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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
As a continuation of French 103, this course explores the diverse cultural and political identities in the Francophone world through short literary texts and films from France, Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East while building on linguistic skills in French. The course will provide an in-depth advanced review of grammar structures, but will emphasize the application of those structures in activities of composition, reading, oral presentation and discussion. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
French 103; this course is primarily for continuing French 103 students; students who have placed at the advanced intermediate level on the placement exam should register for French 105
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3.00 Credits
In this course, we will concentrate on expanding your vocabulary and polishing your written and oral skills while focusing on the analysis and discussion of French and Francophone cultures and the concepts that define them. We will explore key myths and practices linked to national identity in France and seek to understand the history of contemporary national identity debates. Topics of discussion will include: What is a nation? What is the Republic? How is a national identity constructed? What does it mean to be French today? Which are contemporary topics in the Francophone world? How are they represented in the Francophone press? (Print, television, radio, internet) How are these events and controversies situated in a larger historical and philosophical context?Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
RLFR 103, or examination placement
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3.00 Credits
Two years ago, the French gastronomic meal won a place on UNESCO's representative list of "intangible cultural heritage." Yet, as current political and cultural tensions in France suggest, French food has never been more controversial. This course combines an intensive grammar review with a critical and experiential study of French food cultures. Modules focus on gastronomy and the art of degustation, the role of food in debates on religious, national, and regional identities, public health policy, and the war on malbouffe. In addition to analyzing a broad range of texts, film, and other media, students will engage and strengthen their grammar and vocabulary when conducting field interviews, visiting local producers, and experimenting in our class kitchen. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
French 105, or by French placement exam, or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
This course in Advanced Conversation in French is designed to develop students' skills in spoken French while learning about French and Francophone cultures. Students will increase vocabulary and fluency through interactive discussions, and will improve their pronunciation and both oral and written comprehension through different media: the press, television, movies, plays, and songs. We will discuss questions of French and Francophone identities, the Second World War, immigration, and current events. Conversation will improve students' ability to communicate effectively and to analyze culture through different media. Class activities will include listening to recordings, reading newspapers, conversation, and debates. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
RLFR 104 or RLFR 105 or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
We are a society of silent readers. Our eyes move back and forth over words on a screen or page, and the act feels private, interior. In earlier times, however, people interacted differently with texts. Besides silent reading, texts were transmitted through recitation and improvisation for groups of listeners. This course offers an introduction to the key periods, artistic movements, and genres of premodern France as they come to bear on the relationship between literature and orality. How did literary forms circulate and develop before and after the invention of the printing press? When did people who write become "writers?" Who read, heard, and performed texts? Who didn't? Over the course of the semester, students will complete regular creative and analytical exercises, visit the Chapin Library and Special Collections, meet with guest speakers, and practice declamation and performance. Readings to include anonymous authors as well as Marie de France, Villon, Labe, Ronsard, Moliere, La Fontaine, Lafayette, Voltaire, Rousseau. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
French 105, or by French placement exam, or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
The nineteenth-century was a century of evolution, technological advances, and improvement in both working conditions and the quality of life. However, the century's many revolutions and political crises, and the crushing defeat of the Franco-Prussian War (1870) contributed to a personal sense of failure and a national sense of disenchantment. French literature reflected a persistent state of melancholy and a strong feeling of social decline. Romantic, decadent, and naturalist movements responded to this national feeling of moral decay by producing texts that focused on pathology, perversion, and morbidity. In this seminar, we will read novels and stories by Constant, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Huysmans, Maupassant, Flaubert and Zola. We will discuss topics such as boredom, adultery, failed marriages, bachelorhood, family, and suicide. Conducted in French.
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3.00 Credits
Like Shakespeare, the work of France's greatest playwright is less a timeless monument than a living body, perpetually in motion, yet constantly changing. This course offers a dual approach to the theater of Moliere. The first half of the semester will focus on readings and analysis of printed plays: Le Depit amoureux, L'Ecole des femmes, Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, L'Avare, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Les Fourberies de Scapin, and Le Malade imaginaire, among others. We will consider the broader socio-political, intellectual, and aesthetic forces at work in the Age of Louis XIV, as well as the formal and thematic features of each play. Turning from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, the second half of the semester will examine modern interpretations of Moliere, especially those of major theater directors including Jouvet, Planchon, Vitez, and Mnouchkine. Discussions will be informed by viewings as well as interviews, reviews, and critical essays. Throughout the semester, we will explore the dynamic relationships between tradition and innovation, elite and popular culture, actors and audience, past and present. The semester culminates in student-led micro-performances inspired by our readings, viewings, and discussions. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
French 201, 202, or 203, or by permission of the instructor
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3.00 Credits
In the nineteenth-century, women were often depicted as frail, fragile, and weak. Yet many texts (poems, short stories, plays, novels) express a fear of the feminine. Mothers are seen as freaks of nature, wives as adulterous man-eaters, women as seductresses and manipulators, or ghouls and vampires, leaving men as mere prey, victims of the feminine monster. This course will discuss women's roles in nineteenth-century France, mythical and historical representations of women, the institution and challenges of marriage, and the balance between male and female power in intimate relationships. Reading to include texts by Villiers de l'Ile Adam, Gautier, Merimee, Maupassant, Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, and Baudelaire. conducted in French.
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3.00 Credits
Today the countries of North Africa are experiencing rapid social change. Rap music can be heard spilling out of windows while television sets broadcast a call to prayer. In the market place, those selling their goods compete to be heard over the ringing of cell-phones. Old and new exist side by side, albeit sometimes very uncomfortably. During the past decade, literature has emerged in both French and Arabic examining the effects of globalization: unequal modernization, unemployment, cultural change and cultural resistance. In this course, we will read short stories that address these issues as well as analyze films, sociological texts and Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian newspapers on the web in order to explore contemporary transformations of life in North Africa. Readings by Maissa Bey, Abdelfattah Kilito, Zeina Tabi, Mohamed Zafzaf, Ahmed Bouzfour, Soumaya Zahy and Abdelhak Serhane among others.Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
French 201, 202 or 203 or permission of instructor
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3.00 Credits
In this course we will explore the politics and poetics of fiction that engages marginalized urban spaces in France and the francophone world. From the depiction of informal settlements in Martinique in Patrick Chamoiseau's epic novel Texaco to the shantytowns of Casablanca in Mahi Binebine's Les etoiles de Sidi Moumen to the Parisian housing projects in Gisele Pineau's Un papillon dans la cite and Didier Mandin's Banlieue Voltaire, we will explore how literature represents neighborhoods that exist in the face of dominant discourses of urban redevelopment that work to destroy them. What voices and histories emerge from these spaces under aggression? And how does literature claim to speak from and for these marginalized communities? Readings will include both literary works and theoretical readings from urban studies and geography. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:
Any RLFR literature course
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