Graduate course descriptions

4000-level
Francophone Romance:  Love, Sex, Intimacy in the French Colonial World
Madeleine Dobie
Colonial domination and violence have been interwoven with desire and various forms of intimacy. Personal relationships have been vectors of colonial power as well as sites of resistance. This course explores various ways in which love, desire and intimacy have emerged as questions in French colonial practice. It covers a broad historical and geographic span stretching from the age of plantation slavery to the era of decolonization and from the Caribbean and Louisiana to Vietnam and Africa. The primary lens is literature, a medium in which the personal dimensions of empire have often found expression, though we also draw insights from history, sociology and law.

Versailles
Caroline Weber
This seminar will examine Ancien Régime culture through the history of Versailles from its origins as a hunting lodge through Louis XIV's displacement of the court to the château in 1682, through the Revolution. We will read contemporary literature; look at cultural history, architecture and the arts; and consider film treatments from Sacha Guitry's 1954 "Si Versailles m'était conté" to the recent television series "Versailles."   

Medieval Animals, Human and Other
Eliza Zingesser
How did medieval people separate themselves from other (non-human) animals? Was it the ability of humans to talk, use tools, exercise rationality or something else? We will consider these questions in the first unit of this class, in which we’ll look at cases of what Agamben calls “the anthropological machine”—the ways in which humans distinguished themselves from other species. Why do some bestiaries (catalogues of animals) include human animals but not others? How did medieval people understand Genesis and the notion of ‘dominion’ given to humans over the rest of creation? In the next unit, we will turn to talking animals, both in medieval philosophical texts and in literature. Do they speak differently from human animals? Do humans speak differently when speaking of them (for example, do texts about parrots or other bird mimics start to ‘parrot’ other texts?). We next turn to cases of metamorphosis (human to animal or vice versa) and hybridity (in which a single body is both human and animal). What do these texts reveal about what is proper to the human and how does the body play a role in shoring up species identity? In a final unit, we turn to assemblages—conglomerations in which human and nonhuman animals act together. We will look both at chivalry (knight+horse) and at medieval lovers, who are often surrounded by birds.

French Empires: History and Historiography
Emmanuelle Saada
At the beginning of the 21st Century, forty years after its last colonial war, France, which had primarily seen itself as a “nation” in the previous two hundred years, discovered that it had been an “empire” for most of its history. The questions of slavery, colonial violence, racism, exclusion, and exploitation became prevalent in public debates with the conviction that colonial legacies continued to shape France’s present. This new interest in the imperial trajectory of France both informed and was shaped by the publication of many historical works.

This class will explore this 'imperial turn' and examine its specificity vis-à-vis the historiographies of other European empires. We will examine the questions that have been at the center of the historian's agenda: what kind of historical processes are revealed (or masked) by the imperial perspective? How do we think historically about the relationships between nation, Republic, and empire?  How has the 'imperial turn' shaped the categories and writing practices of historians? How have new repertoires of questions about citizenship, gender and sexuality, racism, capitalism, and the environment emerged in the study of imperialism?  What are the contributions of historians to the understanding of postcolonialism?

French for Diplomats
William U Kehl
This course deals with French foreign policy. It is designed for students who have a good French level (the whole course is taught is French, so there are minimal requirements) and are interested by international relations and France. It aims at improving students knowledge of French diplomacy : the vision and values it carries, its history, its logic, its strenghts, its weaknesses, the interrogations and challenges it faces. Though it is not a language course (there will be no grammar), it will also shapren students mastering of French (especially useful for those considering an exchange at Sciences Po, or wanting to work in places such as the United nations where it is useful to master some French diplomatic vocabulary).