French 1: 1 section: Zidouh @ TBD:In this course, emphasis will be on speaking and dialogue with your peers. You will learn to introduce your family and friends, share what your daily life looks like, talk about what you do for leisure. Your final assignment will be to do an oral presentation in French describing your home town. Does not serve to satisfy Distributive or World Culture Requirements.
French 2: 2 sections: Novak and Zidouh @ TBD:In this course, you will expand your possibilities of expression by learning how to use the past and future tenses, to say where you've been and where you're going. You will share childhood memories and exchange ideas about plans for your education and career. While building your vocabulary, you will deepen your cultural knowledge with introductions to multiple francophone countries around the world. Your final assignment will be to choose a francophone country and do an oral presentation for your peers on its history, geography, architecture, art or traditions. Does not serve to satisfy Distributive or World Culture Requirements. Prerequisites: French 1 or qualifying placement through theFrench Placement Exam.
French 3: 3 sections: Novak, McConnell and Mefoude @ TBD:In this course, you will explore several themes of contemporary life and learn to discuss travel, technology and its influence, wellness and healthcare, and social relationships. Your final assignment will be to seek out information on acurrent issue facing a francophone country—theenvironment,racism, poverty, freedom of speech, immigration, the colonial past, religious conflicts—and present it to your peers through a medium of your choice: film, interview, blog, skit, music or poster.Does not serve to satisfy Distributive or World Culture Requirements.Prerequisite: French 2, French 11, or placement through the French Placement Exam.
French 11: 1 section: McConnell @ TBD:This 1-credit course is designed for students who have studied French for one to three years in high school, or those who have been exposed to French through family ties or have spent some time in a Francophone environment. It is also suitable for students with little or no knowledge of the French language, but who have a strong background in another Romance language (i.e. Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, and also Latin). French 11 is an accelerated course that combines French 1 and 2 in one term, offering an exciting and fast-paced atmosphere in which to learn French. The course will have a web-based component, which, through cultural, grammar and multimedia learning activities, will complement face-to-face work and prepare students for in-class work. Students will learn to talk about familiar events in the present and the past, as well as formulate plans for the future. Weekly cultural videos will situate in context the grammatical content of the course, making it relevant and meaningful. Students will be actively engaged in a variety of creative written and oral activities that will help them develop their language skills. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to sign up for French 3 or apply for our French LSAs in Lyon or Toulouse. With the goal of facilitating the acquisition of the target language, this course will be conducted entirely in French. Prerequisite-One year or equivalent of university level instruction in a Romance Language or Latin; or three high school years of instruction in a Romance Language or Latin; or native speaking proficiency in a Romance Language; or permission of instructor.
French 8: 2 sections: Mefoude @ TBD and Sanders @ 10:Exploring French Culture and Languageexpands on the skills acquired in the French language sequence (French 1, 2, 3) as well as offering a transition to French 10 and upper-division courses that call on strong foundations of cultural knowledge. This class introduces students to contemporary and historical French and Francophone societies by focusing on topics such as evolving political and regional identities, writing and literature in the expression of identity, gender relations, the role of the media, and the culture of daily life. Students expand their active use of French, refine communicative, reading, and writing strategies, and comprehensively review grammar. Course work includes active participation in class discussions, oral presentations, and regular reading and writing assignments in the areas of narrative and poetry, cinema, music, and journalism.PrerequisiteFREN 3, or equivalent preparation. -Dist:SOC; WCult:W.NRO eligible.
Fren 10: Tolerance @ 12-Sanders:This course, introduction to French literature, is a survey of French literature that focuses on one topic: tolerance. As we read texts from each period, we will discover different versions of intolerance, often in the form of prejudice against an individual based on their religion, sexuality or geographical origin. Across these representations of (in)tolerance, we will investigate cross-cultural romance, cultural practices, and the uneasy position of religious belief within a secular society. Tolerance, as a concept, emerges during the sixteenth century as a consequence of the religious wars. During a brief period of religious tolerance, after Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes (1598), the late seventeenth century witnesses the re-emergence of intolerance when Louis XIV signs the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). While the Revolutionary era separates Republican France from Catholic dogma, the nineteenth century returns to France's catholic roots until Jules Ferry establishes free, secular education. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries witness a shift to French secularism, which banishes religious practice from the public sphere. In addition to studying tolerance, we will also study literary genres (plays, novels, poems and essays) as well as learn how to read a text closely. By identifying rhetorical figures and word associations, you will learn to appreciate the beauty and meaning of literary works.
French 22:Introduction to French Literature I: the Middle Ages and the Renaissance-LaGuardia @ 12:Medieval France - its art, architecture, technology, philosophy and literature - exerted an unparalleled influence throughout Europe. Studying the first texts written in French, as well as the manuscripts in which they circulated, will shed light on the nature of French culture. We will examine defining issues of the period: the transition from oral to written expression, the invention of printing, debates concerning the status of women, Renaissance humanism, scientific inquiry, religious reform and conflict. Texts may include La Chanson de Roland, selected poetry, and works by Chrétien de Troyes, Christine de Pizan, Marguerite de Navarre, François Rabelais, and Michel de Montaigne.Prerequisite: A course in theFREN 10series or permission of the instructor. Dist:LIT; WCult:W
FREN 50.07Baudelaire/Flaubert: Reading Modernity for Filth:St. Clair @ 10a:It is by a fortuitous, if strange, twist of literary fortune that two publications from the winter of 1857—both of which would later come to be regarded as uncontested masterworks of high modernism in the French literary canon—saw their authors hauled before Second Empire courts and put on trial for obscenity: Gustave Flaubert'sMadame Bovaryand Charles Baudelaire'sLes Fleurs du mal. This course will pursue a perhaps inadvertent insight made during the trials against these two core figures in French – and world – literature: namely, that the so-called crimes (of shocking moral corruption, of prurience and obscenity, etc.) of which Baudelaire and Flaubert were accused have much to do with the formal complexity and aporias that one finds in their works. What one finds there, in other words, is less "filthy" material per se than a stylistics that opens up space for dangerously unruly sociocritical readings; that brings into visibility and legibility desires and subjectivities typically confined in the nineteenth century to thegrisaille silencieuseof "History's" margins; and that seeks to bring out into representation repressed historical and political traumas occasioned by the "shocks" of modernity (Benjamin). One finds, in other words, in Baudelaire's poetry and in Flaubert's novels a distinct literary politics; a critical use of literature against the abuses of the present order of things. Dist:LIT; WCult:W.
FREN 70-Francophone Lit & Culture:Elhariry @ 2:New Directions in Francophone Literature and Culture--This course will involve the study of Francophone literature and culture outside Europe. This may include the cultural productionof Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Québec, and Southeast Asia. The course will introduce students to writing, cinema, and music produced by misfits, outsiders, and figures marginal to France and the French republic of letters. Readings are accompanied by class visits by the authors whenever possible. The course has three main objectives:
- To situate modern and contemporary francophone literary and cultural production within the context of an æsthetic history: Who and what are the precedents to today's books, cinema, and music?
- To underscore that the French language is neither French, nor belongs to France: What makes a language so capacious, plastic, and malleable?
- To enable and empower students to think, speak, and write freely and creatively in their own idiosyncratic version/vision of French: How can a foreign language be transformed into an intimate language?
These will be the principles guiding our explorations of some of the most exciting and provocative cultural productionin French today. Readings may include texts by PNL, Françoise Vergès, Kaoutar Harchi, Elsa Dorlin, Abdelkébir Khatibi, Assia Djebar, David Diop, Laure Murat, Abdellah Taïa, Georges Henein, Edmond Jabès, Joyce Mansour, Habib Tengour, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Linda Lê, Hubert Aquin, Andrée Chédid, Nadia Tuéni, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, and Évelyne Trouillot.Prerequisites: A course in the FREN 10 series or instructor permission .Non-Western Cultures,LRP. Distributives:INT, LIT.
FSP Paris: Beasley-please reach out to Professor Beasley @ Faith.E.Beasley@dartmouth.eduwith any questions.
