Graduate courses for Fall 2018 | French and Francophone Studies

	Title	Instructor	Location	Time	Description	Section Description
FREN 601-401	LANGUAGE TEACHING/LEARNG	MCMAHON, KATHRYN	WILLIAMS HALL 543	W 0200PM-0400PM	Please check the department's website for the course description. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc
FREN 630-401	GENDER, IDENTITY, DISCOURSE AND AUTHORITY IN MEDIEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE	BROWNLEE, KEVIN	WILLIAMS HALL 516	R 0200PM-0500PM	Topics vary. Previous topics include The Grail and the Rose, Literary Genres and Transformations, and Readings in Old French Texts. Please see the department's website for current course description: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc	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.
FREN 660-402	THE FRENCH (?) ENLIGHTENMENT	DEJEAN, JOAN	VAN PELT LIBRARY 605	T 0200PM-0400PM	Topics of discussion will vary from semester to semester. One possible topic is "Masterpieces of the Enlightenment." We will read the most influential texts of the Enlightenment, texts that shaped the social and political consciousness characteristic of the Enlightenment--for example, the meditations on freedom of religious expression that Voltaire contributed to "affaires" such as the "affaire Calas." We will also discuss different monuments of the spirit of the age--its corruption (Les Liaisons dangereuses), its libertine excesses and philosophy (La Philosophie dans le boudoir). We will define the specificity of 18th-century prose (fiction), guided by a central question: What was the Enlightenment? Please see department's website for current course description: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc	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 a 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.
FREN 680-401	THE MODERN FRENCH NOVEL	PRINCE, GERALD	WILLIAMS HALL 516	F 0200PM-0400PM	Topics will vary. Please see the French department's website for current course description: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc	A narratologically oriented study of the poetics of the modern French novel from the Nouveau Roman (e.g. Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Simon) through Tournier, Le Clézio, Modiano, and Ernaux to the Nouvelle Ecole de Minuit and beyond (e.g. Toussaint, Houellebecq, and Michon).
FREN 690-301	PSTCOLNL STD & N AFR LIT: FRICTIONS: POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES & NORTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN DIALOGUE	GUEYDAN-TUREK, ALEXANDRA	WILLIAMS HALL 3	M 0200PM-0400PM	Topics will vary. Please see department's website for current course description: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc	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.