This course features intensive work on French grammar, with emphasis on the acquisition of basic active skills (speaking, reading, writing and vocabulary building). We will be using the multimedia program, Totem, which employs only authentic French, allowing students to use the language colloquially and creatively in a short amount of time. Three hours a week for explanation and demonstration, plus small sections with French assistants. This course prepares students for FREN 103. For students without previous training in French.
In this course, taught synchronously via Zoom with asynchronous features, we will use a range of digital tools (including the online textbook material, video, discussion forums, document collaboration, presentations) to support goals of language acquisition
Fall semester: Visiting Lecturer Tapley and Assistants. Spring semester: Senior Lecturer Uhden and Assistants.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025Intensive review and coverage of all basic French grammar points with emphasis on the understanding of structural and functional aspects of the language and acquisition of the basic active skills (speaking, reading, writing and systematic vocabulary building). We will be using the multimedia program, Imaginez. Three hours a week for explanation and demonstration, plus small sections with French assistants. This course prepares students for FREN 205.
In this course, taught synchronously via Zoom with asynchronous features, we will use a range of digital tools (including the online textbook platform, video, document collaboration, presentations) to support goals of language acquisition.
Requisite: FREN 101 or two years of secondary school French. Fall semester: Visiting Lecturer Tapley and Assistants. Spring semesters: Senior Lecturer Uhden and Assistants.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025An introduction to the critical reading of French literary and non-literary texts; a review of French grammar; training in composition, conversation and listening comprehension. Texts will be drawn from significant short stories, poetry and films. The survey of different literary genres serves also to contrast several views of French culture. Successful completion of FREN 205 prepares students for FREN 207 or 208. Conducted in French. Three hours a week.
This course will be taught synchronously using a range of tools and techniques (including film, collaborative projects, and small group discussions) to support the goals of language acquisition and literary analysis.
Requisite: FREN 103 or three to four years of secondary school French. Fall and spring semesters. Professor de la Carrera.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025Through class discussion, debates, and frequent short papers, students develop effective skills in self-expression, analysis, and interpretation. Literary texts, articles on current events, and films are studied within the context of the changing structures of French society and France’s complex relationship to its recent past. Assignments include both creative and analytic approaches to writing. Some grammar review as necessary, as well as work on understanding spoken French using video materials. This course will be taught synchronously using a range of tools and techniques (including film, collaborative projects, and small group discussions) to support the goals of language acquisition and literary analysis. Highly recommended for students planning to study abroad.
Requisite: FREN 205, or completion of AP French, or four years of secondary school French in a strong program. Fall semester: Senior Lecturer Uhden. Spring semester: Professor Rockwell.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025To gain as much confidence as possible in idiomatic French, we discuss French social institutions and culture, trying to appreciate differences between French and American viewpoints. Our conversational exchanges will touch upon such topics as French education, art and architecture, the status of women, the spectrum of political parties, minority groups, religion, and the position of France and French-speaking countries in the world. Supplementary work with audio and video materials.
In addition to books, we will make extensive use of video and audio material. Classes will all be synchronous and divided between lecture and small group discussions.
Requisite: FREN 205, or completion of AP French, or four years of secondary school French in a strong program. Limited to 16 students. Spring semester. Professor Sigal.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed social, political, and poetic innovations that rival in impact the information revolution of recent decades. Essential to these innovations was the transformation from an oral to a book-oriented culture. This course will investigate the problems of that transition, as reflected in such major works of the early French Middle Ages as: The Song of Roland, the Tristan legend, the Roman d’Eneas, the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, anonymous texts concerning the Holy Grail and the death of King Arthur. We shall also address questions relevant to this transition, such as the emergence of medieval allegory, the rise of literacy, and the relationship among love, sex, and hierarchy. All texts will be read in modern French. Conducted in French.
This course will be taught synchronously online.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Spring semester: Professor Rockwell.
2023-24: Not offeredIn matters of conquest, political alliance, or arts and letters, France’s interactions with Italy during the sixteenth century have left a significant imprint on its history, its language and literature, and even its national identity. With the Italian Renaissance preceding the French, French rulers, thinkers, and artists alike looked across the Alps for inspiration and innovation, and voyages to Italy almost became an obligatory rite of passage for the educated Frenchman. Alongside this admiration, however, was a growing sentiment of suspicion and even rejection, deploring the presence of Italians in the French court.
This course will explore some of the complexities of these relationships by developing three principal threads. The first will offer an examination of sixteenth-century French literature in dialogue with the works of some of the major figures in Italian literary history, such as Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Castiglione, to explore how French writers in turn draw and deviate from the Italian model in their poetry, short stories or nouvelles, and depictions of courtly practice. The second thread places French writers and thinkers on the path to Italy to investigate instead their observations and representations of their Italian experience. And finally, we will read a number of texts expressing the discontent of the French with Italian presence on their soil. We will pay particular attention to those works targeting the Queen Mother (Catherine de’ Medici) and those attacking Machiavelli to better understand the phenomenon of “machiavélisme,” its contribution to Italophobia, and its role in France’s religious wars.
All French texts will be read in French. Italian texts will be read in French or English translation. Students with knowledge of Italian may read texts in the original language. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Nader-Esfahani.
2023-24: Not offered"If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial" (III, 2 "Of Repentance"). A Renaissance jurist and thinker, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) is widely recognized as one of the key figures in the history of self-writing and of the essay as genre. This course, however, situates Montaigne beyond these two frames. In the spirit of Montaigne himself, it proposes to attempt, to sample, to taste—in sum, to essay—the Essais (1580-1595). From confessions of impotence to love affairs with books; from rebuttals of human reason to reflections on solitude and age; from networks of exchange to disease and contagion, the uncategorizable content of the Essais, combined with a dynamic form replete with detours and deviations, is an invitation to err among and try a variety of subjects. Similarly, our objective is not to gain expertise, but to experiment and to experience. Our trials will combine a close reading of a selection of Montaigne’s Essais alongside critical, historical, or theoretical texts from a diverse range of methodologies and fields, such as medicine, sound studies, cultural gerontology and more. In addition to engaging with the writings of Montaigne, this course therefore serves as a more general opportunity to consider the place of literature among and within other disciplines. Conducted in French.
Requisite: FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Nader-Esfahani.
2023-24: Not offeredThis course explores the formation and transformation of various genres in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, with a particular focus announced each time the course is offered. The topic for Spring 2019 is "The Eighteenth-Century Novel and Theater in France." Readings include texts by Diderot, Voltaire, Marivaux, Prévost, Laclos, and Beaumarchais. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Spring semester: Professor de la Carrera.
2023-24: Not offeredFrom the inverted retinal image to the invention of the telescope and microscope, the seventeenth century marks a pivotal moment in the history of vision and optical instruments. What are the repercussions of discovering a retinal image that is but an effect of light and color, and realizing that the world as the eye sees it is literally upside down? What does one make of telescopic and microscopic observations that show objects other than they appear and which unveil worlds beyond what the eye can see? Is the eye, once deemed the most noble of the senses, no longer a reliable form of knowledge? What does this mean for the viewing and knowing subject and his/her knowledge of the world and of him/herself in the world?
This course is an investigation of these transformations and their consequences, not only in scientific circles, but among writers who engage with, adopt, and adapt these objects and observations in their thought. More generally, by examining scientific debates and French writings from a period that precedes the disciplinary divide, this course aims to interrogate and understand the very categories of “literature” and “science.” We will analyze literature’s integration of scientific thought and findings, the language and rhetoric of scientific writings, texts that defy categorization or blur disciplinary lines, as well as broader considerations on the relationship between curiosity, marvel, imagination, invention, and discovery. Readings may include Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, Cyrano de Bergerac, Corneille, Baroque poetry, and more. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Nader-Esfahani.
2023-24: Not offeredThe ideas of the French Enlightenment and the events of the French Revolution have been a source of fascination for twentieth-century writers from countries as diverse as the United States, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Cuba. Which issues have provoked this dialogue across space and time? How do twentieth-century writers reinterpret those issues to fit a modern context? What are the ideological and literary concerns that resonate across the centuries? We will try to answer these and other questions by reading a group of twentieth-century works with and against a group of seminal eighteenth-century texts. Readings from the twentieth century will include Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, Milan Kundera’s Jacques and his Master, Cathleen Schine’s Rameau’s Niece, and Alejo Carpentier’s Explosion in the Cathedral. Readings from the eighteenth century will include Voltaire’s Candide, Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, and Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist and Rameau’s Nephew. We will also view films by Patrice Leconte, Robert Bresson, and François Truffaut. Conducted in English.
Omitted 2020-21. Professor de la Carrera.
2023-24: Not offeredWhen the Renaissance philosopher and essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote that "dissimulation is among the most notable qualities of this century," the word "notable" referred to the prevalence rather than an appreciation of the practice. This course examines the subject of self-representation in light of the culture of dissimulation that dominated the early modern period. To what extent is our behavior codified by society? How do the public and private spaces we inhabit inform self-representation? How do our interlocutors condition our degree of sincerity or caution? How do we conceal our intentions and emotions, and how do our words and bodies sometimes betray our true thoughts and feelings?
Beginning with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century works that theorize and propose models of conduct in public spaces, we will first seek to define simulation, dissimulation, and sincerity and the circumstances in which they are applied. We will also identify the possible consequences of these acts. We will then turn our attention to works of fiction and non-fiction from the seventeenth-century to analyze how these ideas manifest themselves in practice. Finally, we will discuss how early modern texts and their engagement with this subject allow us to critically consider our contemporary practices of self-representation, especially in light of our own culture of curated social media profiles.
All French texts will be read in French, and those not originally written in French will be read in French or English translation. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Nader-Esfahani.
2023-24: Not offeredDenis Diderot, the genial philosophe at the center of the French Enlightenment, was the author of novels, plays, art criticism, music theory, and works on mathematics, politics, and philosophy. As co-editor of the Encyclopédie, the French Enlightenment’s most ambitious intellectual project and a “machine de guerre” for propagating its ideas, he recruited contributions from the most distinguished thinkers, artists, and artisans of his time, while writing scores of articles on subjects ranging from botany and law to mythology and carpentry. We will explore a variety of texts drawn from Diderot’s oeuvre, beginning with La Religieuse, a fictional portrait of eighteenth-century convent life, and Le Rêve de d'Alembert, a philosophical dialogue in which Diderot reveals his dangerously materialist views. We will subsequently read brief selections on politics and religion from the Encyclopédie; excerpts from the Salons, Diderot’s critiques of the French Academy of Art and Sculpture’s exhibitions; and the Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, a depiction of a utopian Tahiti whose social and sexual customs produce harmonious relationships not just among Tahitians but between Tahitians and their natural environment. In conjunction with our reading of the novel Jacques le fataliste, we will view Robert Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, taken from an episode in Jacques. Excerpts from Diderot’s letters to his lover, the Lettres à Sophie Volland, acclaimed as a masterpiece of its genre, will provide yet another perspective on this most versatile and fascinating individual. As we become capable of seeing the commonalities across Diderot’s writings we will give extraordinary attention to Le Neveu de Rameau--a novel whose impact on nineteenth-century writers and thinkers was profound, and which is still startling in its modernity. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following--FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-2021. Professor de la Carrera.
2023-24: Not offeredAn exploration of Enlightenment thought within the context of the collaborative institutions and activities that fostered its development, including literary and artistic salons, cafés, and the Encyclopédie. We will read texts by Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, and others, drawn from the domains of literature, philosophy, memoirs, and correspondence. To get a better idea of what it might have been like to live in the eighteenth century and be a participant in the “Republic of Letters,” we will also read a variety of essays in French cultural history. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor de la Carrera.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2017, Fall 2019In the early years of the twentieth century, the French Colonial Empire stretched from Algiers to Antananarivo and from Hanoi to Cayenne. The Maghreb, French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, the Indo-Chinese peninsula, and Madagascar all lived under French rule. This course will analyze the creation and dissemination of “colonial cultures” in the wake of French imperialism. From the early nineteenth century on, military conquest went hand in hand with the production of a diverse and wide-ranging colonial imaginary. Schoolbooks, colonial exhibitions, natural history museums, visual artefacts ranging from paintings to advertisements, literary works, songs, and films inspired by “Greater France” proliferated in French culture. Drawing from selected case studies, we will explore the many forms taken by the French colonial imagination. We will also examine critiques of colonialism, as well as strategies and modalities of resistance to the colonial imaginary. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Katsaros.
2023-24: Not offered(Offered as FREN 342 and SWAG 342) Prostitutes play a central role in nineteenth-century French fiction, especially of the realistic and naturalistic kind. Both widely available and largely visible in nineteenth-century France, prostitutes inspired many negative stereotypes. But, as the very product of the culture that marginalized her, the prostitute offered an ideal vehicle for writers to criticize the hypocrisy of bourgeois mores. The socially stratified world of prostitutes, ranging from low-ranking sex workers to high-class courtesans, presents a fascinating microcosm of French society as a whole. We will read selections from Honoré de Balzac, Splendeur et misère des courtisanes; Victor Hugo, Les Misérables; and Gustave Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale; as well as Boule-de-Suif and other stories by Guy de Maupassant; La fille Elisa by Edmond de Goncourt; Nana by Emile Zola; Marthe by Joris-Karl Huysmans; La dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils; and extracts from Du côté de chez Swann by Marcel Proust. Additional readings will be drawn from the fields of history (Alain Corbin, Michelle Perrot) and critical theory (Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva). We will also discuss visual representations of prostitutes in nineteenth-century French art (Gavarni, Daumier, C. Guys, Degas, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec). Conducted in French.
Class materials will include books, articles, and films. The class will be taught synchronously in person with the instructor participating via zoom. We will make extensive use of collaborative platforms, such as Google Docs and online annotating tools, to enhance student participation, encourage the development of critical skills, and foster discussion.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Fall semester. Professor Katsaros.
2023-24: Not offeredImages of childhood have become omnipresent in our culture. We fetishize childhood as an idyllic time, preserved from the difficulties and compromises of adult life; but the notion that children’s individual lives are worth recording is a relatively modern one. Drawing from literature, children's literature, history, and art, we will try to map out the journey from the idea of childhood as a phase to be outgrown to the modern conception of childhood as a crucial moment of self-definition. We will pay particular attention to the nature against nurture debate and to gender biases in education. We will discuss theories of child-rearing, the emergence of children’s literature, and the material culture of childhood (e.g., clothes, toys, children's books).
Readings will include essays by historians of childhood such as Philippe Ariès, Elisabeth Badinter and Colin Heywood; selections from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatise, Émile, ou de l' Éducation, as well as excerpts from Félicité de Genlis's Adèle et Théodore, ou Lettres sur l'éducation, and from Henriette Campan's De l'éducation. We will also read a physician's account of the "wild child" known as Victor, Dr. Jean Itard's Mémoire sur l'enfant sauvage de l'Aveyron; La petite Fadette by George Sand [Aurore Dupin]; Les Malheurs de Sophie by the Comtesse de Ségur; selected poems by Baudelaire and Rimbaud; and Jules Renard's autobiographical Poil de Carotte. This course will also closely examine eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists' visions of childhood, with a particular emphasis on female artists such as Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marguerite Gérard, and Berthe Morisot. Conducted in French.
Class materials will include books, articles, and films. The class will be taught synchronously in person with the instructor participating via zoom. We will make extensive use of collaborative platforms, such as Google Docs and online annotating tools, to enhance student participation, encourage the development of critical skills, and foster discussion.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Fall semester. Professor Katsaros.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2013, Spring 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2023The twentieth century was a century of migrations. Many writers and poets experienced exile, whether displaced by the furious violence of history, forced out of their country by an unbearable political situation, or simply led by their literary ambition. For many, the host country becomes a problematic permanent residency; for others, it is only a passage before an often painful return to the native land. These various experiences intensely mark authors' relationship to writing: suspended between two countries, two languages, and two cultures, these poets and writers form challenging conceptions of space and time. In the midst of a violent century, the book becomes a refuge against savagery, or on the contrary a place to cry out one's rage; an intimate territory in a foreign world, a space of questioning and reflection. We will read texts by Aimé Césaire, Benjamin Fondane, Edmond Jabès, Georges Perec, Fatou Diome and Gaspard Njock, and watch films by Nurith Aviv, and Manthia Diawara. Theoretical texts will include essays by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Edouard Glissant, and Edward Said, among others. Conducted in French.
Requisite: FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Sigal.
2023-24: Not offered“Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but rather a medium. It is the medium of that which is experienced, just as the earth is the medium in which ancient cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. Above all, he must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil.” Walter Benjamin surely wrote these words with Marcel Proust (whom he translated) in mind. The opening pages of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time will be the starting point of our reflection. In these seminal pages, the narrator reminisces about his early life through all the bedrooms where he slept. Benjamin’s words, however, take on a particular significance when “the matter” of memory is the experience of genocide and mass murder. In this class, we will read and watch direct or indirect accounts of the Holocaust, the genocide of the Tutsis, the Khmer Rouge regime, and the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966. Confronted with texts and films of this kind, we will interrogate the relation between literature and memory, writing and trauma, remembering and forgetting. We will read books by Marcel Proust, Elie Wiesel, Scholastique Mukasonga, Patrick Modiano, Boris Boubacar Diop, and Art Spiegelman; watch movies by Alain Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, Ritty Panh, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Chantal Akerman; and read various short essays. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following--FREN-207, 208, or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-2021. Professor Sigal.
2023-24: Not offeredThe coincidence of the “I” and the self might seem redundant, even self-evident. But, in the twentieth century, the very act of writing one’s life, of writing about the self, is often the starting point of a quest that brings authors to express conflicted, paradoxical, even violent ideas about themselves and the world. Whether they aim at revealing the naked truth about their life, or on the contrary attempt to conceal it, they use literature as a repository for their experience, as well as an echo chamber of their convoluted thought. Confronted with such texts, we, the readers, may react with puzzlement or skepticism, rejection or envy. In other words, reading a writer telling about her or his experiences engages our own selves. This class will be the occasion to examine how we read when faced with the “I” of the other. Primary readings may include texts by Antonin Artaud, Michel Leiris, Georges Perec, Roland Barthes, Colette Fellous, and Maryse Condé. Secondary readings may include texts by Michel de Montaigne, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Martin Buber, and Marguerite Duras. Students will engage with the material in three steps: writing a reading journal; presenting their work-in-progress in class or during a symposium organized during the semester; writing a final essay. Conducted in French.
In addition to books and articles, we will make extensive use of video and audio material. Classes will all be synchronous and divided between lecture and small groups discussions.
Requisite: One of the following--FREN 207, 208, or equivalent. Fall semester. Professor Sigal.
2023-24: Not offeredIn 1868, a mysterious 22-year-old writer calling himself the Comte de Lautréamont published The Songs of Maldoror. Of the eponymous hero of the book, Lautréamont wrote: “He is as handsome as the retractility of the claws in birds of prey; or, again, as the unpredictability of muscular movement in sores in the soft spot of the posterior cervical region; or, rather, as the perpetual motion rat-trap which is always reset by the trapped animal and which can go on catching rodents indefinitely and works even when it is hidden under straw; and, above all, as the chance juxtaposition of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table!” Do you understand what Lautréamont means? I do and I do not. I do not understand, but I see what he means. I see a world which does not resemble the world as I experience it. A world where beauty is neither aesthetically pleasing nor universal, where flowers are evil and rat-traps endlessly inspiring. For many critics, The Songs of Maldoror marked the birth of literary modernity in French. Writers who wished to create new modes of writing and of representing the world set out to destroy meaning. Dictionaries became useless, the textual became eminently visual, and language created new worlds, as the distinctions between prose and poetry, between reality and dreams, collapsed. In this course, we will follow avant-garde writers’ experiments in thinking language anew: not as a set of fixed relationships, but as a perpetual movement between words and objects. We will read primary sources by Arthur Rimbaud, Comte de Lautréamont, Dada, the Surrealists, Henri Michaux, Gherasim Luca and Hélène Cixous; and critical sources by Plato, Ferdinand de Saussure and Michel Foucault, among others. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following: French 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Sigal.
2023-24: Not offeredThe Oxford English Dictionary defines magic as “the use of ritual activities or observances which are intended to influence the course of events or to manipulate the natural world.” Sorcerers use recipes, incantations, and actions to bend the natural order of things. In this class, we will question why some of the most prominent writers in French modernity have engaged with magical thought in their works. In the nineteenth century, numerous authors used magic as a metaphor to express the irrationality inhibited by a culture obsessed with reason and progress. In the twentieth century, avant-garde movements embraced this trend: writers, poets and artists were avid practitioners of fortune telling, telepathy, astrology, and numerology. Concurrently, magic became a prominent subject of modern ethnologists: magical thinking articulated both the dawn of science in religious societies and the persistence of religion in scientific societies, and thus allowed ethnologists to cross-examine two phenomena essential to defining modern societies. Authors took a great interest in these findings. We could link their interest to a desire to produce a language made of words that “do things.” In a way, writers are like magicians whose incantations do not function anymore, as if their language had lost its power. In this class, we will read both literature and ethnology to investigate the ways in which magical thinking infused the birth of literary modernity. We will read literary works by Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Nerval, Artaud, Breton, and Césaire; and critical and ethnographical texts by Mauss, Levi-Strauss, Métraux, De Certeau and Bailly. Conducted in French.
In addition to books and articles, we will make extensive use of video and audio material. Classes will all be synchronous and divided between lecture and small group discussions.
Requisite: One of the following--FREN 207, 208, 311 or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor Sigal.
2023-24: Not offeredIn 2010, UNESCO designated the French gastronomic meal a “world intangible heritage” for its unique ability to “bring people together to enjoy the art of good eating and drinking, draw circles of family and friends closer together and, more generally, strengthening social ties.” But not all is fair in matters of French fare. This course debunks the myth of the gastronomic meal by studying cuisine as both source and a symbol of tensions in French society. Through the close analysis of primary and secondary sources, including novels, monographs, memoirs, magazines, menus, restaurant reviews, photographs, and advertisements, students consider how culinary discourse has concealed and revealed inequalities of class, gender, and race. Food also serves as our entrée into key conflicts that have shaped modern France, from Marie-Antoinette’s confectionary fetish that incited the French Revolution to the couscous dinner that scandalized the far right in recent presidential elections. Over the course of the semester, students will select and critically dissect a dish from the Larousse Gastronomique. Using France’s open access digital library “Gallica,” they will investigate the origins of the dish, the sourcing of ingredients, and the contexts in which it was cooked and consumed in order to interpret its cultural meaning(s).
The entire class will meet remotely once per week via Zoom in a class which will involve some lecturing and some breakout group work. The class will also have two discussion sections that are also via Zoom. The readings, class discussions, and critical and creative writing assignments are in French.
Requisite: One of the following--FREN 207, FREN 208, or the equivalent. Limited to 24 students. Fall semester. Visiting Lecturer Presnal.
2023-24: Not offeredThe course provides a forum for seniors for the practice of spoken French at the advanced level with native speakers. Students will prepare and deliver presentations; practice interviewing techniques; and learn and practice using technical vocabulary from a variety of disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The choice of short readings and vocabulary sets will vary each time the course is offered and will reflect the interests of the students enrolled.
Open only to Senior French majors. Spring semester. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2023, Spring 2025The rise in the rate of literacy which characterized the early French Middle Ages coincided with radical reappraisals of the nature and function of reading and poetic production. This course will investigate the ramifications of these reappraisals for the literature of the late French Middle Ages. Readings may include such major works as Guillaume de Dole by Jean Renart, the anonymous Roman de Renart, the Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris, selections from the continuation of the Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun, anonymous Fabliaux, and poetic works by Christine de Pisan, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Charles d’Orléans. Particular attention will be paid to the philosophical presuppositions surrounding the production of erotic allegorical discourse. We shall also address such topics as the relationships between lyric and narrative and among disguise, death and aging in the context of medieval discourses on love. All texts will be read in modern French. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor Rockwell.
2023-24: Not offeredThe study of a major author, literary problem, or question from the medieval period with a particular focus announced each time the course is offered. The topic for Spring 2020 is: "The Grail, the Rose, and Dante." We will study the social, philosophical, poetic and institutional currents that contribute to the emergence of allegorical texts in the period between the twelfth and the late-fourteenth centuries. Readings include the Quest for the Holy Grail and works by Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meung, Dante Alighieri, and Marie de France. All readings will be done in English translation. Conducted in English.
Omitted 2020-21. Professor Rockwell.
2023-24: Not offeredMany eighteenth-century writers imagined and invented other, better societies. To attenuate their criticisms of the social, political, and religious structures of the ancien régime, they had recourse to the viewpoint of fictional "outsiders" who arrive in France as if for the first time and describe what they see in minute and telling detail. We will analyze the role that these "other" worlds and the "otherworldly" point of view played in the development of eighteenth-century thought and literature, as well as some of the repercussions that these questions have had in twentieth-century thought. Readings will include Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité, Diderot's Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, and Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne, as well as Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and a selection of essays by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Conducted in French.
Requisite: One of the following—FREN 207, 208 or the equivalent. Omitted 2020-21. Professor de la Carrera.
2023-24: Not offeredSpring semester. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2025Independent reading course. Full course.
Admission with consent of the instructor required. Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025