but are not limited to) work by Némirovsky, Vercors, Perec, Duras, Modiano, Salvayre, Daeninckx, Sartre, Clouzot, Melville, Resnais, Ophüls, Berri, Malle, Chabrol, and Audiard. Course conducted in French. 

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

Nau Hall 241

FREN 4838 - La France contemporaine 

Developing cultural literacy is an integral part of becoming an educated citizen of the world. The attainment of cultural literacy includes understanding social norms as well as politics and current events in a particular country. In France, cultural literacy is particularly valued in professional life, where the expectation is that you will be able to converse on a wide range of topics outside your field of specialization. This course is designed to provide you with some tools for developing cultural literacy in the French context. 

This course will take a deep dive into the politics, culture, and society of present-day France. You should come away from this class with a deeper understanding of social norms and institutional structures, as well as the ability to follow and understand French media coverage of events as they unfold in France. In your future travels in the US or abroad, you should feel comfortable discussing and debating social, political, and cultural issues and current events relating to France. 

To achieve those goals, we will study the evolution of French society, politics, and culture from the end of the Second World War until the present. We will study major social problems facing contemporary France: the role of women, education, immigration, race, religion, public health as well as France's status in the European Union. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on readings from the French press, the televised news, and other visual sources. 

Active student participation is expected. Students will work together in teams to produce a joint course project that will also allow each individual student the possibility of defining and researching an issue of particular interest to them. 

Prerequistes: FREN 3032 plus one additional course above FREN 3040 

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

CAB 407

FREN 5510 / 8510 Inventing the East in Premodern Francophone Literature & Culture 

Edward Said's work on orientalism imposed a radical premodern/modern divide on the study of East-West relations that suppressed an entire intellectual, literary, and cultural tradition crucial to understanding the western invention of the East. This seminar recovers part of this lost history by turning to a medieval francophone corpus in which the East assumed a prominent role in the literary imagination. This corpus encompasses French works from the 12th through the 15th centuries produced in and outside of the French kingdom, including the Chanson de Roland, East-West romances, travel adventures, and late-medieval "alternate histories." Reports of merchants and spies who journeyed east, crusading propaganda, and diplomatic dealings will anchor our reading of these texts as creative responses to an ever-growing interconnected world. While echoes of modern takes on the Orient will emerge, we will discover a world in which western superiority was not a certainty and where contact with the Other often triggered discussion of received values. Western debates about conquest, empire, conversion, collective memory, human nature, gender and ethnicity will deeply inform our reading. This approach will lead to larger questions regarding the complex relationship between creative expression and critical thinking, how fiction constructs time and space, how reading and listening shape understanding, and the unique ways the imaginary processes lived experience (especially concerning collective trauma and cultural shifts). How might this recovered past alter our understanding of Orientalism, disrupt presentist thinking, provide new insights into the role of creative expression in society, and contribute to Global Medieval Studies? Student-led discussion, a mid-semester critical reflection, class presentations, and a final research paper will allow ample opportunity for participants to engage with and contribute to this active field of research. 

W 03:30PM - 06:00PM (McGrady)

Bryan Hall 310

FREN 5560 / 8560 Topics in Nineteenth-Century Literature 

Study of various aspects of nineteenth-century French/ Francophone literature. Genre, theme, specific chronological concentration, and approach will vary. May be repeated for credit with different topics. 

T 3:30PM - 6:00PM (Krueger)

CAB 291

FREN 5585 / 8585 French Theory and its afterlives 

Examines the impact of key figures of what was once called in the American Academy “French Theory”. We will explore, through the lenses of intellectual history and critical theory, authors such as Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Roland Barthes (1915-1980), Louis Althusser (1918-1990), Jean François Lyotard (1924-1998), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Hélène Cixous (1937-), Julia Kristeva (1941-) among others. We will analyze and discuss in depth their writings: how did their works influence several critical movements? how did they address or not their current political situation? what is the legacy of this critical school? Students will be invited to question the production of theory and its impact on our conception of language and real politik. 

F 09:15AM - 11:45AM (Boutaghou)

French House 100