Winter 2024 Class Schedule
Winter 2024 class Schedule
WINTER 2024 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
French Courses with Reading and Discussion in English
FRENCH 375: French Film
This course will consider developments in French and Francophone cinema since the Second World War, with a particular emphasis on the works of directors associated or in dialogue with the "New Wave." We will examine the reinvention of cinematic form by these filmmakers, but we will also explore how such formal innovations may be understood as attempts to respond to the historical events and social processes that transformed French culture in that period, most notably the traumas of the Second World War, the emergence of consumer culture, and the processes of decolonization and globalization. Among the directors whose works will be discussed are Jean Renoir, Agnès Varda, Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Tati, Luis Buñuel, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Claire Denis and Djibril Diop Mambéty.
Introductory and Intermediate French Language Courses
FRENCH 111-2: Elementary French
French 111-2 is the second course of a three-course Elementary French sequence. The aim of the course is to acquire and develop skills in speaking, understanding, reading, writing and cultural competence. Please note, no P/N or auditors allowed.
FRENCH 115-2: Intensive Elementary French
French 115-2 is the second 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 121-2 is the second quarter of a three-quarter course for students who have completed French 121-1 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. No P/N allowed. Please note that Tuesday classes will meet asynchronously.
FRENCH 125-3: Intensive Intermediate French
French 125-3 is the last quarter of a three-quarter course for students who have completed FR125-2 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 will reinforce linguistic foundations. Class meets three times a week and will be conducted in French.
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: Nature and Animals in Medieval French Literature
This class introduces students to major themes and genres of medieval French literature through the lens of works that challenge the boundary between human and animal, social and natural worlds. From talking birds and werewolf knights to submarines and flying machines, the texts we read will show literary representations of the natural provided medieval people with a site for challenging and re-imaging the fundamental categories that defined them. All readings, discussions, and written assignments in French.
FRENCH 271: Genre & Gender
Novels, with their emphasis on domestic life and individual psychology, have historically been considered a “feminine” form whose readership is largely made up of women, and yet the canon of major French novels is largely defined by male authors, often writing about women characters. Women authors often have to publish under a man’s name and find their work dismissed as overly sentimental. In this course, we will examine a canon of novels written by women authors across the modern period. We will ask questions like: What defines a novel? (Certain formal features? Specific content?) What is the relationship between genre and gender? What aspects of the history of the novel do narratives of the novel’s modernity as a rejection of realism exclude? Do novels reinforce normative and hegemonic social forms (gendered, sexual, national, racial) or contest them? Authors studied include Sand, Colette, Diome, and Sebbar. Discussion and assignments in French.
Courses with Prerequisites in French
FRENCH 303: Advanced Writing: Finding Your Voice in French
The goal of this course is the development of oral proficiency through speech functions, conversational routines and patterns, so as to build confidence in the practice of the French language. In order to achieve this goal, emphasis will be put on extensive examination of French press and French television news, French movies, the reading of a book related to the author studied this quarter, and spontaneous expression through dialogues and discussion, and even debates. Special emphasis will be placed on group work and culturally appropriate usage. The students will participate actively in the choice of the materials.
FRENCH 380: How to Change the World? Making Revolution in France and its Colonies
How did France become a secular republic whereas it began as a divine-right monarchy? What did it take to dismantle centuries of tradition, social hierarchy, and ways of thinking and speaking, almost overnight? In this course, we examine the role of ideas, culture, and language in the revolutionary struggles that dramatically reshaped France and the Francophone world at the end of the eighteenth century. The French Revolution drew on a powerful new understanding of "man" in order to reinvent or throw out entirely age-old notions of political authority, religion, the nation, the family, and the constitution. Essential to the movement's contagious force and utopianism were the writings, speeches, symbols, songs, and spectacles that made it a cultural revolution as much as a political one rooted in violence. Beginning with an exploration of influential Enlightenment ideas about human freedom and equality, we survey the revolution's most significant cultural inventions and transformations— from the emergence of a free press to the reconstitution of calendar time — with an aim toward examining their political and artistic aims. Attending to the paradoxes of revolutionary ideas and practices, we compare the revolution's claims in France with those of the anti-slavery Haitian Revolution, which in many ways exceeded the radicalism of the Parisian movement. Throughout the course, we ask in what sense culture is political, what is the relationship between culture, art, and violence, and what are the lessons of the French and Haitian Revolutions for our world today. Works by Rousseau, Sieyès, Marat, De Lisle, Robespierre, Maurin De Pompigny, Dessalines, and others. Taught in French, but readings include essays in English.
French Graduate Courses
FRENCH 410: Troubadours and Tradition
This seminar provides a comprehensive introduction to the poetry of the Occitan troubadours, their language, and their reception among later writers. The troubadours flourished in the south of France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, producing a varied and innovative corpus of lyric poetry, as well as narrative and grammatical texts, which exercised a profound influence on the emergence of later poetic traditions in other European vernaculars. We will study troubadour songs in their manuscripts contexts in order to think critically about the role of textual reception and canon formation in constructing the category of “the literary." Class discussions will be in English, but reading knowledge of French is required.
FRENCH 493: Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes stands out as one of last century’s leading European essayists and critics. Whether
writing on pop culture phenomena like soap-ads and James Bond movies, revolutionary art practices like Soviet avant-garde cinema and Brechtian theatre, or the most intimate of photographs, Barthes has changed the way we think of writing and its relationship to life. “I must admit that I have produced only essays...,” Barthes noted upon being elected to the chair of literary semiology at the Collège de France (1977). In his hands, the essay produced the most subtle and incisive of effects—an understatedly virtuosic reworking of the relationship between image, music, text, affect. This course will follow Barthes’s career from the early alliance with structuralism to the so-called turn to poststructuralism and the development of a style of inquiry that resists any assimilation into predetermined intellectual currents. We will read from Mythologies, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, among others, and the Courses on Idiorrhythmy and the Neutral. While paying attention to the specific form and the larger context of his writings, we will put them in dialogue with current interventions in media aesthetics, feminist/queer theory and critical race theory.
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 101-2: 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 second 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
Italian 102-2 is the second part of the intermediate sequence. 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, etc.), 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 and they will be guided to become independent learners. 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. Please note that Tuesday classes will be asynchronous. Please note that Tuesday classes will meet asynchronously.
ITALIAN 133-1/ITALIAN 134-1: Intensive Italian
IT 133/134-2 is the second segment of the intensive course that started in the fall. 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, etc.); 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 Tuesdays classes will be asynchronous.
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 204: The Modern Italian Short Story
This course examines the genre of the short story in modern and contemporary Italian literature. Storytelling has been a staple of Italian literature and culture since the days of Boccaccio, but the aesthetic and cultural aspects of the genre certainly have changed in the last two centuries. We will explore works written in a realistic mode and in a fantastic style. Moreover, we will discuss the elements that define the two approaches with an emphasis on close reading and on the historical and social context of each text. Our focus in particular revolves around issues of love, jealousy, sexuality, gender, friendship, and youth culture as depicted by Boccaccio, Verga, Morante, Ortese, Levi, Buzzati, Calvino, Tabucchi, and Tondelli. The class material will be available on Canvas. (Taught in Italian.)
Italian Courses with Readings and Discussion in English
ITALIAN 251: Introduction to Italian Cinema
Italian cinema has changed the way in which we conceive of the moving image and its relationship to reality in its social, political, and affective dimensions. This course begins with the heyday of Neorealism in the 1940s (Rossellini's war trilogy, De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, and Visconti's The Earth Trembles), placing this defining moment in film history in the context of World War II and the break from the Fascist period. Particular attention will be devoted to questions of gender and race, as the memory of Italy's racial laws and colonial past in Africa was about to be dimmed by the cultural politics of postwar recovery and, later, the economic miracle. Mindful of this process of historical erasure, we will turn to the remarkable output of the 1960s and 1970s and analyze they way in which different directors (Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Rosi, Pasolini) treated the problems of industrialization, migration, and organized crime. Finally, we will assess the return of a documentary approach to reality in films like Garrone's Gomorra (Gomorrah, 2008) and Rosi's Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea, 2016) in the context of globalization and the resurgence of populism and right-wing politics. Throughout the course, we will work to acquire the critical and methodological tools necessary to analyze film as a complex mode of cultural production.
ITALIAN 275: Dante's Divine Comedy
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 350: Open Wound: Italy's Other Mafia in Fiction
This course immerses you in the gritty world of Naples' notorious Camorra syndicate. We'll explore how this criminal organization is depicted in literature, cinema, and the media. Through works like Roberto Saviano's 'Gomorrah,' captivating documentaries, films and TV series, we'll dissect the Camorra's inner workings. We'll consider their hidden codes, examine their symbols, and dive into the blurred lines between legality and crime. As we dig deeper, we'll shine a light on their wide-ranging activities, diverse markets, and complex relationships. In a society where crime is a part of everyday life, we'll also explore geo-crimes and the emerging eco-mafia phenomenon. Join us for this gripping exploration where you'll uncover the Camorra's secrets, gain insights into Naples' complex underbelly, and understand the far-reaching impact of organized crime on society.