Winter 2023 Class Schedule
- Winter 2023 Class Schedule
- Winter 2023 French Course Descriptions
- Winter 2023 Italian Course Descriptions
- French Undergraduate Course Flyers
- Italian Undergraduate Course Flyers
- French Graduate Course Flyers
Winter 2023 class Schedule
Winter 2023 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.
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.
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.
FRENCH 125-3: Intensive Intermediate French
French 125-3 is the last quarter of a three-quarter course for students who have completed FR125-2 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 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 and Intermediate French Language Courses
FRENCH 210: Reading Literatures in French — African Perspectives
This course introduces students to Sub-Saharan Francophone literatures of Africa. It proposes to analyze a selection of important literary texts (novel, short story, poetry, and essays) and films by representative authors, in their historical and cultural contexts: Negritude, (post)colonialism, new African voices within and beyond the continent. It also underscores African perspectives on the universal challenges and complexities of immigration, gender and sexuality, religion, activism, and community building. The ultimate aim of the course is to forge students' critical capacity to resist simplistic popular understandings of what is taking place on the continent and works to refocus their attention on distinctively African perspectives.
FRENCH 273: Introducing Poetry in French
This course will introduce students to the close reading and analysis of French poetry, from the Middle Ages to the present. We will journey across centuries and genres, from Medieval epic to contemporary hip-hop, tracing the evolution of a literary form in which words don't always mean what they say. This course will incorporate elements of creative as well as analytical writing. The seminar format will emphasize student participation, reading aloud and class discussion.
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.
Courses with Prerequisites in French
FRENCH 303: Advanced Conversation: Debating Contemporary French
The goal of this course is the development of oral proficiency through speech functions, conversational routines and patterns, so as to build confidence in the practice of the French language. In order to achieve this goal, emphasis will be put on extensive examination of French press and French television news, French movies, the reading of a book related to the author studied this quarter, and spontaneous expression through dialogues and discussion, and even debates. Special emphasis will be placed on group work and culturally appropriate usage. The students will participate actively in the choice of the materials.
FRENCH 334: Montaigne and Modernity
Michel de Montaigne was one of the most important writers and philosophers of the early modern period; his Essais continues to be a book to live by. This seminar explores Montaigne's writings in depth, along with those of his most important interlocutors, in the context of the emergence of modern subjectivity in the period we call "Renaissance". Placing the distant past into conversation with the present, we will consider a set of problems relative to the constitution of the self, of the body, of cultural and gender identity, educational ideals, and political freedom. We will explore the rise of cultural norms surrounding death, love, friendship, faith, and violence. Montaigne's writings are a gateway into a turbulent and transformative period of history, one which has much to say to our own.
This class was previously offered as French 333. See French 333 for CTECs.
FRENCH 390: Existentialism and Theatre
This course, taught in French, will have a dual focus—on Existentialist thought, and on the theatre with which it was in dialogue. We will begin by examining Existentialism as the dominant trend in French philosophy and social thought in the period from the end of the Second World War to the early 1960s, focusing specifically on how such authors as Sartre, Beauvoir, and Fanon address the ethical, social and political questions central to Existentialism. We will then turn to the most important literary phenomenon of that moment in French literary history: the astonishing re-invention of French theatre by such playwrights as Sartre, Beckett, and Genet. We will explore not only how these authors all take up and rework elements of Existentialist thought, but also how, in critiquing Existentialism's fundamental assumptions, both Beckett and Genet anticipate in different ways the thought of such post-Existentialist thinkers as Deleuze and Foucault.
FRENCH 395: Reading Michel Houllebecq's Les Particules Elémentaires (1998)
The course is organized around Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (1998). This novel describes in great details the sexual misfortunes of two brothers, Michel and Bruno, whose miserable lives become the symbole of the "suicide of the Western world" and prepare the advent of a neo-humanity produced through cloning. The constellation of texts we will read turn around the novel to create a network of ideas and relations that will illuminate the functioning of the novel as well as its theoretical, historical and political significance, notably in relation to gender and sexual politics, neoliberal capitalism, love and pornography, science and religion, transhumanism…
French Graduate Courses
FRENCH 410: The Courtly Subject – Personhood Across Genre
This class examines the representation of the individual subject in medieval French and Occitan literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Our critical focus will be on the role played by the emergence of new vernacular literary genres and codes in enabling medieval people to imagine alternative models of the individual subject in relation to changing social dynamics including religion, class, sexuality, and gender. Among the works we will study are the lyrics of the troubadours and trouvères, the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the fabliaux tradition, and the Roman de la Rose. Class discussions will be conducted in English but reading knowledge of modern French is required.
FRENCH 492: Beyond "French Feminism"
The course is an introduction to gender and sexuality theory in France from Beauvoir's seminal essay Le deuxième Sexe (1949) to Preciado's Testo Junkie (2008). The goal of the course is to highlight the diversity of approaches to gender and sexuality in France and the productivity of the transatlantic dialogue. We will therefore address the so-called "French feminism" without limiting ourselves to it, and read phenomenological feminism, materialist feminism, cultural feminism, queer feminism, as well as the way gender, class, race and sexuality have been thought together, or not. Course will be taught in French.
FRENCH 493: Cinema at the End of Film: Theories, Histories, Media
What is cinema in the 21st century? What can it still do? This course will explore the afterlives of cinema in the digital age by turning to theorists and practitioners who have addressed the question of technology in terms of both aesthetics and politics. We will read texts from a variety of fields, including film and media theory, feminist/queer theory, critical race theory, and post-autonomist Marxism. At the same time, we will consider the way filmmakers such as John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki, Jean-Luc Godard, and Hito Steyerl have negotiated cinema's role and envisioned its potential in a global image economy.
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/CLS 211: 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 Courses with Readings and Discussion in English
ITALIAN 277: Global Neorealism
Neorealism has changed the way in which we understand cinema and its relationship to our social and political reality. Films such as Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1947) have been influential for generations of filmmakers in countries as diverse as Brazil, France, India, Iran, Senegal, and the United States. This course will explore the history of neorealism and its aftermath from a transnational perspective, paying attention to the role that diversity and plurality have played in the formation and transformation of the neorealist approach. While reading key texts in film and cultural studies, we will watch and analyze films by renowned directors such as Charles Burnett, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami, Glauber Rocha, Ousmane Sembène, and Martin Scorsese.