GRADUATE COURSES IN FRENCH

SPRING 2007

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

French 500
Proseminar
Prof. Richman
TBA

French 593
Francophonie, Postcolonialism and "the Popular"
Prof. Moudileno
T 3-5

This course is designed to explore Francophone fiction via issues connected to the idea of the “popular.” Taking a broadly chronological approach, the course will consider “the popular” from three principal, and overlapping standpoints : 1) The idea of the people as both subject and projected reader of anti-colonialist fiction, such as Senegalese Sembene Ousmane’s and French Caribbean Patrick Chamoiseau’s and 2) Popular genres, or texts that integrate generic elements of popular fiction as they attempt to represent Africa, from Simenon’s European novels to Driss Chraïbi’s “return to Algeria” detective novels. 3) The status of Francophonie as a “popular” field (or not), and debates surrounding the popularity of the postcolonial writer, within the broader context of academic hierarchies and marketability.

We will explore these issues through fiction from a variety of Francophone regions, and with the help of critical works by scholars from different disciplines.

French 630
Introduction to Medieval Literature
Prof. Brownlee
W 2-4

The course will be centered on a reading of the 13th-century Roman de la Rose--the single most widely read and influential literary work of the French Middle Ages. We will study the ways in which the Rose redefines the status of the French vernacular as a “canonical” literary language, while establishing itself as the new foundational work in the French canon. Special attention will be given to how the Rose deploys conflicting discourses of desire and knowledge. We will begin by situating the Rose within the preceding French literary tradition, both lyric and narrative, focusing on the privileged examples of the grand chant courtois of the trouvères and on Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot. We will conclude with Christine de Pizan’s polemical rewritings of the Rose in the early 15th century.

French 641
French Renaissance Poetry from the Pléiade to Jean de La Ceppède
Prof. Donaldson-Evans
M 2-4

This course will analyze the evolution of French poetry from the mid-16th century poetry with readings from Ronsard’s Amours, Du Bellay’s Olive, Les Antiquités and Les Regrets, to the politico-religious poems of Ronsard and Agrippa d’Aubigné. As the religious element becomes dominant in the closing years of the 16th and early years of the 17th centuries, the course will examine the devotional poetry of Sponde, Chassignet, Selve, Pierre de Croix, Antoine Favre and Jean de La Ceppède.

French 670
Prof. Enders
Masculin et féminin: écriture et désir au dix-neuvième
R 3-5

Built around "classics" of nineteenth-century French fiction, this course is designed as an exploration of romance and gender in the modern age, focusing on the “pathologies” of desire (such as bovarysme, hysteria, impotence, hypochondria, or oedipal regression).  Texts by Constant, Stendhal, Sand, Balzac, Amiel, Flaubert, Zola. While providing students with a chance to (re)discover significant novels of the nineteenth-century, the course will also serve as an introduction to the critical methods developed through psychoanalysis and gender studies.

ROML 690
Foreign Language Teaching Methodologies
Prof. McMahon
W 2-4

Romance Languages 690 is a course required of all Teaching Assistants in
Spanish, French, and Italian in the second semester of their first year of teaching. It is designed to provide instructors with the necessary practical support to carry out their teaching responsibilities effectively and builds on the practicum meetings held during the first semester. The course will also introduce students to various approaches to foreign language teaching as well as to current issues in second language acquisition. Students who have already had a similar course at another institution may be exempted upon consultation with the instructor.