Fall 2024
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
Spring 2024
This course examines a series of classic French works from a variety of genres (theater, poetry, novels and tales) in which human protagonists encounter the supernatural: gods and monsters, magic objects and speaking animals, mysterious travels and transformations. The authors often adapted ancient stories but also created new and enduring myths, employing outlandish fictions not only to entertain but also to raise moral, social, and philosophical questions. Classes will focus on attentive reading and discussion of the texts while taking into account their historical context, as well as visual interpretations such as illustrations and movies.
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.
A survey of historical, social and regional variation in written and spoken French, with particular attention to vocabulary, syntax, phonology and prosody.
The seminar explores a variety of texts and genres written about and in the midst of revolutions, including the French Revolutions (1789, 1848, 1871, May `68), the Haitian and Guadeloupean revolutions (1804, 1802), and the Algerian Revolution. We read widely in letters, speeches, novels, journalism, poetry, films, and other genres, from authors including Toussaint Louverture, Robespierre, Olympe de Gouges, Baron de Vastey, Flaubert, Rimbaud, CLR James, Frantz Fanon, Marx, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, Guy Debord, and JL Godard. We also read political theory from authors such as Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière.
This seminar explores le secret as a defining feature of Renaissance French literature. Studying major works of poetry and prose, we ask how literature emerges during the 16th century as a privileged space of secrecy. Examining the secret as a phenomenon at once aesthetic and political, sacred and erotic, we situate it in relation to a wide range of shifting notions and categories in Renaissance France including: privacy, visibility, the body, gender, power, sincerity, belief, desire, censorship, and freedom. Renaissance texts are put in dialogue with modern theoretical works (Freud, Foucault, Irigaray, Derrida, Butler).
A seminar on the nature, varieties and powers of signs as defined and evoked in the philosophy, theology, and poetry of the Middle Ages. Subjects to be discussed include typologies of natural and artificial signs, theories of imposition, analogy and equivocation, self-signification, and "efficacious" meaning. Case studies are furnished by the sacraments, romance obscenities and euphemisms, proper names, Tristan and Yseut's "potion," Lancelot's cart, and the dates of Villon's Testament.
Fall 2023
Frantz Fanon is among the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century whose writings are critical in rethinking our world. In this course we will read all of Fanon's major writings: Black Skin, White Masks, A Dying Colonialism, Toward the African Revolution, and The Wretched of the Earth, as well as essays in Alienation and Freedom. Students must acquire and read David Macey's biography, Frantz Fanon: A Life, before the seminar begins.
This course focuses on the way literature, film, but also cultural events and spaces (circus, zoo, museum) present animals as objects of admiration and subjects of performance. We consider the fascination that animals inspire in humans, which might lead to question the distinction between "us" and "them". What is at stake, what are the consequences, for us and for them, when animals are seen or shown as an elusive Other who still beckons a closer encounter? How does the poetic power of language, or the evocative nature of images, affect their agency and our empathy, and eventually our mutual relationship?
This course investigates Modernist poetics in France from mid-19th to mid-20th c. and seeks to re-evaluate Modernism in French literary history. Course treats the topic at a variety of interrelated levels by exploring French poetry as part of the broad historical phenomenon of Modernism, while examining the specific ways it materialized in France as formal innovation and as response to modernity. Poets such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, and Cendrars, are discussed as well as specific movements. Readings are organized around 1913 as the pivotal year for Modernism in France with a special focus on poetry in relation with other arts.
This course explores the connection between the development of new literary forms and the burgeoning of philosophical notions in eighteenth century France. As they questioned the political, social and ethical norms of their time, the "philosophes" also started a major overhaul of the literary rules and conceptual framework they inherited from the "Grand siècle". Through a significant selection of non-classifiable tests, we study how this bubbling laboratory of ideas remain relevant for today's understanding of literature.
This course explores the Enlightenment concept of Zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, which emerged in Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, spreading widely in Europe and resonating still today. With a focus on mainly French sources, the course will explore questions such as: What is the nature of this spirit (or ghost) that haunts an age? How does the popular understanding of the term differ from its original meaning? When does a particular Zeitgeist begin and end? How can literature (fiction, poetry, theater, non-fiction) and other cultural artifacts (journalistic writing, visual culture, objects) capture it?
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.
Spring 2023
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.
This seminar aims to provide an introduction to the literature and culture of seventeenth-century France through the medium of the letter. We explore the various personal, social, and literary uses of letterwriting, examine some (authentic or fictional) correspondences, and study the beginnings of the epistolary novel. Readings also include verse epistles as well as non-epistolary works in which letters play a crucial role.
This course examines the development of surrealism from its birth in Dada-infused Paris to its life after the Second World War. Materials considered include literary and theoretical texts, visual works, magazines, and exhibitions. The course treats the topic at a variety of inter-related levels, exploring surrealism as a part of the broad historical phenomenon of the avant-garde, examining its specific ways of (re)conceiving literature and art, and investigating the epistemological ramifications of surrealism's aesthetic, political, and moral positions. Gender representation and sexual politics are the focus of the course this year.
Georges Perec (1936-1982) was among the most innovative writers of the twentieth century, whose work encompasses fiction, poetry, radio drama, essays and many unclassifiable texts more or less related to the idea of constrained or formal writing. Relatively obscure for most of his lifetime, Perec has emerged as a post-modern master over the last thirty years and his never pretentious and occasionally humorous work is now published in the prestigious Pléiade collection. This course aims to read through the entire œuvre in a single semester and to assess its aesthetic, human and historical importance.
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 will look at the tangled (hi)stories of education and citizenship and ask what role literature has played.