Graduate course descriptions
- To view course schedules by subject, department, or keyword visit the Directory of Classes website page.
Please note that while these are the courses we expect to offer, there may be some minor modifications to the curriculum.
CLFR GU4000 (in French and English)
Theory of Literature
Aubrey Gabel
This course will not track a single intellectual trajectory but will guide students through several opposing or overlapping fields of intellectual thought, including many ‘isms—formalism, semiology, structuralism, Marxism, poststructuralism, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, and so on—that continue to be influential in literary studies, and especially, in French and Francophone studies in the American academy. There will be a particular emphasis on how foundational ideas about literature, authorship, and criticism shape the very questions that still interest us today, especially from the perspective of thinkers who originally wrote in French. Throughout the semester, we will think about what it means to engage in literary criticism and, more generally, what it means to write or read literature, or to be an author and reader in society. This course will also (re)introduce students not just to foundational concepts and methods in literary studies, but also various modes of academic writing, including book reviews, abstracts and call for proposals, conference papers, annotated bibliographies, and so on. Taught in French and English with readings in both languages.
FREN GU4426 (in French)
Rousseau’s Woman Problem
Joanna Stalnaker
The problem of women lies at the heart of everything Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote. He posited a basic equality between the sexes in the state of nature, while prescribing a radically restrictive view of women’s education. He founded his political thought on models of virility, while writing a best-selling novel featuring a powerful heroine who governs an ideal society. He upheld rigid gender binaries, while fashioning himself as a woman in his autobiographical writings. The goal of this seminar will be to tease out these and other tensions and contradictions in Rousseau’s work and to explore how they have shaped modern views of women and gender. We will read Rousseau in dialogue with the many women who responded to his work, whether by emulating his style, seeking his counsel or subjecting his ideas to virulent critique.
The seminar will be taught in French and fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the French major and the MA and PhD in French. Undergraduates with an advanced level of French are welcome to enroll.
FREN GU 4269 (in French)
Literature and Prostitution
Elisabeth Ladenson
French literature has been preoccupied with prostitutes and prostitution for centuries. This course proposes to examine some of the various depictions of women and men who make their living via sexual activity, from the 18th century through our own era. We will trace the different varieties of “loose women,” identifying an extensive taxonomy of courtisanes, lorettes, grisettes, filles de joie etc., in male-authored works from Manon Lescaut (1731) through the apogee of literary obsession with “fallen women” in the 19th century. Over the course of the century the romantic “whore with a heart of gold” trope (Dumas’s Dame aux camélias) coexisted with Mérimée’s fatal gypsy Carmen, Flaubert and Baudelaire’s insistence on prostitution as metaphor, Maupassant’s analyses of bourgeois hypocrisy in this regard, and, finally, Zola’s irresistible and destructive Nana. The 20th century saw more nuanced depictions of both female and male prostitution from such authors as Colette and Jean Genet. We will conclude with 21st-century first-person accounts of sex work by Nelly Arcan (Putain, 2001) and Virginie Despentes (King Kong théorie, 2006).
FREN GU4082
Rebel Literature (in French)
Emmanuel Kattan
“Quand on refuse, on dit non,” said Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma towards the end of his life. Taking this stance as a starting point, this seminar will explore, through the lens of the novel, major political upheavals in the Francophone world during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. We will shed light on the history of decolonization, May 68, the feminist movement, and struggles against racism and injustice by delving into the imaginary worlds of six leading Francophone novelists: Marguerite Duras, Ahmadou Kourouma, Assia Djebar, Hélène Cixous, George Perec and Édouard Glissant.
FRGER 4000
Language Pedagogy
Jutta Schmiers-Heller
What kind of teacher would you like to become? What experience, knowledge, and opinions regarding learning and teaching a language and language and communication do you bring to class? How can theoretical and practical literature help us augment our personal experiences? How do we plan and execute lesson plans? What role do institutional expectations play? What can we learn from how others teach? How can we ensure that we welcome a wide spectrum of students into our classes? How can we grow as educators through self-reflection, our interactions with colleagues, and through our understanding of theoretical and practical knowledge that goes beyond planning the next class?
Collaboratively, we will discuss these and other questions using our concrete experience, practical and theoretical literature, and opportunities for professional development. We will apply our knowledge and create materials together, visit colleagues in other language and reflect on our learning and teaching experience.
FREN GR9701
Dissertation Workshop
Instructor TBA
The dissertation workshop offers a forum for advanced PhD students to share their dissertation proposals and chapters with their peers and the faculty facilitator of the workshop. Participants will receive valuable feedback on their work in a supportive setting, while also honing their skills in offering constructive feedback to others. We will also discuss research and writing challenges and strategies for addressing them. The seminar will meet every two weeks throughout the fall and spring semesters. Each student will present their work at least once per semester.
Please note that while these are the courses we expect to offer, there may be some minor modifications to the curriculum.
CLFR W4716
Francophone Romance Love, Sex, Intimacy (in English)
Madeleine Dobie
The domination and violence that have characterized the phenomenon of empire have always been interwoven with forms of intimacy. Personal relationships have been vectors of colonial power; they have also been sites of resistance. In this course we consider various ways in which love, desire and intimacy have emerged as questions in the French colonial context. The course covers a broad historical span, stretching from the age of plantation slavery to the era of decolonization. Geographically, it explores colonial context extending from the Caribbean and Louisiana to Vietnam and Africa. We consider the transmission of categories and practices across these diverse colonial contexts as well as historical transitions and regional specificities. The course methodology is interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from history, sociology and law. The primary lens, however, is that of literature, a medium in which the personal dimensions of empire have often found expression. We consider how recurrent themes and figures of colonial desire and intimacy took shape in different genres and registers of writing.
CLFR GU4722
Annie Ernaux. Writing as a Knife (in French)
Thomas Dodman
This course offers a deep dive into French contemporary novelist Annie Ernaux’s auto-socio-biographical fiction, through an analysis of some of her major works. Close readings of texts will be paired with research notes and recent film adaptations, sociological and theoretical work that has inspired Ernaux, her growing critical reception (amplified by her recent Nobel prize), as well as other writers whom she has drawn from and in turn inspired. Themes covered include: what is auto-socio-biography? exploring women’s desire and sexuality; Ernaux’s feminism and political militancy; ethnographies of contemporary France and the baby-boomer generation; how to write about the experience of time, history and memory. Throughout, we will consider what kind of genre Ernaux’s writing is, and what writing as a knife can do. Class taught in French (students with limited French will be allowed to read texts and write papers in English. Please consult with the instructor).
FREN GU4XXXX (in French)
Theater, Controversy, and Cultural Authority in 17th- and 18th-Century France
Alexis Stanley
This seminar examines the turbulent world of French theater from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period in which the stage became a privileged site of aesthetic innovation, ideological conflict, and political negotiation. Far from being mere entertainment, early modern French theater functioned as a laboratory for debates about morality, genre, gender, spectatorship, censorship, and the shifting boundaries between public and private spheres. Through close readings of plays, polemical pamphlets, critical prefaces, censorship dossiers, and theatrical memoirs, students will explore how dramatists, critics, and audiences used theatrical controversy both to challenge and to reinforce notions of cultural authority.
The seminar moves chronologically from the Querelle du Cid, which crystallized debates about classical decorum and the authority of the newly founded Académie française, to the theatrical politics of Louis XIV’s court and commercial stages, through Régence libertinage and the emergence of bourgeois drama, and finally to the ideological stakes of pre-Revolutionary theater. Special attention will be paid to the intersections of performance and power; the moral panic surrounding actresses; the rivalry between the Comédie-Française, Comédie-Italienne, and fairground theaters; disputes over comic vs. tragic decorum; and the Enlightenment’s attempt to transform theater into a pedagogical and civic institution.
Students will engage critically with major early modern French playwrights and theorists. The course also incorporates recent scholarship in performance studies, cultural history, and gender studies to reconsider canonical controversies and recover lesser-known debates. By the end of the semester, students will develop a nuanced understanding of how theater shaped, and was shaped by, the political, philosophical, and social transformations of early modern France. This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the French majors.
FREN GU4819
Images of the French Revolution (in English)
Caroline Weber
Along with the American Revolution which immediately preceded it, the French Revolution was the most important political event in modern history. The bloody end of the 18th century ushered in modernity, retrospectively marking a definitive break between “early modern” and “modern” eras. The French Revolution has been endlessly and variously mythologized and analyzed, as well as depicted in polemical writings, novels, poetry, theater, film, and opera. This course is designed as an overview of responses to the ten-year event, concentrating on popular depictions in Francophone and Anglophone works. We will start with contemporary responses and move on through 19th- and 20th-century literary representations of the Revolution, including plays and films, both adaptations of literary responses and original treatments. Readings will include works by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Wollestonecraft, Sade, and Dickens, along with more recent responses. This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the French major.
FREN GU8819
Sociologies of the Everyday (in English with readings in French)
Aubrey Gabel
What is everyday life? Is it the day-to-day grind of métro, boulot, dodo or the raucous pleasure of the soixante-huitards? The overlooked and underappreciated lives and experiences of the working class? Or the subtle changes of a single street, in a single square, over days or years? In this course, we will consider critical investigations of the everyday in literature, film, and beyond. Mid-to-late 20th-century France saw the rise of literary practices less centered on narrative and more on experience and documentation. Influenced by scholars from diverse intellectual traditions--such as Marxism, history, anthropology, sociology, and psychoanalysis--authors and intellectuals directed their attention to analyzing, understanding, and documenting lived experience. This explosion of interest in the quotidien reversed the ethnographic gaze, compelling sociologists like Morin to focus on themselves and others of modern Europe. In the dynamic political and social climate of the Trentes glorieuses, there was much to consider, from the rise of consumer culture to major political events (such as the Algerian War or May '68). Above all, as the playwrights of the Théâtre du quotidien argued, the goal was to tell the stories of real people (“raconter la vie des ‘gens’”) and to offer a glimpse into their lives (“une tranche de vie”). In this literature and cultural studies course, we will consider the cross-fertilization across a variety of intellectual disciplines (notably sociology, ethnography, structuralism, and so on) provoked by interest in the everyday. Moving into the 21st century, we will consider the legacy of the everyday in contemporary French fiction, in light of major sociopolitical changes in late 20th-century France, most notably, the failure of communism and the decline of industrialism. In this era “after” (post-industrial, post-communist, post-avant-garde, or even post-political), how do authors document and interrogate daily life? With the radical globalization of culture in the digital moment, how do authors and artists apprehend the changing dynamics of lived experience? Taught in English with readings in French and English.