Fall 2023

Reading and Composition (R&C)

English Composition in Connection with the Reading of French Literature
R1A section 1
Fall 2023
Class No: 26688
279 Dwinelle Hall
TTh
11:00 AM - 12:29 PM

English Composition in Connection with the Reading of French Literature
R1B section 1
Fall 2023
Class No: 26136
4125A Dwinelle Hall
MWF
9:00 AM - 9:59 AM

Undergraduate Courses 

Introduction to Romance Languages and Linguistics
C26
Fall 2023
Class No: 31012
Haviland 12
MWF
Oliver Whitmore
2:00-3:00 p.m.
The dissemination of Romance languages across the world tells stories of nation-building, colonization, immigration, and assimilation, with written records that trace back to a common linguistic ancestor, Latin. Taught in English, this course introduces students to Romance linguistics through a socio-historical perspective, requiring that students understand how the evolution of Romance varieties has been shaped by European and global history. After a brief introduction to core fields in linguistics (phonetics/phonology/ morphology/syntax/pragmatics), students will apply these concepts through various analytic approaches to understanding language, including but not limited to historical, variationist, and anthropological.

- This course is taught in English. No prior linguistics knowledge is necessary for this course.

Prerequisite: Students should minimally have an intermediate knowledge or higher of one Romance Language or Latin. This is equal to completion of 2 semesters of a university course in French, Spanish, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romanian, or other. Native speakers are welcome.

Man, Woman, Other
43A : Aspects of French Culture
Fall 2023
Class No: 25495
B5 Hearst Field Annex
TTh
Will Burton
9:30 AM - 10:59 AM
(This class is taught in English, no French knowledge necessary.)

Stories about gender variance and transgression have circulated in French and francophone cultures since the medieval period. Sometimes they have been the vehicle for philosophical and scientific debates (nature versus nurture, free will versus determination). In religious and spiritual contexts, gender-variant people have been used as metaphors for human diversity or divine transcendence. They have also played symbolic roles in discourses of emancipation, from anticolonialism to feminism.

While we investigate these themes, we will also attend to issues of anachronism and power in these works. How can contemporary ideas and terms guide our recovery of LGBTTQI+ lives from history—or hinder it? What is at stake when apparently cisgender writers take non-cisgender people as their subject matter? How are their stories similar to or different from ones written by the “interested parties”?

The class will begin with questions of terminology (using words like “queer” or “transgender” to describe figures from the past who used different words; the differences between French and English). We will also read a selection of classical texts that inform the works that follow (the Bible, Plato, Ovid). Our attention will then turn to a diverse series of readings (religious, literary, autobiographical, scientific and historiographic texts) as well as films. As we read, we will track five recurrent themes: (1) familial and economic considerations; (2) Christian mysticism; (3) Platonic androgyny and the arts; (4) scientific theories of sexual difference; (5) free will and determinism.

In addition to regular participation and preparedness, students will have the choice between two tracks for evaluations: a test track (midterms and a final) and a paper track (midterm and final papers).

(* marks texts that students will need to acquire)

Selections from Genesis, the Gospel according to Matthew, 1 Corinthians, Galatians; Plato’s Symposium; Ovid’s Metamorphoses; and the Encyclopédie

*Anonymous. The Life of Saint Eufrosine. Translated by Amy Victoria Ogden. Texts and Translations, vol 35. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2021.

Balzac, Honoré de. “Sarrasine” in The Girl with the Golden Eyes and Other Stories. Translated by Peter Collier. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

*Barbin, Herculine. “My Memoirs.” In Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century French Hermaphrodite, edited by Michel Foucault, translated by Richard McDougall, 3–118. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

Diderot, Denis. Rameau’s Nephew ; and, D’Alembert’s Dream. Translated by Leonard Tancock. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth ; New York: Penguin, 1976.

Éon de Beaumont, Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée d’. The Maiden of Tonnerre: The Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and the Chevalière d’Éon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

*Garréta, Anne. Sphinx. Translated by Emma Ramadan. First edition. Dallas, Texas: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015.

*La Mackerel, Kama. Zom-Fam. Montreal: Metonymy, 2020.

Long, Kathleen P. “The Case of Marin Le Marcis.” In Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern, 68–94. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021.

———. “Hermetic Hermaphrodites.” In Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe, 109–36. Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006.

Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt. “Hermaphrodite.” In Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert - Collaborative Translation Project, October 1, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.208.

Mystère Alexina. JML distrib., 2013.

*Perrault, Charles, François-Timoléon de Choisy, and Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier. The Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville. Edited by Joan E. DeJean. Translated by Steven Rendall. Texts and Translations. Translations 16. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2004.

Rey, Terry. The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Taïa, Abdellah. A Country for Dying. Translated by Emma Ramadan. Seven Stories Press, 2020.

Tomboy. San Francisco, California, USA: Kanopy Streaming, 2016.

Introduction to Translation Studies
48
Fall 2023
Class No: 32124
B4 Dwinelle Hall
TTh
Mairi McLaughlin
12:30 PM - 1:59 PM
This course provides a general introduction to translation studies. Translation studies is a relatively new field which lies at the intersection of a range of disciplines from literature and linguistics, through gender and postcolonial studies, to cognitive and computer science. We will explore the history of the way that people have thought about translation from the ancient world and thinkers such as Cicero and Dao’an to the formal field of translation studies which emerged in the 1980s. We will also explore translation studies as a field today, discovering the many different theories and methods that can be used to understand what translation is as a linguistic, textual, and socio-cultural practice. This will involve looking not just at writing about translation but also analyzing specific translations and the choices made by translators. One thread running throughout the course is the central role that translation plays in our multilingual world. We will discover that translation is ubiquitous but often invisible so we will discover the role that it plays shaping not just literature but also the media, science, technology, politics, diplomacy, the law, and business. The course will also highlight the importance of translators themselves.

You will be asked to carry out some translation in this course but this does not mean that you need knowledge of French or any other language; students can opt to translate between different registers and varieties of English instead of using another language.

Required texts:

Munday, Jeremy, Sara Ramos Pinto, and Jacob Blakesley (2022) Introducing Translation Studies: Theory and Applications, 5th edn, Abingdon Oxon – New York: Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence (2021) The Translation Studies Reader, 4th edn, London – New York: Routledge.

Recommended texts:

Baker, Mona (2018) In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation, 3rd edn, London – New York: Routledge.
Baker, Mona and Gabriela Saldanha (eds) (2019) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 3rd edn, London – New York: Routledge.
Hatim, Basil and Jeremy Munday (2019) Translation: An Advanced Resource Book, London – New York: Routledge.
House, Juliane (2017) Translation: The Basics, London – New York: Routledge.
Malmkjaer, Kristen and Kevin Windle (2011) The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pym, Anthony (2014) Exploring Translation Theories, 2nd edn, London – New York: Routledge.

An Historical Anatomy of the World’s Most Romantic City
80 : The Cultural History of Paris
Fall 2023
Class No: 26155
2060 Valley Life Sciences Building
MWF
Nick Paige
11:00 AM - 11:59 AM
This class will offer students a historical exploration of the urban artifact that is Paris. Proceeding “forensically,” the class aims to peel back what is visible to today’s observer in order to uncover the historical, economic, and ideological forces that have produced one of the most visited cities in the world. Students can expect, first, to gain knowledge of the city’s infrastructure, from its historical center to its marginalized outer suburbs. More generally, we will attend to the overlapping layers in Paris’s built environment, which is also to say the way that the Instagrammable urban present is haunted by the displacements and traumas of the past. Rather than following a textbook, we will be reading a variety of primary and secondary texts (poems, a novel, a memoir, part of a play; ephemeral pieces and testimonials; selections from historical and sociological studies), as well as viewing a number of films and looking at a lot of visual works (paintings, engravings, photos, maps, graffiti). A brief data science unit studying recent trends in gentrification will complete our semester.

Advanced Reading and Writing Workshop
102
Fall 2023
Class No: 2 sections
Various
MWF or TTh
Various
Offerings:
MWF 1:00 PM - 1:59 PM / 233 Dwinelle Hall
TTh 9:30 AM - 10:59 AM / 89 Dwinelle Hall

Readings:
Course Reader; other readings as assigned by Instructor

Course Description:
French 102 is the gateway course to the upper division in French. Students build on the solid foundation in the language and culture acquired in French 1-4 by broadening and deepening their ability to read and write about French texts in an academic context.

Students read a selection of works from different media and genres including short stories, poems, plays, letters, essays, paintings and films. Through close reading, students develop their analytical ability in French, paying particular attention to the different kinds of choices that writers make, and how these choices contribute to the making of meaning. Students also develop their skills as writers of academic French, focusing both on the content of their written work and on its form.

By the end of the course, students are ready to meet the reading and writing requirements of upper division courses in the French department.

Prerequisites:
French 4 at UC Berkeley. Students who have taken the equivalent of a third-year college-level French course elsewhere may enroll in French 102, and should contact the French Undergraduate Advising Office at frendept@berkeley.edu to confirm placement.

Additional information:
French 102 is the sole prerequisite to all UCB French courses numbered 103 and above. Course open to non-native speakers of French only. Course conducted in French. Satisfies 1 course requirement in French major or French minor.

Sex, Monsters and the Margins of the Francophone Premodern
103A : Language and Culture
Fall 2023
Class No: 21467
179 Dwinelle Hall
MWF
Henry Ravenhall
11:00 AM - 11:59 AM
What is a monster? When, where, and why does it turn up? From werewolves to cannibals, fairies to fish-knights, we will look at monstrous bodies, behaviors, and spaces through a range of French-language texts and images from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. We will think critically about how the “monstrous” is related to non-normative identity and the marginal (often literally at the margins of the known world and in the margins of manuscript books). We will consider how monstrosity intersects with issues of gender, sexuality, race, and religion. We will also engage with some modern theory about monstrosity, as well as recent thinking about modern practices of representing and othering the Middle Ages.

No knowledge of medieval French is required, as all texts will be read in modern French translation. Students will have the opportunity to work with the original language, but this remains completely optional. The course will be taught in French.

Sounds of Silence
121A : Literary Themes, Genres, Structures
Fall 2023
Class No: 31172
51 Evans Hall
MWF
Liesl Yamaguchi
1:00 PM - 1:59 PM
Coercive claims about silence abound in today’s divisive political atmosphere. “Silence is complicity!” “Silence implies consent!” And even “Silence is violence.” But how do we determine what silence “is,” does, or means? An ethics of interpretation seems particularly elusive when it comes to language that, by definition, is not there. In this course, we will read our way through literary texts that foreground silence as a means of investigating how the absence of language is made to signify. We will focus our attention on silent characters, poetic pauses, and pointed omissions, inflecting our inquiry with codified legal interpretations of silence as well as linguistic studies of turn-taking and ellipsis. Topics to be covered include the cultural specificity of silence, the syntax of silence, silence and gender, silence and subalternity, silencing, silence and power, and silence in poetry. Conducted in French.

French for Economics, Politics, and Business
137 : French for Professions
Fall 2023
Class No: 30842
20 Wheeler
MWF
Claire Tourmen Perron
12:00 PM - 12:59 PM
Learning Objectives:
This class provides a solid introduction to French-speaking political, economic, and business cultures.

The course’s cultural objectives are coupled with 1) linguistic objectives to help you speak about political and economic issues in French and 2) intercultural objectives to prepare you for the workplace in francophone organizations, i.e. for an internships, especially if you follow the new professionalizing opportunity offered in “International Relations” within the French Minor and Major (for more details, contact Nina Cohen, ninarennertcohen@berkeley.edu, or Claire Tourmen, tourmen@berkeley.edu).

We will also train you to take an optional test (planned in the French Department in December 2023 – work in progress), recognized in francophone professional worlds, le Diplôme en Français Professionel, delivered by La Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Paris, to boost your employability and certify your proficiency in French in certain professional domains.

This class will be an asset if you want to work in diplomacy or international affairs, politics, economics, international business, law, media, and NGOs. It is well suited for majors/minors in French and as a complement for majors in Political Science, Global Studies, Law, Economics, Business Administration, Sociology, Journalism, Media Studies, among others. This class is also a perfect introduction or complement for “Political Science 147F – Contemporary French politics in historical perspective: the republican model in transition,” taught by Professor Jonah Levy.

Learning Outcomes:
After this class, you will be able to:

Navigate French-speaking media and decipher their different orientations;
Read, listen to, and discuss current political/economic/business matters in French, with the use of specialized vocabulary;
Understand the unique features and challenges of French-speaking political/economic systems, and francophone businesses;
Immerse yourself with intercultural relevance in professional francophone worlds;
Conduct a semi-directive interview in French.

Course Organization:
Each class will involve a mix of teacher and student presentations, discussions, role plays, and analysis of authentic documents (texts, audio, video etc.). The class will be conducted entirely in French. This will be an interactive class, aimed at maximizing your time interacting in French. Your grammar does not need to be perfect; we will focus on being understood and accurate (both linguistically and culturally). We will work on texts from famous francophone thinkers such as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the economist Thomas Piketty, and others, and this class will help you learn techniques to do research in social sciences. We will welcome a few French-speaking guest lecturers from other departments/universities (e.g., in political science, in sociology, geography…) and from professional worlds (e.g., Unesco, Gastronomy and Food-Industry…) in class.

The class will be organized around 5 chapters:

Introduction: we will reflect on the politic/economic/social state of France within Europe today;
Chapter 1 (Political Life): you will learn about French political parties, public debates, and the chief politicians and institutions in France;
Chapter 2 (Media): you will learn how to navigate French-speaking media worldwide;
Chapter 3 (International Relations): you will learn how to understand French-speaking countries’ positions on the world stage;
Chapter 4 (Business): you will learn about the main features of the French economy, its strengths and its challenges; we will dive into the institutional and spatial organization of commerce in France, as well as into several economic sectors representative of the country’s strengths and specificities (e.g., agro-food industry and gastronomy, tourism, engineering and technology);
Chapter 5 (Workplace cultures): you will learn about workplace cultures in France and prepare yourself for a professional immersion (e.g., through an internship). You will also be trained to perform successful professional interactions in French.

Special features of the class: This class will be tied to the active participation in the Social Science Speaker Series in French, organized by the French Department and the Center of Excellence for French and Francophone Studies in Berkeley. It will also include an online exchange with students from Sciences Po Lyon on political/economic topics.

Instructor:
Claire Tourmen Perron
Lecturer at UCB French Department, tourmen@berkeley.edu

A French native, Claire Tourmen was trained in humanities, philosophy and political sciences at La Sorbonne (Paris I) before becoming a researcher in Education at AgroSup Dijon-University of Burgundy, where she specialized in professional learning (including psychology of work), intercultural learning, and program evaluation. Claire did her PhD resesarch within a consulting firm in Lyon while performing public program evaluation for the European Union and various national and local organizations in France. She also taught program evaluation at the Master level at Sciences Po Lyon, Sciences Po Rennes, and other universities. She experienced working with multiple professional worlds in France and Québec while she was teaching vocational training in Dijon and supervising internships, including abroad. She is a reviewer for journals such as Evaluation, American Journal of Evaluation, The Canadian journal of program evaluation, Revue Française d’Administration Publique, Culture and Psychology. Since 2017, she has been a lecturer in the UC Berkeley French Department and in charge of the “French For Politics” class in the Spring of 2022. She is now developing professionalizing paths for learners of French at UC Berkeley, in collaboration with Déborah Blocker, other colleagues, and partners, after having received a grant from the French Embassy in the US/Face Foundation.

The Refugee “Crisis” in Fiction, Film and Photography
141 : French Studies in an International Context
Fall 2023
Class No: 26159
2066 VLSB
TTh
Debarati Sanyal
9:30 AM - 10:59 AM
This course seeks to accompany the journey of refugees attempting to cross borders into Europe. How are dominant views of the refugee “crisis” currently shaped by the media? How does activist or experimental art change these visions? We will use contemporary film, fiction, photography, VR platforms and the press, to explore the experiences and stories of those fleeing poverty, violence and climate change. How are the exiled trapped by land and sea borders? How do they confront, challenge, and cross these borders? How do they offer new ways of thinking about becoming and belonging? We will consider border technology, surveillance, encampment and detention, the asylum process, resettlement and sanctuary. Our viewing and readings will also migrate from the French-speaking world to places such as the US-Mexico border and Ukraine.

Narrative fiction by Marie NDiaye, Joyce Carol Oates, Ali Smith, Valeria Luiselli, Shumona Sinha, Natacha Appanah.

Art installations (photography, VR platforms) by Zach Blas, Alejandro Iñárittu, Darryl Emerson, Hito Steyerl, Richard Mosse and John Akomfrah.

Films include Welcome by Philippe Lioret, The Messengers by Hélène Crouzillat and LaetitiaTura, Those Who Jump by Abou Bakar Sidibé, Estephan Wagner and Moritz Siebert, Dheepan, by Jacques Audiard, His House by Remi Weekes

Introduction to French Linguistics
146A
Fall 2023
Class No: 23152
B3 Dwinelle Hall
TTh
Mairi McLaughlin
2:00 PM - 3:29 PM
This course provides an introduction to the linguistic analysis of Contemporary French. You will develop the basic skills of linguistic analysis in order to understand how French works. We consider four different levels: phonology (sounds), morphology (internal structure of words), syntax (word order), and lexis (vocabulary). The course places considerable emphasis not just on the linguistic system but also on the variation that characterizes French and all other natural languages. We will explore, for example, why the negative particle ne is often not used in spoken French, how French varies in different places around the world, and how inclusive and non-binary language is currently evolving in French. We use real linguistic data as much as possible, so alongside formal written texts, you will find yourself analyzing conversations, social media, and excerpts from films.

The following are recommended works only.

Abeillé, Anne, and Daneille Godard (eds) (2021) La grande grammaire du français. Arles: Actes Sud.
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy and Janice Carruthers with Rosalind Temple (2001) Problems and Perspectives: Studies in the Modern French Language. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.
Battye, Adrian, Marie-Anne Hintze and Paul Rowlett (2000) The French Language Today: A Linguistic Introduction. London – New York: Routledge.
Blanche-Benveniste, Claire with Philippe Martin (2010). Le français: usages de la langue parlée. Leuven/Paris: Peeters.
Fagyal, Zsuzsanna, Douglas Kibbee and Fred Jenkins (2006) French: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Léon, Pierre et Parth Bhatt (2005) Structure du français moderne: introduction à l'analyse linguistique. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.
Polzin-Haumann and Wolfgang Schweickard (eds) (2015) Manuel de linguistique française. Berlin – Boston: De Gruyter.
Reutner, Ursula (ed.) (2017) Manuel des francophonies. Berlin – Boston: De Gruyter.
Riegel, Martin, Jean-Christophe Pellat, and René Rioul (2004) Grammaire méthodique du français. 3rd edn. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Women and Writing in France, 1500-1800
150B : Women in French Literature
Fall 2023
Class No: 31013
4104 Dwinelle Hall
TTh
Susan Maslan
11:00 AM - 12:29 PM
“Dans ses meubles, dût-elle en avoir l’ennui, / Il ne faut écritoire, encre, papier, ni plume./ Le mari doit dans les bonnes coutumes, écrire tout ce qui s’écrit chez lui.” Molière, L’École des femmes

This course will explore the relation between women and writing from the sixteenth through the end of the eighteenth centuries in France. We will study women writers, but we will also explore discourses about women and writing. We will read forms of writing traditionally associated with women—such as letter writing—that may not typically be included in the category of “writing” as well as novels, plays, and poems. We will seek to understand what writing meant to women: how it helped them form their own identities, explore and construct the self, and to participate beyond the domestic sphere. And we will study how the broader culture thought about women and writing: was writing transgressive or dangerous? Was it ridiculous? Was it a mode of creating and affirming community? Why were women readers and writers sometimes depicted as either sexual predators or, equally dangerous, distinctly uninterested in men? Recent critics have brought much early modern women’s writing back into the center of literary and scholarly discussion, but some scholars resist the notion that women made a significant contribution to the world of letters: one scholar has gone so far as to argue—ingeniously—that the great poet Louise Labé didn’t really exist. She was, on this account, a mere “paper creature" invented by male poets! In addition to these topics, we will explore the material life of writing: paper, ink, pens, envelopes, desks, etc.

REQUIRED TEXTS: Marguerite de Navarre, "L’Heptaméron"; Louise Labé, "Sonnets"; Lafayette, "La Princesse de Cleves"; Molière, "Les Femmes savantes"; Riccoboni, Charrière, Lettres de Mistress Henley; "Ernestine"; Laclos, "Les Liaisons dangereuses" (extrait); Stael, "De la litterature."

The Invention of Human Rights in France
171 : A Concept in French Cultural History
Fall 2023
Class No: 31014
115 Social Sciences
TTh
Susan Maslan
12:30 PM - 1:59 PM
France prides itself on being the birthplace and the home of human rights which were first articulated in the Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789). Indeed, it conceives many of its engagements around the world today as the necessary corollary of its commitment to human rights. Why was it that the idea of human rights first came into being in France? How did a notion of the “human” evolve there and how did the idea of “rights” get attached to it? How and why did literature participate in the creation of what we might call a culture or a “mentalité” of human rights? Why and how did rights appear as a remedy to problems of suffering and inequality? How did a specifically literary discourse act upon and with other discourses, e.g., political and economic? Can we distinguish a literary history of human rights?

In this course we will examine the development of the idea and the figure
of the human—that is, of some nature that is specific to human beings, on
the one hand, but that is shared by all of them on the other. We will see
how the human evolves in relation to the State, the family, and love. We
will examine the relation between citizenship and humanity—why and when are some humans and some citizens? Who is included and who is excluded from these categories? We will also study critiques of human rights and debates over human rights both from the earliest period of the invention of human rights and in our period. Readings will include primary literary texts such as Corneille, Horace, Montesquieu, Les Lettres persanes, Rousseau, Le Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité and more. We will also discuss some of the voluminous secondary literature: Hannah Arendt, Samuel Moyn, Jacques Rancière and more.

Pronoun Wars
173 : Linguistics & Literature
Fall 2023
Class No: 31174
115 Social Sciences
TTh
Will Burton
2:00 PM - 3:29 PM
“I said that personal pronouns engineer gender through language, and personal pronouns are, if I may say so, the subject matter of each one of my books.” —Monique Wittig, “The Mark of Gender,” in The Straight Mind.

Based loosely around the lesbian theorist-novelist Monique Wittig’s “pronoun trilogy”—L’Opoponax (1964), Les Guérillères (1969), Le Corps lesbian (1973)—this course will focus on the history of debates about the French personal pronoun system, especially those related to gender.

We will study four areas of literary experimentation, linguistic research and social controversy in the use of personal pronouns in French:

the omnipersonal pronoun “on”;
the primacy of the masculine over feminine;
the relationship between “I” and “you” (“tu” and “vous”);
the development of gender-neutral third-person pronouns.
The syllabus will feature works of literature, cinema and philosophy as well as research and theory in linguistics; we will also look at activist tracts and materials and media coverage of pronoun-related polemics.

Readings will include Wittig, Roland Barthes, Cathy Barasc and Michèle Causse, Émile Benveniste, Luca Gréco, and more.

Paris, c’est nous: Paris in French-language film
178A : Studies in French Film
Fall 2023
Class No: 31009
B-4 Dwinelle
TTh
Maya Sidhu
11:00 AM - 12:29 PM
Course taught entirely in French. This course will explore how Paris provides an inspiration to filmmakers both past and present as a site to explore questions of French national culture, and its relationship to race, class, gender, and sexual identities. This course will culminate in a study of a cohort of contemporary filmmakers creating new representations of Paris that film critic Claire Diao calls “La Double Vague,” or “The Double Wave,” referring to their dual cultural identity. This will include films by Franco-Senegalese directors, Alice Diop and Maïmouna Doucouré, Franco-Moroccan director Houda Benyamina, and Franco-Malian director Ladj Ly, among others. Throughout our course, we will also consider how French-language filmmakers view the city of Paris as emblematic of French cinematic identity. We will look at how films throughout history interrogate the way Paris figures as its own text in films of The French New Wave (1958-1962) and in the films of the banlieue genre of the 1990s. We will also examine the precursors to this contemporary movement through films set in Paris such as: Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker, 1963) and J’ai pas sommeil (Claire Denis, 1994). This class is open to both French and Film majors, though a knowledge of French is required (Film students will not be assessed on their competency in French). Students counting this course towards the major or minor in French must submit all written work in French. Class discussions are in French.

Literature and Colonialism
185
Fall 2023
Class No: 26160
B-33 Dwinelle Hall
TTh
Soraya Tlatli
12:30 PM - 1:59 PM
Dans ce cours nous étudierons, à travers un ensemble de témoignages et de fictions littéraires la manière dont des écrivains tels que Marguerite Duras, Albert Camus, Mouloud Feraoun ont décrit leurs expériences vécues de la colonisation. Sur le plan historique, nous nous interrogerons sur la façon dont l’idéologie coloniale s’est adressée aux enfants à travers un réseau d’images et de récits. Les questions que nous poserons seront relatives à la manière dont l’idéologie coloniale est diffusée ou contestée par ce type de récit. Nous essaierons ainsi de faire ressortir la complexité de la question de l’identité coloniale et nous analyserons le thème de l’appartenance à l’empire colonial. A partir de ce point de départ, nous interrogerons de manière plus historique les problèmes politiques et culturels qui se sont posés à la France en tant qu’empire.

Graduate Courses

Proseminar
200
Fall 2023
Class No: 21443
4226 Dwinelle Hall
F
Mairi McLaughlin
1:00 PM - 1:59 PM
This course gives new graduate students a broad view of the French Department faculty, the courses they teach, and their fields of research. In addition, it will introduce students to some practical aspects of their graduate career, issues that pertain to specific fields of research, and questions currently being debated across the profession.

Second Language Acquisition: Concepts, Theories, and Debates
206 : Special Topics in French Linguistics
Fall 2023
Class No: 30837
4226 Dwinelle Hall
Th
Rick Kern
2:00 PM - 4:59 PM
This seminar will explore the field of second language acquisition, taking account of not only its central concepts and theories but also its tensions and controversies. We will begin by considering canonical psycholinguistic and interactional theories of second language acquisition and then contrast them with more recent sociocultural and ecological/emergentist theories. Along the way, we will see how perspectives on language, culture, context, and competence have shifted over time. We will consider some of the linguistic, cognitive, and social dimensions of children’s acquisition of a mother tongue and compare them with processes of second language development and the diverse factors that affect those processes in older children and adults. In the first part of the semester, we will consider questions such as: What is the relationship between age and language learning? Why are some people better at learning languages than others? Is successful language development a matter of aptitude? length of exposure? practice? motivation? What is the importance of the first language in second language acquisition? What is the role of explicit instruction? We will focus on key concepts such as competence and performance, input and interaction, aptitude and motivation, form and meaning, critical periods, interlanguage and fossilization, learning versus acquisition. We will then turn to questions that reflect a focus on discourse rather than on language as viewed from a structural perspective. Here we will be concerned with relations between discourse and culture, mediation, language socialization, identity issues, multilingual subjectivity, and how all these come into play in language education. This latter portion of the course will consider alternative approaches to second language acquisition, including the adaptation of sociocultural theory, ecological theories, and different notions of competence (e.g., translingual competence, intercultural communicative competence, symbolic competence). The seminar will also examine research methods associated with these various approaches.

Articles/chapters supplemented by VanPatten et al. (2020). Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction. Third Edition. (Routledge).

French Absolutism, at Home and Abroad
230B : Studies in 17th-Century French Literature
Fall 2023
Class No: 30838
4226 Dwinelle Hall
M
Nick Paige
2:00 PM - 4:59 PM
This course will introduce students to the paradigmatic example of the early modern court society, Louis XIV’s “absolutist” court. Moving out from the foundational studies of Foucault, Elias, and Marin, we will explore a number of more recent efforts—coming from the disciplines of both literary studies and history—to parse the historical and historiographical category of absolutism and some of the received ideas associated with it (the “Classical Age,” “subjectivity,” possibly “modernity” itself). Over the course of the semester, we will examine a series of sites where the culture of absolutism took shape, from the gardens of Versailles and its festivals, to the salons of Paris, and outward to the east (India) and west (North America). Central to our concerns will be the specific place and work of literature in the making of absolutist culture; as such, we will be reading a careful selection of canonical literary texts from the period (e.g., La Fontaine, Molière, Racine, Lafayette), alongside a range of other texts and artifacts. All texts available in English, and students of other periods and national traditions will be encouraged to develop projects on their own specific interests. For books in French, we’ll organize a purchase at the beginning of the semester.

The Surrealist Movement: Literature, Psychoanalysis and Politics
265A : Modern Studies
Fall 2023
Class No: 30839
4226 Dwinelle Hall
T
Soraya Tlatli
3:00 PM - 6:00 PM
In this seminar we will consider the surrealist group as well as its poetic and political influence from the 1920’s to the 1960’s. We will first pay particular attention to the relationship between literature and psychoanalysis as well as to the specificity of the surrealist image. We will read various texts such as Les Champs Magnétiques, (Breton, Soupault), Le Manifeste du surréalisme, Martinique, charmeuse de serpents (Breton, Masson.) We will then focus our attention towards the ongoing exchange between Freud, Lacan, Breton and Dali. We will also discuss the political importance of the surrealist group in the ideological struggle against French colonialism. Finally, we will turn our attention toward the influence of the surrealist movement on francophone writers such as Mohammed Dib (Qui se souvient de la mer) and Aimé Césaire (Cahier d’un retour au pays natal).

A Practical Introduction to Rare Books, Manuscript Studies and Archival Research
281 : Interdisciplinary Topics in Literary and Cultural Studies
Fall 2023
Class No: 30840
4226 Dwinelle Hall / Bancroft
W
Déborah Blocker
1:00 PM - 3:59 PM
This seminar provides a practical introduction to the skills students in the humanities will need to conduct research on original sources for their dissertation work and is taught in the Bancroft Library. The class introduces students to book history and exposes them to a wide variety of rare books, which we practice locating, describing (according to the standards of material bibliography), and analyzing for research purposes. The class also provides an initiation to manuscript studies, offering an overview of the history of scribal culture, as well as an introduction to the study of manuscript materials. Students will acquire foundational skills in codicology (the material analysis of manuscripts), paleography (the deciphering of scripts) and transcription practices. An introduction to archival research is also offered, through secondary readings and a discussion of how archives are collected, classified, and catalogued in repositories. Strategies for locating archives from afar, working within a collection and analyzing archival documents will be developed through practical exercises.

This introduction to rare books, manuscripts and archives will initially be based on materials chosen by the instructor, whether drawn from the Bancroft’s collection or accessible on-line (the specificities of working with virtual documents will also be discussed). But, over the course of the semester, students be encouraged to call in books and manuscripts related to their own research interests, in whatever language or field they intend to work in, and these will be discussed collectively in class, to address materials and periods intersecting with, or corresponding to, the interests of those enrolled. The seminar will be validated via three short practical exercises to be performed on materials directly related to the students’ research plans: 1) a succinct material and contextual analysis of a rare book, 2) the brief transcription of an excerpt of a manuscript document and 3) the drawing up of a precise plan to study archives or a collection of printed documents in a specific repository, and/or on-line.

This seminar satisfies the REMS requirement for Critical Approaches and Methodology.

It is currently scheduled for Wed. 1-4pm, but the scheduling could be adapted to students’ needs, provided a room can be found in the Bancroft Library.

If you are interested in taking this class, please contact the instructor, Prof. Déborah Blocker, via email as soon as possible (dblocker@berkeley.edu).

Teaching French in College: First Year
375A
Fall 2023
Class No: 32129
4226 Dwinelle Hall
Th
Vesna Rodic
12:00 PM - 1:59 PM
This course (1) provides participants with an understanding of basic principles of first- and second-language acquisition and the theoretical underpinnings of commonly used language teaching methods, and (2) offers in-service training in teaching, in creating and adapting instructional materials, and in designing tests for use in the Lower Division Program in French. The two-hour weekly meetings consist of a one-hour lecture/discussion and a one-hour practicum. GSIs are also required to attend a pilot class on select dates and as indicated on the lesson plans. Enrollment in this course is required for GSIs in their first semester of teaching in the French Department. The course is also open to GSIs teaching other foreign languages and whose departments do not offer a pedagogy program, as it qualifies for the GSI Teaching and Resource Center's Certificate of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

Required Texts:

Lightbown, P. and Spada, N. How Languages Are Learned, 4th edition. Oxford University Press.
Additional select readings (to be found on BCourses)