GRADUATE COURSES IN FRENCH

FALL 2005

(Course information subject to change)
(Cross-reference with Department Roster)

French 500
Proseminar
Prof. Donaldson-Evans
W 2:00-4:00

The proseminar in French will address such issues as academic writing and presentation, the application of critical theory to textual analysis, research methods and resources. It will also provide a forum for preparation for the Master's exam.

French 512-401
Literary Theory
Prof. English
T 1:30-3

TBA

French 593
Francophone Literature
Prof. Moudileno
M 2:00-4:00

This seminar aims to introduce students to central issues in postcolonial studies, as they have appeared in the most significant works of the Francophone world since the 1950’s. Designed as a survey course, it will provide extensive coverage of the intellectual history and cultural production of four major areas of Francophonie: Sub-saharan Africa, the Maghreb, and the Caribbean.

French 660
The Enlightenment in Letters
Prof. DeJean
R 4-6

The letter is the overwhelming obsession of the literature of the Enlightenment. Time and again, the greatest figures of the French eighteenth century turned to various types of epistolarity to sound the rallying cries that shaped the revolution in public opinion that we call the Enlightenment. Montesquieu ( Les Lettres persanes), Graffigny ( Les Lettres d’une Péruvienne), and Diderot ( La Religieuse) used the epistolary novel to bring their message about the corruption of French society to a broad public, while Riccoboni ( Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd) used it to question the era’s sexual politics. Rousseau ( Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles) preferred the public letter, and Voltaire created elaborate fictive correspondences that he presented as having been written by the real-life protagonists in what he made into the first public “affaires” in French history (Callas, Chevalier de la Barre). All through the semester, we will ask two questions: What was the Enlightenment? and why did the epistolary form prove so central to its success?

French 680
Studies in the 20th Century
Prof. Prince
R 2-4

A study of the poetics of the French novel from the "Nouveau Roman" to the "Nouvelle Ecole de Minuit" and other manifestations of postmodern and contemporary fiction.