Adventurers of Form (LA)

FRE 416 / COM 474

This course explores the formal inventions of modern and contemporary writers--from Woolf, Borges, Perec to Bolaño--who reinvent storytelling through hybrid structures, fragmented voices, and experimental forms, who carve new paths through language and narrative. Each session will spotlight authors from the French, English, and Spanish literary worlds, examining how each writer responds to the ruptures of the modern world through the invention of forms, how literature might respond to (and reshape) the world to come.

INSTUCTORS: Pierre Ducrozet

Seminar in 17th-Century French Literature: Behind Closed Doors

FRE 516

The international impact of the Pélicot case invites us to rethink the archetypes of the monstrous husband and the sleeping beauty. Seventeenth-century French society offers crucial insights into these representations. At a time when forced marriages, rapts de séduction, & questions of sexual consent were scrutinized through novels, fairy tales & plays, traditional masculinity underwent a paradigm shift. Women's growing influence and the rise of galanterie reshaped cultural norms. From courtship to harrowing wedding nights, this seminar explores how seduction and predatory gazing shaped patterns that continue to haunt modern sexual dynamics.

INSTUCTORS: Jennifer L. Tamas

20th-Century French Narrative Prose: 20th and 21st-Century

FRE 524 / HUM 524

This course focuses on the role of narrative discourse in the articulation of cultural, historical, and literary developments from the late 20th to the early 21st century. An emphasis on narratological considerations will be combined with reflection on issues of race, gender, class, history, and memory.

INSTUCTORS:  Thomas A. Trezise

Interdisciplinarity and Antidisciplinarity

HUM 583 / FRE 582 / ENG 586

Academic life is largely configured along disciplinary lines. What are "disciplines," and what does it mean to think, write, teach, and work within these socio-cognitive structures? Are there alternatives? This course, drawing on faculty associated with the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities (IHUM), takes up these questions, in an effort to clarify the historical evolution and current configuration of intellectual activity within universities. Normative questions detain us. The future is a persistent preoccupation. Collaborative work and generic experiment are encouraged.

INSTUCTORS: Kinohi Nishikawa, Christy N. Wampole

Graduate Research Internship 

FRE 586

This course is designed for post-generals students who are currently working with their academic adviser on developing research for their dissertation. This course provides a platform for students who have been nominated/awarded an internship from another university, research institute, private foundation, or outside organization that is relative to the student's dissertation research topic. A summary of the research and its relevance to the student's dissertation is required no later than one week after the completion of the internship.

INSTUCTORS: André Benhaïm

Graduate Proseminar in French Studies

FRE 599

The goal of this seminar is to provide first-year graduate students with a formal introduction to the Department's curriculum and requirements, through practical training in the various methods of research and scholarly activities and productions. It also familiarizes students with fundamental theoretical texts and approaches to a variety of critical fields pertaining to French studies. Finally, it offers concrete outlooks on their professional future by showcasing ways of optimizing their career prospects in the realm of academia, but also in other domains.

INSTUCTORS: TBD

Topics in Francophone Literature, Culture, and History: Francophone Caribbean Literature (LA)

FRE 403 / LAS 423

An examination of the literature of the francophone Caribbean from the Haitian Revolution to the postcolonial present. The course focuses on the original critiques of slavery, racism, and colonialism that this literature has invented. Authors will include Toussaint, Louverture, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, CLR James, and Maryse Condé.

INSTRUCTORS:  F. Nick Nesbitt, Thomas A. Trezise

Poetry and War: Translating the Untranslatable (LA) 

HUM 423 / COM 465 / TRA 423 / FRE 423

Focusing on René Char's wartime "notebook" of prose poetry from the French Resistance, Feuillets d'Hypnos (Leaves of Hypnos), this course joins a study of the Resistance to a poet's literary creation and its ongoing "afterlife" around the globe. History, archival research (traditional and digital), the practice of literary translation, and a trip to France that begins in Paris and follows Char's footsteps as poet and Resistance leader on the Maquis will all be part of our exploration. The poet's widow and editor will accompany us in France. We conclude with a presentation of the "notebook" in multiple languages by seminar participants.

INSTRUCTORS:  Sandra L. Bermann, Peter Makhlouf

The French Sound System (EC)

FRE 424 / LIN 324

This course explores the French sound system through the lens of English phonetics, offering a deep dive into the similarities and differences between the two languages. Students will study vowel and consonant production, acoustic and articulatory properties, and suprasegmental features like syllable structure and intonation. The course begins with foundational phonetic theories and examines pronunciation instruction in L2 courses. Through hands-on practice with phonetic software and analysis of real-world data, students will gain critical skills for understanding language acquisition and pronunciation challenges in L2 learners.

INSTRUCTORS:  Vincent Chanethom

Second Language Acquisition Research and Language Teaching Methodology

FRE 500

Designed to provide future teaching assistants with the knowledge and conceptual tools needed to reflect critically on pedagogical practices in the second language classroom. Examines issues related to teaching language and culture in a university setting, highlighting the relationship between theory in Second Language Acquisition and language pedagogy and helping students understand the practical implications of theoretical frameworks in the field.

INSTRUCTORS:  Christine M. Sagnier

Marx and Lacan: Analyzing Capitalism's Unconscious Forms 

FRE 507

How can Lacan's thought inform and transform the reading and interpretation of Marx's Capital today? We discuss various possible and explicit associations, implications, resonances, and conversations between these two canonical bodies of critical analysis. Attention is devoted both to Lacan's literal discussions of Marx's text, as well as associations to be drawn out between the analytical procedures Marx and Lacan develop and deploy across their works.

INSTRUCTORS:  F. Nick Nesbitt

Seminar in 19th- and 20th-Century French Literature: Readings of Proust 

FRE 526 / COM 525

A study of Marcel Proust's works and "imaginaire", some of his most remarkable readings, along with readings of/by some of his most remarkable readers (writers, philosophers, critics, artists, and film makers).

INSTRUCTORS:  André Benhaïm

The Government of the People: Rousseau's Politics

FRE 531 / POL 587

"It is the people who compose humankind", says Rousseau in Émile. How is it, then, that most citizens practically have no say in government? "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains": can that be mended? What would a governing people look like? What challenges would it have to face? What do the concepts of "government" and "people" entail? With these questions in mind, this course explores the most significant of Rousseau's political writings, combining political theory and literary analysis. We also explore Rousseau's lasting impact on political thought, from the French Revolution to contemporary politics.

INSTRUCTORS:  Flora Champy

What Photography Can Do 

FRE 536 / HUM 510 / MOD 512 / ART 592

This interdisciplinary course explores the wide range of ways photography has been used for aesthetic, scientific, documentary, political, and surveillance purposes. Particular attention is given to the rich history of photography in France, beginning with the work of early inventors (Niépce's héliographie, Daguerre's daguerréotype, the Lumière brothers' vues photographiques animées) and practitioners (Atget, Nadar). We explore aerial & biometric photography, landscape, still life, portraiture, photo novels & photo essays, photojournalism, and photography's use as a tool of social control in the colonial context.

INSTRUCTORS:  Christy N. Wampole

Punishing & Publishing the Author. Authorship, Individual Sin, and the Media, from Auctor to Auteur 

FRE 537 / COM 508 / CDH 537

The author has been cyclically proclaimed dead by critics, yet it remains at the center of modern Western judicial, aesthetic, and philosophical systems of belief and knowledge production. We explore some of the causes of this centrality and critically examine ways to uproot them. Our focus spans French and Non-French writings, films, and political documents from the Middle Ages to the 2023 Writers Guild strike against AI. Authorship is analyzed through the lenses of theories of sin and subjecthood, book culture and media ecologies, as well as theories of creativity, intertextuality, relationality, and reception.

INSTRUCTORS:  Julien R. Stout

The Sounds, Forms, and Places of French Across Time: A Critical History of the French Language

FRE 412

A multisensory history of the French language. To foster discussions on the cultural, musical, literary, and epistemological relevance of producing historical linguistic knowledge, we will review the documents and monuments of the history of French, once a regional variation of Latin that turned into a global language. Our overview will include examples such as the spelling "errors" of the Latin graffiti of Pompeii, medieval French poems written in Hebrew script, plurals in "-aux", linguistic innovation in literature from Québec, Martinique, and Maghreb, and contemporary debates on Franco-Malian artist Aya Nakamura's songs.

INSTRUCTORS: Julien Stout

Seminar in 19th- and 20th-Century French Literature: Novel and education

FRE 526

What do novels teach? And can novels be taught? The age of the novel is also the age of education, with the gradual advent of mass literacy, universal education, and democratic citizenship. How does the novel track, chart, reinforce, subvert, and perform the pedagogy of the modern citizen? From Rousseau's Émile to the Nouvelle Éducation (20C), via Guizot, the 1848 Republic, the Commune, and the Ferry laws, reformers of various stripes pinned their hopes for a new society on education. Reading novels and pedagogical texts side by side, we look at the tangled (hi)stories of education and citizenship and ask what role literature has played.

INSTRUCTORS: Göran Magnus Blix

Seminar in French Civilization: Queer Lyricism

FRE 527

This trans-historical course looks into three moments (antiquity, 16th c., and 19th-20th c.) to explore the connections between lyricism and same sex desire. With Sappho and her reception as a starting point, the readings and discussions focus on the poetry of the Pleiade and then modernist poetry from Baudelaire and after. Together with the cultural context regarding gender and sexuality, the course approaches lyricism's expression of the self in relation to an exploration and questioning of one's gender and sexuality, but also the lyric as the privileged genre for expressing socially non-normative desires and positions.

INSTRUCTORS: Katie Chenoweth, Efthymia Rentzou

Topics in French and Francophone Critical Theory: From the Slave Trade to Globalization

FRE 587

This course examines the four great forces haunting the literatures of the Americas: the Amerindian genocide and the slave trade; the slave plantation; the sudden growth of cities; globalization. It explores the processes of creation as well as the literary and theoretical works to which they have given rise, and includes consideration of works from the plastic arts, photography, and film. Among the many topics to be broached: the nature and effects of historical trauma; creolization; the folktale and its teller; the Caribbean archipelago; contemporary migration; the view of the landscape.

INSTRUCTORS: Thomas A. Trezise, Patrick Chamoiseau

Graduate Proseminar in French Studies

FRE 599

The goal of this seminar is to provide first-year graduate students with a formal introduction to the Department's curriculum and requirements, through practical training in the various methods of research and scholarly activities and productions. It also familiarizes students with fundamental theoretical texts and approaches to a variety of critical fields pertaining to French studies. Finally, it offers concrete outlooks on their professional future by showcasing ways of optimizing their career prospects in the realm of academia, but also in other domains.

INSTRUCTORS: André Benhaïm