Current Seminars

Spring 2025

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

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

Topics in French Literature and Culture: Fantastic Fictions, 1650-1750 (LA)
Subject associations
FRE 401

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.

Instructors
Volker Schröder
Second Language Acquisition Research and Language Teaching Methodology
Subject associations
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
Language and Style
Subject associations
FRE 502

A survey of historical, social and regional variation in written and spoken French, with particular attention to vocabulary, syntax, phonology and prosody.

Instructors
David M. Bellos
Writing Revolution
Subject associations
FRE 505

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.

Instructors
F. Nick Nesbitt
Seminar in French Literature of the Renaissance: Secrets of Renaissance Literature
Subject associations
FRE 513

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).

Instructors
Katie Chenoweth
Medieval Signs
Subject associations
FRE 560 / COM 557 / PHI 504

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.

Instructors
Daniel Heller-Roazen

Fall 2023

Literary and Cultural Theory: Frantz Fanon
Subject associations
ENG 571 / AAS 572 / MOD 570 / FRE 572

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.

Instructors
Andrew Cole
Looking for the Beast: Animals in Literature, Film and Culture
Subject associations
FRE 517 / COM 512

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?

Instructors
André Benhaïm
French Modernist Poetry
Subject associations
FRE 522

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.

Instructors
Efthymia Rentzou
Formal and Conceptual Experiments in the Age of Enlightenment
Subject associations
FRE 541

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.

Instructors
Flora Champy
Zeitgeist Literature
Subject associations
FRE 545 / HUM 545

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?

Instructors
Christy N. Wampole
Graduate Proseminar in French Studies
Subject associations
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 2023

Second Language Acquisition Research and Language Teaching Methodology
Subject associations
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
Seminar in 17th-Century French Literature: Epistolary Writing
Subject associations
FRE 516

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.

Instructors
Volker Schröder
Surrealism: Masculin/Féminin
Subject associations
FRE 525 / GSS 524

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.

Instructors
Efthymia Rentzou
Seminar in 19th- and 20th-Century French Literature: Georges Perec
Subject associations
FRE 526 / COM 525

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.

Instructors
David M. Bellos
Seminar in French Civilization: Novel and Education
Subject associations
FRE 527

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.

Instructors
Göran Magnus Blix