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

After a brief language history and a review of the phonetic system, students study morphology, syntax, and certain aspects of French stylistics, through theoretical readings, practical exercises, and compositions.

Theoretical consideration and practical analysis of the problems of literary translation, English-French and French-English.

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.

In addition to the study of major texts of French medieval literature, the course introduces students to the methodologies of paleography and codicology, as well as the modern technologies of film, slides, CDs and CD-ROMs, digital scriptoria, and online resources. The ongoing themes and issues of the course are the performance of works; relations between image and text; variations among different manuscripts of the same work.

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.

Topics include: Teaching French Cinema, French Cinema and Politics.

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.

Survey of medieval drama. Addresses questions fundamental to all of medieval literature: the emergence of written texts from traditions of oral performance (leading to popular printed editions for readers by the end of the 15th century); the spiritual representations of human life and history in moralit?s and myst?res; the symbolic political transformation of court and urban space by processional theatre; the elaboration of dramas around political and religious issues as well as around language play and character types.

Study of French visual culture may include painting, photography, cinema.

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

Close reading of the Essays. Humanism and its treatment of classical literature. Rhetoric, self-portrayal, the relationships between the Essays and philosophy.

How does one read the Rabelaisian corpus today? What are the limitations of this corpus, and what are those of the fictitious universe that it proposes? What is at stake in historical, philosophical, political, etc. readings of Rabelais? How many distinct, or even contradictory, meanings can a work provide? Must we decipher ?Rabelais?? According to what procedures do we do so?

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

Focuses on several of the major works of DiderFocuses on several of the major works of Diderot, in fields as different as the theatre, the novel, science, and philosophy. In each instance, the aim is to recreate the context in order to better read its modernity and, consequently, to better understand its past.

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

Focuses on four novels taken from the Rougon-Macquart, Histoire naturelle et sociale d?une famille sous le Second Empire. Students concentrate both on a genetic and genealogical approach (?histoire naturelle d?une famille?) as well as on the development of the chronicle (?histoire sociale sous le Second Empire?) in their articulation within a ?story,? the novel of the Rougons and the Macquarts.

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

On the one hand, this course focuses specifically on Du côté de chez Swann, À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Albertine disparue (Deuxième partie de Sodome et Gomorrhe III), and Le Temps retrouvé, providing a framework for an in-depth study of these four texts. On the other hand, it also gives the student an opportunity to reflect upon broader theoretical issues, which are representative of Proustian criticism today. Accordingly, special emphasis is placed both on the making and on the structure of À la recherche du temps perdu. The course provides ample opportunities to discuss a number of seminal interpretations, including works by Barthes, Deleuze, Genette, Anne Henry, Vincent Descombes, Paul Ricoeur, and others.

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.

POTENTIAL TOPICS INCLUDE THE NOUVELLE VAGUE; FASHION & POWER