Students learn to communicate in French through verbal interaction with instructors and
classmates. Comprehension of spoken French is stressed, and all classes are in French.
Basic concepts of French grammar are introduced and practiced in written homework as
well as in classroom activities. Readings based on cultural information provide frequent
opportunities for discussion of French and francophone cultures. The language
Laboratory program provides additional opportunities for listening practice.

Students review and develop their knowledge of French language and culture. Extensive
reading and writing assignments are complemented by classroom discussion and
small-group activities. Classes are conducted in French only.
Prerequisite: French 1C or equivalent.

This course introduces students to the study of French culture by considering the ways in which one filmmaker and various writers have described cultural encounters between France and the Orient, that is, the Islamic cultures of North Africa and the Middle East. These encounters have been the source of many enduring myths fabricated by the French about the Orient and also, in the process, about themselves. But for many numerous writers and filmmakers, they have also served as the basis for a challenge to those same myths and for the creation of a new understanding of both France and the Orient. Course given in English for non-majors.

Review of French grammar and development of vocabulary and communication skills using
a film-based approach complemented by a variety of readings. Students will study and
practice forms of descriptive and narrative writings, and textual and/or film analysis including
critical reviews and explication de texte of prose and poetry passages.
Prerequisite: French 2C or equivalent

An introduction to nineteenth-century French literature through close readings in texts of Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Maupassant. Reading and writing for the course will be in French. Class discussion will be in French and English.

In this course we will read and discuss two seventeenth--and three eighteenth-- century French
plays that treat the ambiguous relation between the master and the servant. We will focus on the
at times overt power struggle between them, as well as the moments when a sense of a common
humanity seems to override those same conflicts and tensions.

In addition to the five plays—Corneille's L'Illusion comique, Moliere's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme,
Le Sage's Turcaret, Marivaux's Le Jeu de l'amour et du hazard, and Beauchais's Le
Mariage de Figaro--we will also read a brief selection from the work of philosopher G.W.F. Hegel
on the relation between master and slave and discuss its implications for each of the five plays.
The question is, should these dramatists be condemned for having reinforced the old social order,
or should they rather be credited with the creation of a new form of political - and artistic -
consciousness?

This course examines the engagement of nineteenth-century French writers and thinkers with questions of race. The nineteenth century saw the modern French Republic take form, with the attendant institutionalization of a republican discourse about democracy and universal human rights. Yet during the same period, the rise of scientific racism and colonial empire saw France embrace racial hierarchies at home and abroad. We will examine this paradoxical state of affairs by investigating topics like human zoos, slavery, colonialism, and anti-Semitism. Readings will include literary and historical texts by the likes of Maupassant, Loti, Renan, and Tocqueville. Course to be conducted in French.

This course will study a series of modern novels that depict France at war: from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, to World Wars I and II, and finally the Algerian War. War novels are not necessarily exclusively or even primarily about the events of the wars they depict, for they often use the context of war to raise fundamental social, political, and moral questions in situations of extreme duress, violence, and suffering. In studying how different novels and films approach the issues raised by war, we will attempt to understand better the role of fiction in the representation of historical reality and the formation of collective memory. Novels by Zola, Remarque, Semprun, and Duras will be read; films such as “Paths of Glory,” Au revoir les enfants,” and “The Battle of Algiers” will be shown and discussed. Readings, class discussions, exams, and paper all in English. French texts will be ordered for French majors.

Requirements: Midterm, final, and 5-7 page paper.