Graduate courses for Spring 2020 | French and Francophone Studies

	Title	Instructor	Location	Time	Description	Registration Notes
FREN 500-000	PROSEMINAR				This course will provide a forum for collective preparation for the Master's exam.
FREN 500-001	PROSEMINAR	PRINCE, GERALD			This course will provide a forum for collective preparation for the Master's exam.
FREN 601-401	FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING	MCMAHON, KATHRYN	WILLIAMS HALL 543	W 0100PM-0400PM	Please check the department's website for the course description. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc
FREN 608-401	SHORT NARRATIVE FICTION IN THE FRENCH MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE	FRANCIS, SCOTT	WILLIAMS HALL 516	F 0200PM-0400PM	This course will focus on prominent examples of the genres of tales and stories characteristic of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: lays, fabliaux, saints' lives, and novellas, which are among the most influential and widely distributed genres both in France and elsewhere. The success of these tales is a function of their origin in oral culture, their brevity, their wit, and their propensity for titillating, obscene, or even shocking subject matter. At the same time, though, their distinct blend of high and low culture provides modern readers with a window into the literary, cultural, and intellectual history of the medieval and early modern periods. The topics we will discuss include: The formal characteristics of each genre (narrative techniques, organizational principles), the ways in which seemingly disparate genres such as saints' lives and bawdy fabliaux can inform one another, how tales both follow and call into question the logic of exemplarity, according to which stories are meant to hold up good examples to be imitated and bad examples to be avoided, what representations of love, marriage, and sex can tell us about medieval and early modern conceptions of gender, how tales reflect developments in learned discourses such as theology, law, and medicine, how the same story can be told differently by multiple authors, and what these different versions can tell us about chronological, national, professional, and gender differences. While the primary focus of the course is on literature in French, particular attention is also given to the ways in which French short narrative fiction influences and is influenced by the larger medieval and early modern world, with a particular focus on England, Italy, and Spain. Moreover, English translations of all primary readings will be made available via Canvas, and in-class discussions will be designed to accommodate varying levels of ability in French. This course counts toward the graduate certificate in Global and Medieval Renaissance Studies.
FREN 611-301	FRENCH CINEMA	MET, PHILIPPE	WILLIAMS HALL 516	T 0300PM-0600PM	Please see the department's website for current course description: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc	UNDERGRADUATES NEED PERMISSION
FREN 675-401	THE UNDERGROUND IMAGINARY	GOULET, ANDREA	WILLIAMS HALL 219	T 0100PM-0300PM	Topics will vary. Please see department's website for current course description: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/french/pc	UNDERGRADUATES NEED PERMISSION
FREN 681-301	MODERN FRENCH POETRY	MET, PHILIPPE		CANCELED	How does one approach the modern poetic text which ever since the Mallarmean "crise de vers" appears to have cut loose from all referential anchoring and traditional markers (prosody, versification, etc.)? This course will present an array of possible methodological answers to this question, focusing on poetic forms and manifestations of brevity and fragmentation. In addition to being submitted to precise formal and textual inquiries, each text or work will be the point of departure for the analysis of a specific theoretical issue and/or an original practice - e.g., genetic criticism, translation theory, the poetic "diary", aphoristic modes of writing, quoting and rewriting practices, etc. Texts by key modern poets (Ponge, Chazal, Du Bouchet, Jourdan, Jabes, Michaux).	UNDERGRADUATES NEED PERMISSION