Fall 2022 Class Schedule
- Fall 2022 Class Schedule
- French Course Descriptions
- Italian Course Descriptions
- Undergraduate French Course Flyers
- Graduate French Course Flyers
- Undergraduate Italian Course Flyers
fall 2022 class Schedule
fall 2022 course descriptions
Introductory and Intermediate French Language Courses
FRENCH 111-1: Elementary French
French 111-1 is the first quarter of a three-quarter course for students with less than one year of High School French or with no previous study of French.
If students have studied French for more than one year in High School and have not received permission from the course coordinator to enroll in French 111, they will not receive credit for this course. Students who have studied French before should enroll in 115-1 and 115-2, the Accelerated First-year course offered in Fall and Winter quarters.
Note that P-N is not allowed if students take this course to fulfill the CAS language requirement. If you have questions, please contact the course coordinator.
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.
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 that course by the French department. The aim of the course is to develop students' communication skills and cultural knowledge. Class meets four times a week. No P/N allowed.
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.
FRENCH 210: Reading Literatures in French — Marseille: The Cosmopolitan
Marseille, one of the oldest ports in Europe, has attracted migrants, refugees, and foreigners, especially from the Jewish and black diaspora, over several centuries. It offered a home for writers in exile and a window onto France's former colonies. As a result, it often presents itself to the world as a cosmopolitan city, "une ville d'acceuil," but what makes a place hospitable and creates a sense of belonging? Has Marseille's cosmopolitanism evolved through time, and does this representation still hold today? Finally, what does the literary imaginary of Marseille reveal about French literature? This course will address these questions by examining (in)hospitality and cosmopolitanism in Marseille from the modern to the contemporary period. Looking across multiple literary genres, including poetry, prose, drama, memoirs, and travel logs, we will look at the role of Marseille in French and Francophone literature. We will examine what model works of literature of Marseille might offer to reimagine a more equitable and peaceful world and conceive of cultural diversity and forms of belonging beyond citizenships and nation building.
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 272: Introducing Theatre: The Tragic Condition
Did the tragic consciousness vanish in the modern era? Reading Racine, Musset, Camus, Beckett, and Koltès, we will explore the genres of the classical tragedy, the lyrical tragedy, the romantic drama, as well as existentialist, absurdist and contemporary theater so as to highlight the persistence and the redefinition of the notion of the tragic from early to late modernity.
Courses with Prerequisites in French
FRENCH 301: Society and Popular Culture: Advanced Grammar Through French Media
The purpose of French 301 is to study, understand and practice grammar in context. Through a content based instructional approach, this course will offer students opportunities to discover, analyze and reflect on past and current debates and issues within French society. Authentic documents, from newspapers articles to radio interviews, will be used to illustrate and enliven specific grammar points. French 301 helps students master the finer points of French Grammar while improving their intercultural communicative competence.
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 335: Renouncing Love in 17th-Century Literature
Love is a privileged theme in 17th-century French literature, particularly in the genres that were in vogue at the time: comedy, tragedy and the novel. The course focuses on the recurring motif of the renunciation of love in the writings of Molière, Corneille, Racine and Mme de La Fayette, all prominent authors of the classical canon. In each case, a character is morally obliged to renounce the love to which he or she still aspires. We will read these texts from the perspective of the history of gender, sexuality and affect in order to understand how 17th-century French literature has shaped our erotic and emotional modernity.
French Courses with Reading and Discussion in English
FRENCH 105-6: Re-Enchant and Repair: Theoretical and Literary Approaches to the Human Subject
In the middle of the twenty-first century, anti-colonial and anti-humanist movements critiqued European humanism and its conception of man as rational and superior to others. Today, advances in technology (e.g., gene editing and virtual reality) and climate change raise new issues as they challenge the future of humanity and how we define ourselves as subjects. What does it mean to be human, and how will recent advances in technology and climate change radically transform our humanity in the future? How might we "re-enchant" our understanding of the human beyond harmful views that have shaped the West historically through colonialism and imperialism? How might we imagine a humanism centered on repair, sustainability, and re-enchantment? This seminar will explore these questions through a wide range of critical essays and narrative fiction. We will examine various conceptions of the human from the discovery of the New World to contemporary theories of post and trans-humanisms. We will trace how redefining humanism requires us to address problems in bioethics, media, technology, and other perspectives at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality. Additionally, as our course is a first-year seminar, we will also learn about and discuss various aspects of college academic life as well as the skills you will need to flourish at Northwestern.
French Graduate Courses
FRENCH 493: Topics in Literary Theory: French Materialist/Marxist Theory
This introductory course on problems in contemporary critical theory will begin by focusing on critique of ideology in the Marxist tradition (with particular attention to Sartre, Althusser and Jameson, along with some of their major predecessors, allies and adversaries, including such thinkers as Eisenstein, Barthes, Bataille and Derrida). We will then discuss how the relationships between discursive, institutional and aesthetic practices and their pragmatic effects are rethought in the writings of such theorists as Foucault, Rancière and Deleuze. While the primary focus of the course will be on theoretical texts, these texts will also be considered in dialogue with literary and cinematic works.
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.
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, 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. 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. While speaking and listening continue as the center of class activity, they will focus more intensively on reading and writing Italian.
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, 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.
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 207: Italy Beyond Stereotypes
In this class students will read short texts and watch films or other media material to entertain informed and structured conversation on Italian culture and history. Sample titles include Gomorra by Saviano; Pecore nere by Sciego, Kuruvilla, Ingy Mubiayi, Wadia; Caro Diario by Moretti, Lazzaro Felice by Rohrwacher, L'amore molesto by Martone. Taught in Italian.
Italian Courses with Readings and Discussion in English
ITALIAN 275: Dante's Divine Comedy: To Love Through Justice
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.