This course is designed to fulfill the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement. The primary goal of this course is to develop students' reading and writing skills through a series of assignments that will provide them with the opportunity to formulate observations made in class discussions into coherent argumentative essays.  Emphasis will be placed on the refinement of effective sentence, paragraph, and thesis formation, keeping in mind the notion of writing as a process. Other goals in this course are a familiarization with French literature and the specific questions that are relevant to this field. In addition, students will be introduced to different methods of literary and linguistic analysis in their nonliterary readings.

This course focuses on the prison in literary texts from across the French-speaking world, including stories set in France, Switzerland, Quebec, Haiti, and Algeria. We will read novels by authors who were themselves incarcerated as well as texts that depict carceral experiences. We will study the ways that fiction and autobiography blend when writing from prison and how incarcerated authors both represent and resist the material conditions of their incarceration. In addition, we will consider works that use the prison as a theme or as a metaphor to explore broader social questions such as racial and gender hierarchies and (neo)colonialism.
 

Prerequisite: Previously passed an RA course with a letter grade of C- or better. OR Score a 4 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature and Composition. OR Score a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Language and Composition. OR Score of 5, 6, or 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level Examination in English. OR By permission of the instructor. No experience in Foreign Languages required.