All Work for This Class Conducted in French; Completion of FR102, Placement Exam, or Native Language Fluency Required for Enrollment.

This class offers an introduction to the art world and cultural institutions in France (and some francophone countries, such as Québec). We examine these domains as professional fields of practice, and the class is taught entirely in French. It aims to prepare students, both linguistically and culturally, to intern/work in (or with) French in a wide variety of public cultural institutions and private cultural enterprises. Coupled with a supervised internship in French in these fields, either abroad or locally, and two other French classes, this class leads to a certificate of French for Professional Purposes. In the class, we 1) reflect on how the arts and the notion of cultural heritage (patrimoine) are conceived of in francophone countries, 2) enquire into the history of how these perceptions came to be, 3) acquire an understanding of the economy of the cultural sphere, and of how public policies and private enterprises coexist within it and 4) investigate both the variety of ways in which cultural institutions are administered and financed in France today, and the history of these practices. Students will be asked to do short presentations in class on a variety of topics, and they will be guided through the definition of a professional project, as well as in the preparation of CV and cover letter in French, to support their internship/job applications. In the last third of the class, we collectively investigate six cultural institutions or enterprises (the Musée d’Arts de Nantes, the Musée de l’Immigration in Paris, the Comédie Française, the radio station France Culture, the publishing house Les Belles Lettres and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France). As their final project, students document and analyze a cultural institution of the choice, which could be one at which they aim to intern/work.

Required books : 1. Saez, Guy (éd), Institutions et vie culturelles, Les notices de la documentation française, Paris, CNFPT, 2004. 2. Benamou, Françoise, L’Économie de la culture, Paris, La Découverte, coll. Repères, (1996) 2017. 3. Mairesse, Françoise, Gestion de projets culturels : conception, mise en œuvre, direction, Paris, Armand Colin, 2020.