Fall 2023 Class Schedule
fall 2023 class Schedule
fall 2023 course descriptions
French Courses with Reading and Discussion in English
FRENCH 101-7: The Trail and the Quest
Knights, battles, monsters and marvels; these are the building blocks of adventure tales. This first-year seminar explores heroes and the tests they face, the journeys they pursue, and the ways in which adversity and accident shape them. What is a hero? Are heroes born, or must they be made? What are the lessons of failure and self-delusion that the quest teaches? Beginning with the Song of Roland, we will examine epic, Arthurian romance and comic parodies of knightly genres in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and then turn to contemporary film to trace the ways in which modern fantasy and superhero adventures raise old questions and provide new answers to the challenges of the hero's self-defining mission.
FRENCH 371: Giants, Cannibals, and Critique
How do fantastic figures and imagined places help us shape and critique the real world? This course will focus on early modern French and European literature and philosophy to explore the ways in which the 16th century imagined its "others" and moulded its ideals. We will discuss satire and scepticism as modes for social commentary, situating our primary texts in their historical and political contexts. We will ask how the Renaissance defined itself against the religious, pedagogical, political, philosophical and literary norms of previous centuries. Why did images of giants, cannibals, monsters and imaginary places play such a critical role in redefining society in this period of intense political and religious upheaval? We will also use that long-ago past to examine the ways in which those norms and prejudices continue to affect everyday life today. This course will be taught in English.
Introductory and Intermediate French Language Courses
FRENCH 111-1: Elementary French
French 111-1 is the first quarter of a three-quarter course that covers the same material as the two-quarter sequence of French 115, (which assumes some prior knowledge of the language). The aim of the course is to review and develop skills in speaking, understanding, reading, writing and cultural competence. Please note, no P/N or auditors allowed.
FRENCH 115-1: Intensive Elementary French
French 115-1 is the first course of a two-quarter sequence (Fall and Winter) that covers the same material as the three-quarter sequence of French 111, but which assumes some prior knowledge of the language. The aim of the course is to review and develop skills in speaking, understanding, reading, writing and cultural competence. Please note, no P/N or auditors allowed.
FRENCH 121-1: Intermediate French
French 121-1 is the first quarter of a three-quarter course for students who have completed French 111-3 or have been placed in this course after taking the Placement test of the Department of French and Italian. The teaching methodology for this course uses the flipped model: students learn grammar and vocabulary at home. Class activities are devoted to conversation and other communicative activities that will allow students to practice what they learned while exploring contemporary French and Francophone cultures. Class are conducted in French. A minimum grade of C- is required to continue the sequence. Please note that Tuesday classes will meet asynchronously.
FRENCH 125-2: Intensive Intermediate French
French 125-2 is the second quarter of a three-quarter course for students who have completed French 125-1 or been placed in the course upon taking the French Placement Test. The primary goal of this course is to strengthen oral and written communication skills by immersing students in authentic cultural contexts and language. A review of essential grammar and vocabulary will reinforce linguistic foundations.Class meets three times a week and will be conducted in French.
FRENCH 201: Culture and Society: Introduction to French Studies
French 201-0 is a one-quarter introductory third-year course, offered only in the fall. This course is designed to develop the students' mastery of French by giving them the opportunity to practice the language in a variety of cultural contexts while deepening and expanding their insights into contemporary French culture. French 201-0 will introduce students to a sampling of social and cultural topics central to an understanding of France and French-speaking peoples. Classes meet three times a week and are conducted in French. Students are expected to attend class regularly and prepare outside of class. A grade of C- or above in French 201-0 fulfills the WCAS foreign language requirement.
FRENCH 202: Writing Workshop: Cultural Encounters in Contemporary France
This course is designed to develop and improve writing skills through a variety of classroom activities: discussion, writing, editing. Students will learn how to write a college-level analytical paper. Selected grammar points will be discussed in class, and course content will be provided by a novel and two films. Homework will include short writing exercises and compositions as well as the preparation of grammar exercises related to the writing objectives. This course serves as prerequisite for most other 200 and 300-level French classes.
FRENCH 203: Oral Workshop: Individual and Society in France Today
This course is designed to build fluency in speaking and understanding French. Classes will concentrate on increasing listening comprehension through viewing of videos and films, building vocabulary and idiom use, and enhancing oral communication skills. One group project based on a play.
Introductory French Literature and Culture Courses
FRENCH 210: Voulex vouz coucher avec moi ce soir? Making Love in French
French literature is known to have given form to all sorts of "love discourses": courtly love, love as passion, gallantry, libertinage, romantic love... In this course, we will account for the cultural significance of these discourses by reading texts or excerpts of texts written by authors from the Middle Ages to 18th century, all of whom in their writing question and sometimes displace the border between the licit and the illicit, the normative and the transgressive.
FRENCH 211: Reading Cultures in French: Changing France
An introduction to French culture through study and analysis of major themes, issues, and debates that characterize or preoccupy contemporary French thought and society, this course helps students understand French society and culture in today's world. We explore the challenges posed to the traditional republican notion of French national identity by colonial history, decolonization, immigration, and globalization by studying a wide range of documents, texts, and films that portray individual and collective experiences. Drawing on the notion of "la France en mutation / changing France," we study how historical events and French institutions (especially the state and the school) shape identities. Students gain an understanding of questions relating to social inequalities and diversities from a "French Global" perspective, while focusing on French definitions and experiences of (in)equality and diversity, and how these play out in terms of race and ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual orientation. Conducted entirely in French, this course is designed to increase students' ability to speak, read, and write in French, and improve their aural comprehension. Students also learn techniques of close reading and detailed critical analysis through class discussion and presentations, the creative/reflective assignment, the analytical essay, and the practice of annotation.
FRENCH 273: Introducing Poetry in French
This class offers a survey of lyric poetry in French from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, placing special emphasis on the identification of genres, styles and poetic techniques in order to facilitate close-reading and analysis. Poetic movements studied include the medieval troubadours, the Pléiade, symbolism, modernism, surrealism, avant-garde poetry, négritude and francophonie. Readings, writing assignments, and class-discussions in French.
Courses with Prerequisites in French
FRENCH 302: Advanced Writing: Finding Your Voice in French
Perfect your written expression in French and learn to write in a variety of genres such as portrait, summary, review of film or performance, explication de texte, correspondence, interview, editorial, documentary research and creative writing. Practice is organized according to language functions (describing, summarizing, persuading, hypothesizing, etc.) and communicative needs. You will review vocabulary and grammar as needed and develop awareness of appropriate styles of writing, learning their characteristics by reading authentic material.
FRENCH 310: Making Love in the Middle Ages
This course explores the evolution of love as a central theme in French literature during the Middle Ages. The period in question saw major transformations in almost every aspect of human life, from law and government to technology, science and the arts. Despite these changes, love remained a central preoccupation of writers in every literary genre. Why? We will approach the texts on our reading list not only as records of the past, but as points of contact, which allow us to confront the role of literary traditions in addressing evolving notions of individuality, family, sexuality and gender. How did social and historical changes influence the representation of emotion and desire? How might love as a literary theme comment on the changing status of the individual and his or her role in society.
FRENCH 386: Sexual Forms: The Criminal
The history of same-sex sexuality is often structured around a divide between the modern and pre-modern, where the modern is defined by the invention of homosexual identity around 1870 and the increasing hegemony of that identity into the present. In this course, we will challenge this periodization by tracing a social and sexual form, the criminal, across the modern divide. Starting in the 1830s and going through the present, we will interrogate the ways in which the social form of the criminal was also associated with same-sex sexuality. How does the association between criminality and same-sex sexuality challenge the idea that same-sex sexuality was unspeakable or uncategorizable before the invention of homosexuality? How does the persistence of this "pre-modern" sexual category into the twentieth century challenge the idea of the hegemony of modern sexual identity? We will draw on a range of text types from 1830 to the present (all in French), including literary and filmic texts, but also scientific and legal texts produced by prison officials and texts from popular culture including illustrated humorous books and newspaper reports. In addition, we will read brief theoretical or secondary texts in English and in French. The first half of the course will be on the 19th century and the second half will be on film from across the twentieth century. Discussion in French.
French Graduate Courses
FRENCH 430: The Powers of Literature: From Sovereignty to Governmentality
Over the past two decades, "sovereignty" has tended to give way to "governmentality" (Michel Foucault) as a category for analyzing power in seventeenth-century French literature - not only the representation of power in texts, but also the ways in which those texts often effect power. In this course, we will attempt to follow this shift by focusing on the representation of love, which sometimes opposes power, sometimes metaphorizes it, in texts written by Corneille, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Molière, but also La Fayette and Scudéry.
FRENCH 460: The Global Avant-Garde
This seminar offers an introduction to a range of avant-gardes movements from the early twentieth century, including futurism (in Italy and Russia), expressionism (Germany), MAVO (Japan), stridentism (Mexico), anthropophagy (Brazil), and négritude. Our emphasis will be on manifestos, literary works, and criticism, but we will also consider the visual arts and film. Major topics linking the diverse material include: the movements' geopolitical contexts and imaginaries; the international resonance of the Bolshevik revolution; the politics of race and gender; and the relationship between literature and the other arts. There will be assigned readings for the first meeting, so students who plan to take the course but are not yet enrolled by then should contact the instructor.
Courses Taught in Italian
ITALIAN 101-1: Elementary Italian
A beginning course in Italian language and culture, Elementary Italian is devoted to developing all four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) within the three modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive, presentational). While studying the language, students will be introduced to Italy and its people and they will gain both language and cultural competence. At the end of full-year Italian 101 sequence, students will be able to handle successfully a few uncomplicated communicative tasks, participate in simple conversations on topics related to personal information, personal preferences, daily activities, and immediate needs. This course is the first in a three-part sequence for beginning students of Italian. Classes are conducted entirely in Italian and are very lively, with lots of give-and-take among participants. Students with some experience in Italian may take the online placement test to place out of any or all of the first-year sequence. Please note that Tuesday classes will meet asynchronously.
ITALIAN 102-1: Intermediate Italian
Intermediate Italian continues and completes the two-year sequence in Italian language and culture. At the end of the full 102 sequence (102-1,2,3), students are expected to create with the language when talking and writing about familiar topics, to understand the main ideas and some supporting details from a variety of texts (newspaper articles, short stories, …), to describe and narrate, with some consistency, in all major time frames while organizing their discourse into paragraphs. Students will significantly increase their knowledge of Italy's history and culture. After the completion of the entire sequence of Italian 102, students will be eligible to study in Italy and will be ready to embark on the minor or major in Italian. The second-year Italian course sequence completes the two-year WCAS language requirement. The classroom is very lively, with lots of conversation, partnering, and small group exercises. Students will be guided toward independence, posing and solving language problems on their own and in collaboration with classmates. Please note that Tuesday classes will meet asynchronously.
ITALIAN 133-1/ITALIAN 134-1: Intensive Italian
Intensive Italian is a double course that fulfills the WCAS two-year language requirement in one academic year. At the end of the entire 133/134 sequence, students will be able to create with the language when talking and writing about familiar topics; to understand the main ideas and some supporting details from a variety of texts (newspaper articles, short stories, …); to describe and narrate, with some consistency, in all major time frames while organizing their discourse into paragraphs. While studying the language, students will be constantly exposed to the Italian culture. By the end of the intensive sequence, students are expected to achieve language, cultural, and intercultural competence enabling them to study in Italy and to embark on the minor or major in Italian. Intensive Italian classes are small and highly interactive. Please note that Tuesday classes will meet asynchronously.
Students MUST be registered for both Italian 133-1 and 134-1. However, students should wait until the add/drop period to register for 134-1, to avoid potential issues with adding a 5th course.
ITALIAN 205: Voyage Through Italy
This course delves into Italy's rich history and diverse cultures through an examination of contemporary literary works, films, music, and other cultural productions. It will provide students with an understanding of the social, political, and cultural context of Italy from the end of WWII to today. In this class, students will gain insight into the different perspectives and experiences of modern Italian society and deepen their appreciation for the rich and increasingly diverse cultural heritage of contemporary Italy.
Italian Courses with Readings and Discussion in English
ITALIAN 275: Dante's Divine Comedy: Finding Freedom
Refashioning the conventions of poetry, Dante (1265-1321) used the account of his presumed journey through the three realms of the Christian afterlife — Hell, Purgatory and Paradise — to explore the world at the close of the Middle Ages. The poem is both an adventure story and an exhaustive, assessment of the state of politics, society, religion, literature, philosophy, and theology at the beginning of the fourteenth century. This course examines a selection of the Divine Comedy's cantos in their cultural, social and political context. In particular we will explore how the world imagined by the poet relates to late medieval life and culture. A guiding concern of the discussion is to assess the ways in which Dante changed our understanding of the relationship between the human and the divine, justice and love, will and reason, happiness and knowledge, literature and the Bible. Political turmoil, philosophical and theological paradigms social and religious conflict all converge in the making of Comedy and will thus form crucial elements of our investigation. Taught in English.
ITALIAN 370: Reimagining the World After the Plague
Students in this course will explore one of the most significant masterpieces of medieval narrative: the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. Written soon after the black death that killed millions of people in Europe in 1347-51, this work collects hundreds of short-stories on the driving forces of life: sex, love, money, success, power, and curiosity. Responding to the drama of loss and chaos, the writer offers memorable portraits of men and women fighting to survive, with skills or might, the ups and downs of life and chance. Boccaccio's humanity is not blameless, but its vitality appears as the best answer to the trauma of collective death caused by the plague. Such vitality will mark the work and life of Renaissance artists and writers who believing in the motto that transformed and transported the Middle Ages into modernity: ‘Humanity is the maker of its own fortune.'