Winter 2022 Class Schedule
Winter 2022 class Schedule
Winter 2022 course descriptions
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. Classes meet four times a week (MTWTh) and will include a variety of activities designed to help students develop their knowledge of basic French vocabulary and structures along with the ability to use what they have learned in communicative activities. Classes will be conducted exclusively in French except when explanation of grammar or other material may necessitate the use of English.
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. Classes meet four times a week (MTWTh) and will include a variety of activities designed to help students review and develop their knowledge of basic French vocabulary and structures along with the ability to use what they have learned in communicative activities. Classes will be conducted exclusively in French except when explanation of grammar or other material may necessitate the use of English.
FRENCH 121-2: 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 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 125-3: Intensive Intermediate French
French 125-3 is the third quarter of the three-quarter Intensive Intermediate French course for students who have completed French 125-2or have been placed in that course by the French department. 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 Literature and Culture Courses
FRENCH 211: Reading Cultures in French: Les Chansons d'Amour
The course offers a cultural history of the French love song from the middle-ages to the contemporary period with a focus on the second part of the 20th century and the 21st century. We will listen to love songs composed and/or performed by Piaf, Barbara, Brassens, Brel, Ferré, Gainsbourg, Rachid Taha, Abdel al Malik, Christine and the Queens… we will contextualize them and analyze them through the viewpoint of gender, sexuality, race, and class.
FRENCH 273-0: Intoducing Poetry in French
This class offers a survey of lyric poetry in French from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, placing special emphasis on the identification of genres, styles and poetic techniques in order to facilitate close-reading and analysis. Poetic movements studied include the medieval troubadours, the Pléiade, symbolism, modernism, surrealism, avant-garde poetry, négritude and francophonie. Readings, writing assignments, and class-discussions in French.
Courses with Reading and Discussion in English
FRENCH 277: French Existentialism
This course, taught in English, will serve as an introduction to existentialism, which not only defined the literary, philosophical and political culture for French intellectuals of the post-war period, but also remain indispensable for an understanding of various currents of contemporary literature and culture. We shall begin by discussing the philosophical and literary foundations of existentialism. Then we will examine the moral, social and political questions central to existentialism, as worked out in the fiction, drama, and essays of such authors as Sartre, Beauvoir, Beckett, and Fanon. Finally, we will consider the extent to which post-existentialist thought and culture may be read as a continuation of or as a reaction against existentialism. This course satisfies the Area V (Ethics and Values) and the Area VI (Literature and Fine Arts) distribution requirements.
Courses with Prerequisites in French
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 309: French For Professions: Business French
Focused on seeking employment in a French-speaking environment, this course is designed to familiarize students with the business culture in France and in the Francophone world. The essential components of the course include acquiring knowledge of the economic sector, business structures and practices, business communication skills, as well as cultural competency. In a student-centered classroom, students will practice their writing and speaking skills by way of reality-based and task-specific communicative activities. They will, for example, write a CV and a cover letter, conduct a job interview, respond to business clients, create and present a company. Upon completion of the course, students will have created a personalized and comprehensive portfolio of a French company that they can use as a model when entering the job market.
FRENCH 362: African Languages and Cultures: Migrations and Movements in Francophone African Fiction and Film
Movement and circulation are literature's perennial themes. Yet, the ways in which these motifs are generated through writing differ significantly across time and space. In the same way that our political and social discourses on circulation and migration shift according to changing political social and historical conditions, so do their literary inscriptions. In this course, we turn to these ever-present motifs in Francophone African literary writings and cinema. We clearly cannot exhaustively explore all the rich possibilities of this theme, given the time limit of a quarter. However, the works chosen will expose students to both a broad historical and political framework and geographical expanse. We will begin with migration and movement in the colonial era and move forward in time. We will also travel from West Africa to North Africa and the Indian Ocean in order to explore the modalities of movement and circulation in their political, historical, and geographical contexts. The literary and cinematic corpus of the class is robustly supported with theoretical and historical materials and lectures. Movement also hints at the affective and emotional charge of circulation, be it understood as migration—forced or voluntary—return, or simply as travel. The modalities of affects linked to movement will constitute an important dimension of our analyses.
FRENCH 395: Advanced Studies in Culture and Thought: Deciphering the Everyday: Myth, Ideology, Culture
In recent years, increasing attention is being directed to deciphering the everyday with the understanding that monuments, public spaces and everyday objects and practices as well as cultural objects and practices are bearers of layers of meaning. The idea is not new. Twentieth century French thought has produced robust and sustained reflections on how to understand and relate to the everyday as a cultural and ideological field. Yet, much of these thoughts are set aside and forgotten, naturalizing our relationship to what is actually produced and constructed in such a way as to do specific ideological work. This course will return to this practice of reading and deciphering our everyday myths. The course is organized around Mythologies postcoloniales (2018) which has recently received a great deal of attention given the urgency of the debates about legacies of colonialism and racism in the public space both in the United States and around the world. In this book, Etienne Achille and Lydie Moudelino reflect on names and legacies of public spaces in France, such as streets, through the lens of colonial history and historiographical and interpretative methods informed by Roland Barthes' famous Mythologies (1957). We will therefore begin by reading segments of Mythologies in order to understand both the ways in which the notion of "mythology" is defined by Roland Barthes and his distinct method of reading cultural and everyday objects and practices, uncovering their ideological substrata. We will then read Mythologies postcoloniales to understand its particular angle in mobilizing this method to critique the legacies of colonial history and its relationship to memory. We will conclude this first phase of the course by reading a critique of Barthes's discourse by Lydie Modelino with understanding that mythologizing and ideological discourses cannot necessarily be excluded from politically, culturally and intellectually thoughtful critical projects. This will allow us to then take account of our practices and become critical analysts of how we read the world. Students will practice their own acts of reading and deciphering in order to put their theoretical knowledge to work and to decipher the world in which they circulate, for we often can see the ideological underpinning of others' activities than our own. In phase two of the course covering the last three weeks of the quarter, students will develop, research, and write a culminating research project beginning with the framework provided by our class readings and then expanding and deepening it by selecting their own topic for research and actually doing the work of research and investigation.
French Graduate Courses
FRENCH 450: Our 19th Centuries: Prehistories of the 20th Century
Godard says of the cinema that it was essentially "a nineteenth-century matter that was resolved in the twentieth century". For the cinema, the emblematic medium of the twentieth century, turned the powers specific to it (e.g., montage, projection photography) to articulating or developing aesthetic, philosophical and political problems posed by literature, philosophy and painting in the previous century. This invites us to think the relationship between centuries in two ways. First, problems posed in the 19th-century continue to shape (and limit the possibilities of) the forms in which twentieth-century art mobilizes its powers. For, having outlived the situation in which they were initially formulated, these problems continue (in Marx's phrase) to "weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living". Second, it becomes necessary for those who find themselves within this history to conduct an archaeology of nineteenth-century art and thought as a prehistory of twentieth-century culture. This course will explore these questions by reading canonical literary texts of the 19th century (by authors such as Balzac, Michelet, Flaubert, Baudelaire and Zola) alongside cinematic works (such as those of Buñuel, Renoir, Marker, Walsh and Godard), as well as critical texts (such as Benjamin, Jameson, Kracauer, Deleuze and Rancière).
FRENCH 490: Visual Culture: Art History & Literature: Proust and the Arts
In this course we will read about half of Proust’s A la Recherche du temps perdu/In Search of Lost Time, focusing on the importance of the arts both within the world of the novel and for the construction and style of the text. In addition to our reading of the novel, then, we will consider relevant works of music, architecture, photography, and painting, ranging from Gothic cathedrals to Japanese woodblock prints and violin sonatas—and critical responses to these. No background in these other areas is assumed.
Students who can read the text in French should do so, but all readings will be available in English as well and reading knowledge of French is not mandatory. Most readings and other materials will be provided via Canvas. Critics we will read may include Hannah Freed-Thall, Gérard Genette, Suzanne Guerlac, Siegfried Kracauer, Elisabeth Ladenson, and Jacques Rancière. If at all possible, the course will include a group visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.
FRENCH 495: Practicum in Scholarly Writing, Publication, and Research
In this course, students revise and expand a paper written in a previous course with the aim of producing an article manuscript of approximately 20-25 pages in length and submitting it to for publication upon completion of the seminar. In the revised article, students develop an original argument relative to a significant problem or research question; demonstrate knowledge of relevant primary and secondary sources and the ability to evaluate them critically; engage with an appropriate theoretical or scholarly methodology; and draw out clearly the significance of their findings. The class meets regularly as a group for the purpose of discussion and feedback on individual work. Students submit written assignments and make short presentations on essential elements of their articles, including the argument, the current state of the secondary research, and their contribution to the field. In addition, they receive and write a reader's report similar to those generated by referees of journal submissions. Throughout the course, students will meet individually with the professor to discuss their progress in addition to working with their peers. Work written or revised over the course of the quarter will be shared and discussed in the final class meeting. This course is required for 2nd and 3rd year graduate students in French. It will be taught in English. Enrolled students must submit the seminar paper they wish to revise to the professor no later than December 20, 2021 as the professor will generate feedback on each paper before the first day of classes.
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 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.
ITALIAN 102-2: 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.
ITALIAN 133-2/ITALIAN 134-2: 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. Students MUST be registered for both Italian 133-2 and 134-2. However, students should wait until the add/drop period to register for 134-2, to avoid potential issues with adding a 5th course.
ITALIAN 204: The Modern Italian Short Story
This course will examine 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, ethical, and cultural aspects of the genre certainly have changed in the last century. Can the modern short story still communicate ethical and social truths? Is the inherent, conclusive brevity and elegance of the genre paradoxically better able to capture the chaos of contemporary life? We will examine 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. We will focus in particular on issues of love, jealousy, sexuality, gender, friendship and youth culture as defined by Boccaccio, Verga, Morante, Ortese, Pavese, Calvino, Tabucchi and Tondelli.
ITALIAN 377: Gender and Sexuality in Italian Culture: Gender, Race, and Aesthetic Resistance in Film and Media
Gender, Race, and Aesthetic Resistance in Film and Media: This course will focus on films, TV programs, and music videos that expose and attempt to counter the formation of gender and race hierarchies in the fabric of daily life. Our point of departure is Italy's current predicament, which sees the resurgence of right-wing politics and a widespread homophobic and racist stand. Several anti-immigration policies and the recent rejection of the Zan bill (which was meant to make violence against LGBT people and disabled people, as well as misogyny, a hate crime) urge us, yet again, to contest still enduring images of Italy as the land of love and of Italians as basically "brava gente" ("decent people"). We will begin by considering the ways in which mass media have contributed to construing gender and race stereotypes at different junctures in Italian history, keeping in mind the longstanding repression of Italy's colonial past in Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. However, the bulk of the course will be devoted to those practices of cultural resistance that developed within commercial film/television production as well as in more lateral or experimental contexts. Among the examples we will consider are Pier Paolo Pasolini's queer documentary, Comizi d'amore (Love Meetings, 1964); Cecilia Mangini's Essere Donne (Being Women, 1965), a feminist take on Italian Marxism and anthropology; Adriana Monti's Scuola senza fine (School without End, 1983), produced in the context of the experimental "150 hours" course; Gianikian and Ricci-Lucchi Dal Polo all'Equatore (From the Pole to the Equator, 1985), which re-edits archival footage of colonial travel and sport from the Fascist period; and contemporary works by Afro-Italian writers and artists such as Gabriella Ghermandi, Dagmawi Yimer, and Karima 2G. We will conclude by addressing the resonances between Afrofuturism and feminist poetics in the US and Italy.
Italian Courses with Readings and Discussion in English
ITALIAN 251: Introduction to Italian Cinema: (Neo)Realism and the Documentary Impulse
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 then turn to the remarkable production of the 1960s and 1970s and analyze they way in which different directors (Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Rosi, Pasolini) treated the problems of modernity and industrialization, migration, organized crime, and the media industry. 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 the current socio-economic crisis and the resurgence of populism and right-wing politics. Throughout the course, we will also work to acquire the critical and methodological tools necessary to analyze film as a complex mode of cultural production.