French and Francophone StudiesFrench 601: Language Teaching and Learning
Prof. McMahon
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This course is required of all Teaching Assistants in French and Italian in the second semester of their first year of teaching. It is designed to provide instructors with the necessary practical support to carry out their teaching responsibilities effectively, and builds on the practicum meetings held during the first semester. The course will also introduce students to various approaches to foreign language teaching as well as to current issues in second language acquisition. Students who have already had a similar course at another institution may be exempted upon consultation with the instructor.
French 630: Discourse, Identity, Authority and Gender in Medieval French Literature
Prof. Kevin Brownlee
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An introduction to Medieval French literature by close readings of key representative works from among hagiography, chanson de geste, romance, lyric, chantefable, theater, and “autobiography.” The course will consider the creation and the functioning of these new generic forms in the French vernacular, with particular attention to questions of gender, authority, "truth," and language. Focus will be on the first-person authorial subject, on representations of gender and of the erotic, and on religious and socio-political contexts (including Christian self vs. Muslim other). Texts to be studied include La Vie de Saint Alexis, La Chanson de Roland, Chrétien de Troyes's Cligès, Aucassin et Nicolette, and Adam de la Halle’s Jeu de Robin et Marion. We conclude with an analysis of René d’Anjou’s Livre du Cœur d’Amour Épris.
French 660: The French (?) Enlightment
Prof. Joan DeJean
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Much of the current debate about the phenomenon known as the Enlightenment is formulated in terms of national traditions: the Scottish Enlightenment, the German Enlightenment, and so forth. Behind these national markers lies an implicit questioning of France’s intellectual role in the 18th century. In fact, such a questioning was at the heart of the French Enlightenment from the start. This questioning began at the moment when the French language was Europe’s lingua franca and when France’s cultural and political superiority were widely recognized. But the Enlightenment’s classic texts reject the notion of cultural supremacy. The writers and philosophers who articulated its key arguments refused to define themselves as purely and simply French. Diderot, Montesquieu, and Voltaire encouraged their readers to think globally – of the earthquake in Lisbon, of the Jesuits in Peru, of the cost of slavery, and of Philadelphia as the ideal city. At the moment when the French language was dominant, thinkers such as Voltaire and Diderot became the first major figures to learn not classical languages but a modern one: English. They used their knowledge to introduce the Francophone world to everything from Shakespeare to the Bank of England. The so-called French Enlightenment marked in many ways the introduction of England to a broad non-Anglophone audience. We’ll examine the “foreignness” of the French Enlightenment in different fashions. In Lettres persanes (Persian Letters) and Lettres d’une Péruvienne (Peruvian Letters), Montesquieu and Graffigny viewed France’s institutions through a foreign lens. In Diderot and d’Alembert’s monumental Encyclopédie (The Encyclopedia), “France” is recalibrated in relation to “Geneva” and “Pennsylvania.” Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (Letters Concerning the English Nation) has been described as “the bomb” whose explosion signaled the start of the Enlightenment. The book’s two very different titles refer to two distinct works, one censored by French authorities and known only in truncated form -- the other classic in England in the 18th century, widely known and revered. Which one should be considered explosive, the English work or the French one? The course will be taught in English. Reading can be done in French or in English, or in some combination of the two. The Encyclopedia, its history and its censorship, will be at the center of the course. The Encyclopedia’s extraordinary diversity will allow students to work on an equally diverse range of projects.
French 680: The Modern French Novel
Prof. Gerald Prince
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A narratologically oriented study of the poetics of the modern French novel from the Nouveau Roman (e.g. Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Simon) through writers like Tournier, Perec. and Modiano to the Nouvelle Ecole de Minuit and beyond (e.g. Toussaint, Houellebecq, and Michon).
French 690: Frictions: North African Literature and Postcolonial Studies in Dialogue
Prof. Alexandra Gueydan-Turek
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This seminar examines an array of North African Francophone novels in order to explore and question the ongoing relevance of the concept of Postcolonialism for Maghrebi writers and intellectuals. By paying particular attention to the material conditions of production and consumption, and combining this perspective with one derived from postcolonial theory, we probe francophone literature's ability to reflect, bolster, and interrogate the postcolonial nation. We adopt both a comparative and thematic approach to discuss works published in the ex-colonial margins alongside those published concurrently in Paris, exploring topics to include: (1) Looking atthe continuing use of French in Maghrebi works, we discuss evolving notions of diglossia, Francophonie and world literature, and the uncertain role that this language has come to play in voicing socio-cultural dissatisfaction. (2) We interrogate how the changing realities of transnational migration challenge the postcolonial nation-state, (3) and the extent to which oppositional discourses run the risk of being commodified and participate in what has been termed the ‘postcolonial exotic.’ Readings will be drawn from across the Maghreb, with particular attention paid to new voices that were catalyzed by periods of political unrest, including the Algerian war of Liberation, its decade-long civil war, the “Lead years” in Morocco and the 2011 Tunisian revolution. This course will be conducted in English, but requires a good reading knowledge of French as many of the primary materials are in French.