French (FREN-GA)

This course is designed to give you the skills necessary to conduct research in French. It will focus on reading knowledge of the language only. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Classes will be conducted in English and the readings will be tailored toward individual student research needs.

POTENTIAL TOPICS INCLUDE: History and theory of the novel; comedy; transclass narratives

The new Graduate Student Teaching Assistant workshop-seminar is a series of biweekly meetings which combine readings and discussions of articles that treat the basic tenets of foreign language pedagogy with opportunities to apply what is presented in those readings to real-world teaching situations. The principle goals of the workshop-seminar are the enrichment and diversification of our new teachers' methodological approaches as well as the development of their confidence and skills in the classroom. These goals are met through both an examination of the theoretical underpinnings of second language acquisition and a wide variety of exercises and tasks, including but not limited to peer classroom observations, textbook analyses, test writing and analysis, sample lesson plan creation, sample exercise and task creation, and self observation and analysis.

Analysis of approaches, methods, and presuppositions found in the articulation of notions about French culture and the French identity.

The place of close reading in broader critical studies. Enhancement of fluency in oral and written expression. Introduction of concepts and tools of critical methodology.

The conventions of theatre. Theatre as performance. Theatre as text. Critical approaches (semiology, viewer response, narratology). The language of the theatre (stylized and realistic modes, nonverbal theatre, the uses of silence, the theatre of cruelty). The concept of the avant-garde.

The technique of versification and its linguistic bases. The special prosodic and rhythmic characteristics of French verse. Fixed forms. The modernist challenge to poetic conventions and conceptions (free verse, the prose poem, new patterns of typographic disposition, punctuation, syntax). This course aims at enabling students to perform sophisticated readings and close analyses of the poetic text through systematic exposure to linguistic and literary concepts relevant to this practice.

Potential topics include: Forms of Feeling, The Nonhuman on Stage and on the Page, and What is a Substitute? A Reading of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.

Potential topic include: French Civilization: History, Pedagogy, Methodology, and 19th Century France and Its Empire.

The development of French theatre since the beginning of the 20th century, from early reactions to outmoded conventions of realism to the ?flight from naturalism? that has marked it since. Approaches: thematics; dramatic technique; conventions; language; metaphors of the human condition; audience-stage relationship. Apollinaire, Cocteau, Claudel, Anouilh, Montherlant, Camus, Sartre, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet, Sarraute, Duras, le Th??tre du Soleil, recent authors.

Fiction of the second half of the 20th century. The literature of commitment, reflections on the absurd, the ?new novel,? and the role of the reader. Principal authors: Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet, Perec, Sarraute.

Potential topics include: The Maghreb, Les héritages coloniaux en France Francophone Theatre, Abîme, Errance, séisme – Francophone Fictions of (Dis)placement.

Potential topics include: Caribbean Surrealism, Caribbean Travel Literature.

Potential topics include Putting the Love Back in Philology, and Writing, Rewriting, Unwriting Medieval French Literature.

Recent topics include: Minority Literature in the time of Montaigne

Recent topics include: Émulation, rivalité et concurrence au XVIIe siècle ; Versailles : Art and Nature

POTENTIAL TOPICS INCLUDE: FORMS OF FEELING, INDIGENEITY, QUEER FORMS

Recent topics include: The Age of Enlightenment; Au tournant des Lumières

Recent topics include: Historic Novel, Exoticism, The Marriage Novel, Realism and Naturalism, L’expression de la justice dans la littérature romantique.

Study of 20th/21st-century French-language literature

Potential topics include: Lire avec les oreilles.

Study of 20th/ 21st-century French-language theater

Study of French-language literature with emphasis on historical context and change.

Potential topics include Recent French Theory.

Student-led in-depth study of a topic of importance in the field. Meets bi-monthly; final research paper.

Student-led in-depth study of a topic of importance in the field. Meets bi-monthly; final research paper.

Strategies for writing an abstract, a proposal, an article, a book; exploration of academic structure and style.