Spring 2014

Reading and Composition (R&C)

The Trouble with Crowds
R1A (Section 1) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2014
Instructor: C. Talley

Readings:

Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Zola, Germinal; Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego; Reader with excerpts from: Whitman, Leaves of Grass; Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen; Taine, The Origins of Contemporary France; Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind; Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”; Hawthorne, “Wakefield”; Film: Lang, Metropolis

Course Description:

From the alienating crowds on city streets to the rebellious masses that threaten political order, we will consider modern representations of the people as a troublesome group. People in great numbers – especially in cities – have posed a variety of problems for modern society; they redefine both politics and day-to-day experience. For some writers, crowds are the lifeblood of democracy; for others, they are masses of unruly citizens liable to jeopardize social order with rebellion and revolt, if not simply with sloth and vice. For still other writers, they are the overwhelming crush of humanity characteristic of modern city life, numbing the senses and creating a unique brand of loneliness. In this course, we will explore works that demonstrate the mix of hope and anxiety that crowds inspire, including novels and stories by Hugo, Poe, and Zola; poems by Baudelaire and Whitman; essays by Taine, Le Bon, and Freud; and a film by Lang.

Additional Information:

French R1A satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition Requirement. Classes are conducted in ENGLISH.

Community: What Makes One?
R1B (Section 1) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2014
Instructor: A. Skrzypczynska

Readings:

Working list of texts:

Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)

Tradition (Marci Blackman)

“The Lottery” (Shirley Jackson)

W, or the Memory of Childhood (Georges Perec)

“The Growing Stone,” “The Silent Men” – from Exile and the Kingdom (Albert Camus)

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera)

Course Description:

This course will move through texts that expose and try to work through the implications of being part of a community. Participation in a community is rarely a static phenomenon and often demands a process of negotiation—be it between cultural boundaries, the past and the present, or the new and the old. As we will see, these processes are also often the grounds on which a relationship between the individual and the collective is articulated. Taking as a point of departure the commonly-held association of community with oneness, we will examine the variety of demands, questions, and problems raised by the negotiation of individual “oneness” and collective “oneness.”

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.

Additional Information:

French R1B satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement. Classes are conducted in ENGLISH.

The Fly in the Ointment: Literary Setbacks
R1B (Section 2) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2014
Instructor: D. Hoffmann

Readings:

Émile Zola, The Masterpiece; Franz Kafka, “A Hunger Artist”; Honoré de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece and Sarrasine; Paul Valéry, excerpts from Notebooks; poems and essays by Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Course Description:

Works of art often don’t come to fruition as planned, if at all. From the spiritual to the material, this course will explore setbacks of all kinds: waning inspiration, the pangs of self-doubt, the problems of a fair-weather muse, even bankruptcy and censorship. We’ll consider such mishaps, reversals, and obstacles both as a theme in literature and as a living problem for artists and writers alike. Readings will include prose from Zola, Balzac, Kafka, and Flaubert, along with poetry and/or essays from Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valéry, and Mallarmé.

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.

Additional Information:

French R1B satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement. Classes are conducted in ENGLISH.

Upper-Division Courses 

An Introduction to the Films of the French New Wave
24 : Freshman Seminar

Spring 2014
Instructor: N. Paige

Readings:

A reader will include both classic essays from the period and modern historical and critical work.

Course Description:

This seminar will introduce students to a number of representative films of the French New Wave, perhaps the most important and emblematic moment in modern cinema, and a point of reference for filmmakers ranging from Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai. Along the way, we will look at the theoretical and cultural factors that help explain this extraordinary flowering of filmmaking talent in the late 1950s and early 1960s; and we will also be reading some important short essays from the period that will help bring the films’ originality into focus. Movies screened will be subtitled and will include works by Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Demy, Rohmer, Eustache, and others.

Additional Information:

Course limited to freshmen.

Writing in French, 3 sections ("W")

102
Spring 2014
Instructors: R. Shuh; E. Colon; D. Blocker

Readings:

Course Reader; Other readings as announced.

Course Description:

This course introduces students to different modes of proposing and furthering a point of view or argument (whether in a critical essay, through dramatic metaphor, or in plays or short stories). To this end, we read passages from a variety of works, such as critical essays, novels, and plays, in order to study their use of language, their structure, and their tactics of persuasion. Through readings on problems of language and the visual arts, we explore the ways in which words and images structure thought, communication and interactions of individuals and societies. Great attention is paid, both through the readings and through extensive written work, to questions of interpretation as well as to the logical and coherent development of reading and writing skills leading to correct and effective expression in French.

Prerequisites:

Completion of French 4 at Berkeley or the equivalent. Students who have taken the equivalent of a third-year college level French course elsewhere, or who have AP scores of 5, may also enroll in French 102; Additional placement questions may be directed to the course instructor.

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. This course is designated as “W” (writing intensive) in the French major.

Literature, Identity, Social Class ("W")
103B : Language and Culture

Spring 2014
Instructor: S. Maslan

Readings:

Reading to include: Moliere, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme; Marivaux, Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard; Duras, Ourika; Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert; Renoir, La Grande Illusion; Truffault, L’Enfant sauvage; Sartre, Huis clos

Course Description:

How does literature tell us who we are and where we fit in society? How does literature both create and reflect the way societies work and the way individuals participate in or resist social norms? How has literature been a means by which people have sought to re-make their identities and re-create themselves or, on the other hand, how have some works of literature both subverted and maintained the status quo? We will read texts from the seventeenth-century through the present and we will study some films that investigate these questions from all sorts of perspectives. We will read plays, short stories, and novellas.

Prerequisites:

Students must have either previously completed French 102 or its equivalent, or be concurrently enrolled in French 102. For additional placement information please see Placement Guidelines.

Additional information:

Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature. This course is designated as “W” (writing intensive) in the French major.

Love, Humor and Satire in an Age of War and Plague
114 : Late Medieval Literature

Spring 2014
Instructor: D. Hult

Course Description:

The Black Plague, the Hundred Years’ War, serve as the gruesome backdrop for one of the richest periods of creation in the aristocratic tradition of courtly poetry and romance, extending from the mid-fourteenth to the late fifteenth century. Were the light and frivolous fictions of love and seduction merely an escapist fantasy, a way of thinking of things other than death and disease, or is there a darker side to these fictions? In the course of the semester, we will study lyric and narrative works by some of the best-known court authors of the period: Guillaume de Machaut, Christine de Pizan, Charles d’Orléans, Alain Chartier, and François Villon, as well as some anonymous works reflecting the growing importance of a bourgeois economic and literary sensibility: the satiric Quinze Joyes du mariage and the brilliant Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin. Class discussion and readings in French. No previous knowledge of Medieval French is required or expected, though we will read some works in the original.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Additional information:

Knowledge of Old French not required; readings in modern French translation. This course satisfies 1 French Major course requirement in the “Literature” (112-120) category or 1 French Major course requirement in the Elective category. This course also satisfies 1 Historical Period Requirement in the French major. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature.

The Art of Passion -- Phèdre, Racine, and French Classical Tragedy ("W")
117B : Seventeenth-Century Literature

Spring 2014
Instructor: N. Paige

Readings:

Corneille, Horace; Racine, Phèdre; Andromaque; Britannicus; Bérénice

Course Description:

Despite its reputation for rationality and rigid codification, seventeenth-century tragedy might be more accurately described as hyperemotional—a device not only for regulating but also propagating what people then called “passions.” For no playwright is this more true than for Racine, known at the time for having a knack for making his audience dissolve in pools of tears. This course proposes an examination of Racine’s theater of emotion through a consideration of four of his best-known works, especially Phèdre, to which we will return periodically throughout the semester. Students can expect to come away, first, with deep knowledge of this enduringly famous play on a number of levels: we’ll spend a lot of time making sure we understand its language; we’ll look at the Greek and Roman texts Racine was in dialogue with; and we will sample the huge tradition of commentary it spawned. We’ll also seek to understand how Phèdre fits in with the playwright’s broader oeuvre, with the trajectory of his career, with other Classical tragedies (notably those of Corneille), and with tragedies of other times and places. This course is designated as “W” (writing intensive) in the French major.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Additional Information:

This course satisfies 1 French Major course requirement in the “Literature” (112-120) category or 1 French Major course requirement in the Elective category. This course also satisfies 1 Historical Period Requirement in the French major. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature.

The Arrival of Modernity ("R")
119A : Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Spring 2014
Instructor: M. Lucey

Readings:

Stendhal, La chartreuse de Parme (Gallimard – Folioplus); Sand, Les maîtres-sonneurs (Gallimard-Folio); Baudelaire, Naissance de la musique moderne: Richard Wagner et Tannhaüser à Paris (Fayard- Mille et une nuits); Baudelaire, Le peintre de la vie moderne (Fayard – Mille et une nuits).

Course Description:

This course is intended to help students acquire research skills while focusing on works by three nineteenth-century authors who deal in one way or another with the arrival of the phenomenon we loosely call “modernity.” We will also study a number of different kinds of secondary sources alongside our primary texts, and learning about the social, cultural, and political history of nineteenth-century France. We will spend a good part of the semester on Stendhal long masterpiece, La chartreuse de Parme, a novel about the production of modern forms of political and sentimental subjectivity. Then we will turn to George Sand’s Les Maîtres Sonneurs, a novel about the fading away of certain traditional ways of life, certain landscapes, and certain musical practices. Finally, we will look at some critical writing (and also a few poems) by Charles Baudelaire that deal with the startling experience of modern music and art in the Paris of the 1860s. All students will be expected to undertake small research projects of their own dealing with one of the three authors we will be studying.

Prerequisites:
French 102 or equivalent or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

This course satisfies 1 French Major course requirement in the “Literature” (112-120) category or 1 French Major course requirement in the Elective category. Priority enrollment for declared French majors. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature.

This course is designated as an “”R”” (Research-Oriented) course in the French major sequence.

Honoré de Balzac -- “To Sell Out or Not to Sell Out”
126 : Senior Seminar

Spring 2014
Instructor: M. Lucey

Readings:

All by Balzac: Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (Flammarion-GF), Illusions perdues (Gallimard-Folio), La Muse du département (Gallimard-Folio), La maison du chat-qui-pelote (Flammarion-GF). We will also be reading a few other Balzac short stories that are either included in these volumes (La bourse, Gambara) or will be provided via b-space (L’illustre Gaudissart, Pierre Grassou).

Course Description:

Honoré de Balzac is the author of one of the great novel cycles, La comédie humaine, in which he set out to chronicle the social life of his time (the first half of the nineteenth-century in France). In doing so, he became one of the most influential novelists of all time. One of his great interests was the nature of artistic activity, which involved the kinds of ambitions that motivate artists, musicians, and writers to pursue either artistic greatness or celebrity (or, in rare cases, both at the same time). He was also interested in the way business or commerce itself could be pursued artfully. We will spend the semester reading chronologically through a series of his novels and stories that deal with art, music, writing, and commerce and the kind of conflicts that arise when artists come up against forces of economic necessity and the temptations of fame and wealth. Along the way, we will learn a bit about nineteenth-century French social history, about questions of literary form, and about the development of realism as an artistic practice. Students in the seminar will also be asked to do a little bit of independent research into Balzac’s life and various aspects of his social world and historical situation.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Translation and Debate

131A
Spring 2014
Instructor: M. McLaughlin

Readings:

Required: Hervey, Sándor and Ian Higgins, (2002) Thinking French Translation. Recommended: Baker, Mona, (2011) In other words: A coursebook on translation

Course Description:

The discipline known as ‘translation studies’ is a relatively new field and yet it has much to offer the practicing translator. This course brings together aspects of translation theory and translation methodology in order to develop our skills as translators. During the course we will translate both from French into English and from English into French, paying particular attention to the linguistic differences between the two languages that pose problems for translators. One of the main theoretical and methodological questions addressed by the course is how the practice of translation varies according to genre: from the translation of poetry, through scientific translation to subtitles and dubbing in film.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent, or consent of instructor.

Additional Information:

This course satisfies 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French Major. This course satisfies the College of Letters and Science breadth requirement in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

French for Teaching and Related Careers

138
Spring 2014
Instructor: R. Kern

Readings:

Lightbown and Spada, How Languages are Learned,Third Edition. Oxford UP, 2006; French 138 readings on bspace.

Course Description:

This course will introduce students to the field of second language acquisition, considering specific issues in learning and teaching French. What is “grammar” and how does it relate to our everyday use of language? What is the significance of language errors? How do “spoken” and “written” norms differ? What roles do a student’s native language, as well as motivation, memory, and personality play in the learning of a foreign language? How do social factors affect language learning? What is the nature of the relationship between language and culture, and how can culture be taught through language? We will study models of second language acquisition, as well as a variety of approaches to the teaching of French as a foreign language. Students will learn how to observe and analyze teaching and will get practice in preparing and teaching a micro-lesson.

Prerequisites:

French 35 and 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

This course satisfies 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French Major. This course also satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

An Introduction to the Films of the French New Wave
140D : French Literature in English Translation

Spring 2014
Instructor: N. Paige

Readings:

A reader will include both classic essays from the period and modern historical and critical work.

Course Description:

Though by many accounts a mere four-year phenomenon, the French New Wave is arguably the most emblematic movement in the history of modern cinema, one that continues to inspire filmmakers from Los Angeles to Teheran to Hong Kong. This class provides a comprehensive overview of the movement and its major films, with attention to the cultural and theoretical factors that help explain this extraordinary flowering of filmmaking talent in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Lectures, in English, will cover topics such as: “cinephilia” and auteur theory; technological innovations and the transformation of urban experience; post-war social upheavals and the rise of consumerism; the “ontology” of the image and film as documentary; time, narrative, and the ideology of form. Movies screened will be subtitled and will include works by Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Demy, Rohmer, Eustache, and others. Readings will include classic essays from the period as well as modern historical and critical work.

Prerequisites:

Open to all students. Course taught in English.

Additional information:

No knowledge of French is required. All lectures and discussions in English. This course satisfies 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French major if written work is done in French. If written work is done in English, this course can satisfy 1 “Outside Elective” course requirement in the French major, with prior approval of French Undergraduate Major Adviser.

Please note new time for weekly screenings of films: Screenings are Mondays from 5:40 to 7:15. Students who cannot attend screenings may view films on their own.

Satisfies the College of Letters and Science breadth requirement in Arts & Literature.

Students wishing to take this course to satisfy major requirements in the English or Film major should consult with their undergraduate major adviser.

Women and Writing in France, 1500-1800
150A : Women in French Literature

Spring 2014
Instructor: S. Maslan

Readings:

Marguerite de Navarre, L’Heptaméron; Louise Labé, Sonnets; Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves; Madame de Sévigné, Lettres; Molière, Les Femmes savantes; Riccoboni, Ernestine; Stael, De la littérature.

Course Description:

“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 Labe 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, desks, etc.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Additional Information:

Satisfies one “Culture” or one “Elective” course requirement in the French Major. This course also satisfies 1 Historical Period Requirement in the French major. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth requirement in Arts and Literature. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Le Vu et le Cru (The Seen and the Believed)
177B : History and Criticism of Film

Spring 2014
Instructor: U. Dutoit

Readings:

Alain Resnais, Liaisons secrètes, accords vagabonds. Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues et Jean-Louise Leutrat. Cahiers du Cinéma 2006

Course Description:

“I disapprove of death, one begins to sniff the temptation to believe in something.” Clive played by John Guielgud in Providence (1976), Alain Resnais’ first film in English.

“Le vu and le cru” – from “Vous n’avez encore rien vu” (you ain’t seen anything yet), (2012)…Resnais’ most recent film.

In this course we will try to get closer to the extraordinary creativity of Alain Resnais (or at least to a part of his almost 70 years of film production).

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent; French 170 or equivalent is recommended, or consent of instructor. Film studies students should consult with instructor about language prerequisites

Additional Information:

This course satisfies 1 “Culture” or 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French major. This course also satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

weekly screening (required): Wed. 4-6, B-4 Dwinelle

La Question de l'immigration dans la France contemporaine
180D : French Civilization

Spring 2014
Instructor: S. Tlatli

Readings:

Selected Readings to be announced.

Course Description:

Dans ce cours nous analyserons les enjeux théoriques, artistiques et politiques liés a la question de l’immigration en France des populations issues du Maghreb et de l’Afrique. Il faut compter, parmi les questions que nous développerons : le retour du passé colonial dans le présent français, les différences entre les générations d’immigrés depuis la seconde guerre mondiale, la relation entre l’identité nationale et la présence de cultures diverses sur le territoire français, l’interaction entre tradition et modernité à travers l’experience du déplacement.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

This course satisfies 1 “Culture” or 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French major. This course also satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

The Poetics of Political Asylum in Contemporary France
183A : Configurations of Crisis

Spring 2014
Instructor: D. Sanyal

Readings:

List will be finalized by Oct. 15, but contenders include Shumona Singha, Assommons les pauvres!, Eric Emmanuel Schmitt, Ulysse from Bagdad, Delphine Coulin, Samba pour la France, Karine Tuil, Douce France, Boualem Sansal Garraga (excerpts) and Laurent Gaudé, Eldorado. There will also be a strong film component.

Course Description:

Le terme « réfugié » s’appliquera à toute personne qui (…) craignant avec raison d’être persécutée du fait de sa race, de sa religion, de sa nationalité, de son appartenance à un certain groupe social ou de ses opinions politiques, se trouve hors du pays dont elle a la nationalité et qui ne peut ou, du fait de cette crainte, ne veut se réclamer de la protection de ce pays. Article premier de la Convention de Genève, 28 juillet 1951.

This course investigates the itineraries and narratives of refugees who are seeking political asylum in France today. Contemporary fiction and film will help us reconstruct the stages of their flight from political, religious, and also economic oppression, and to chart their perilous journey across transit territories and high seas into France. As refugees confront the legal bureaucracy of asylum, many questions arise: What constitutes the right to asylum? When is a refugee deemed “worthy” or “unworthy”? What forms of trauma and suffering fall under the Geneva Convention’s definition of persecution, and what forms do not? What forms of evidence are required? What stories are considered persuasive or unreliable? What is the role of translation in this process? We will pay particular attention to the forms of personhood that emerge or are put into crisis by clandestine passage, undocumented labor, extra-territorial spaces of detention, etc. We will also consider how the asylum process turns applicants into authors of their past, summoning them to act as translators of their stories before the state and the law. We will pursue these and related questions through readings of literature, cinema, law and theory.

Prerequisites:
French 102 or consent of Instructor.

Additional information:
This course satisfies one “Culture” or one “Elective” requirement in the French major. This course also satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Graduate Courses

The Learned Academies of Early Modern France, Italy and Spain (1500-1800): Knowledge, Sociability, Politics
C203 : Comparative Studies in Romance Literatures and Cultures

Spring 2014
Instructor: D. Blocker

Readings:

See Description

Course Description:

This course investigates the literary, artistic and intellectual importance of the major learned academies of early modern France, Italy and Spain (1500-1800), with an eye to their social and political impact.

Early modern academies were social institutions assembling a group of individuals united by a quest for knowledge, outside of a university setting. Some of these sodalities were large, public and mostly subservient to power. Others were small, private and secretly subversive. Thousands of academies developed throughout Western Europe during the early modern period and these institutions played a major role in the advent of modernity, in a variety of different ways.

It is for example within the academies of early modern France, Italy and Spain that many of the disciplines taught today on university campuses first came together as scholarly discourses (such as philology, linguistics, literary criticism, musicology, history, but also mathematics or physics). Meanwhile, the Universities remained conservative professional schools, restricted to the teaching of law, medicine and theology. It is also amid the academies and their extensive intellectual networks that many of today’s academic values were originally crafted (such as the call for a leisurely and disinterested quest for knowledge for its own sake, or the imperative to think rationally and critically, or the insistence on the importance of integrity, honesty and autonomy in intellectual activities). Last but not least, early modern academies were important social and political experiments in their own right. Because they frequently affirmed themselves to be central elements of the ‘Republic of Letters,’ these institutions have even been described as one of the institutional foundations of the liberal democratic ideal.

In this seminar, we examine the development of the academic movement in France, Italy and Spain over three centuries, while also questioning the ways in which historians have accounted for this complex phenomenon. Alongside these historiographical accounts, we read primary sources (academic statutes, academic orations and polemics, literary and scientific works, letters, etc.), paying special attention to the wide variety of academic institutions and practices. We also investigate the development of new discourses within the academies (from poetics to history and even physics), through a handful of case studies and comparisons. Finally, we question the socio-political foundations, as well as possible repercussions, of the early modern academic movement.

This course is designed to give students in the Romance Languages and Literatures (RLL) track a comparative sense of the social and intellectual history of France, Italy and Spain during the early modern period. It is however also suitable for students of early modern history, literature(s) and philosophy. Historians of early modern art, music or science will also find it beneficial.

Additional Information:

Knowledge of at least one Romance language (French, Italian or Spanish) is preferable but not compulsory. English will be the main language of the secondary readings, but students in the Romance Languages and Literatures track will be expected to work through a variety of primary sources in French, Italian and/or Spanish. Specific reading arrangements can however be made for students not enrolled in the RLL track.

Also listed as Italian Studies C203 and Spanish C203.

Advanced French Syntax
206 : Special Topics in French Linguistics

Spring 2014
Instructor: M. McLaughlin

Readings:

Required: Riegel, M., J.-C. Pellat and R. Rioul (1994) Grammaire méthodique du français, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Course reader to be made available at Copy Central

Recommended: Ayres-Bennett, Wendy and J. Carruthers, with R. Temple (2001) Problems and Perspectives: Studies in the Modern French Language, Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.

Jones, Michael Allan. 1996. Foundations of French Syntax, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McLaughlin, Mairi (2011) Syntactic Borrowing in Contemporary French: A Linguistic Analysis of News Translation, Oxford: Legenda.

Rowlett, Paul (2007) The Syntax of French, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Course Description:

This is an advanced graduate course in French syntax. Although the class will be held in English, the readings will be in both French and English so you will need to have good reading knowledge of academic French. You should also have taken a course in linguistics or in French linguistics before taking this class (e.g. French 146, French 201, Linguistics 120, Linguistics 220 or Linguistics 230). We will explore a range of topics in French syntax concerning the noun phrase, the verb phrase and the order of constituents. Examples of topics include the position of the adjective, the use of the passive, dislocation, and interrogative constructions. We will also consider a set of thematic questions which focus on syntactic variation such as syntax and register, syntax and genre, and syntax and language contact. No single theoretical approach is taken to syntax : some topics are approached descriptively whereas others are approached from a particular theoretical perspective. Similarly, the balance of synchronic and historical data varies according to the topic and we will not focus exclusively on the standard language : the syntax of informal spoken French will be a major focus of the course. Students will acquire a very nuanced understanding of syntactic variation in contemporary French and an excellent understanding of the relationship between the historical evolution of the language and its current state. By focussing on French, students will also develop a better understanding of French approaches to the study of syntax and this should be of benefit to graduates in the linguistics department. A substantial part of the course will be devoted to developing your own research project in French syntax.

Late Medieval Fictions of Love
210A : Studies in Medieval Literature

Spring 2014
Instructor: D. Hult

Readings:

Guillaume de Lorris, Le Roman de la Rose; Richard de Fournival, Le Bestiaire d’Amour; Guillaume de Machaut, Le Livre du Voir Dit; Alain Chartier, La Belle Dame sans Mercy; Christine de Pizan, Cent Ballades d’Amant et de Dame; René d’Anjou, Le Livre du Cœur d’Amour Épris.

Course Description:

This seminar will focus on the tradition(s) of love narrative in the later French Middle Ages beginning with two important thirteenth-century works that set the tone for centuries to come by inscribing the lyric tradition within romance narrative: Guillaume de Lorris’s enormously influential, fragmentary Roman de la Rose; and Richard de Fournival’s intriguing Bestiary of Love, which inscribes the love quest within the hitherto didactic genre of animal lore, the bestiary. The balance of the semester will be devoted to noted authors of the fourteenth and fifteenth cenuries, including Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Christine de Pizan, Alain Chartier, Charles d’Orléans, and René d’Anjou. Although previous knowledge of Old French is not required, inasmuch as most texts will be read in original language editions with facing-page modern French translation, class discussions will frequently focus on the original text. Topics of discussion will include the question of the first-person narrative voice, the relations between lyric and romance, song and book, evolving notions of authorship, and the rhetoric of courtly love.

Violence and Counterviolence in Nineteenth-Century French Literature
250B : Studies in Nineteenth-Century French Literature

Spring 2014
Instructor: D. Sanyal

Readings:

Required:

Honoré de Balzac, La Fille aux yeux d’or, Père Goriot (GF-Flammarion)

Georges Sand, Indiana (folio)

Flaubert, L’Education Sentimentale (GF with dossier)

Zola, Nana (1070-252x)

Maupassant, Bel Ami (GF Flammarion)

Barbey d’Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques (GF-Flammarion)

Rachilde, Monsieur Venus (MLA edition)

Recommended:

Baudelaire, Oeuvres Complètes (eds Laffont)

Zola, Le Roman expérimental (GF with dossier)

David Harvey, Paris Capital of Modernity

Course Description:

“Non seulement, je serais heureux d’être victime, mais je ne haïrais pas d’être bourreau- pour sentir la Révolution de deux manières!” Baudelaire, Pauvre Belgique!

This seminar examines a series of classic works from Romanticism to Decadence in light of their negotiations with the violence of history. These works address the revolutionary upheavals and cultural transformations of the period: the spectral recurrence of revolution and terror; shifting configurations of class struggle; the shock experience in the modern city; the spectacularization of history and urban life; new forms of private and public space; scientific and medical discourses on gender, class and race. Other issues of interest include the politics of aesthetic form (including the visual arts); desire, theatricality, and consumerism; the intersections of writing, gender and sexuality; the colonial imaginary. We will explore these issues through detailed close readings, with a view to contrasting the distinctive discursive strategies of violence and/as counterviolence that characterize each work, while identifying the kinds of inquiry and critique modeled and enabled by literary form. Authors include Balzac, Sand, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, Barbey d’Aurevilly and Rachilde.

Precarity and the (Post-)Modern City
265B : Modern Studies

Spring 2014
Instructor: E. Colon

Readings:

See Description

Course Description:

Nous profiterons de l’ampleur de la période d’investigation proposée par ce séminaire d’ « études modernes » pour retracer la généalogie littéraire et théorique d’une question contemporaine—celle de la précarité urbaine et de sa figuration—dans un ensemble de textes parus entre les années 1830 et les années 2000. Nous nous poserons en particulier les questions suivantes : quelles sont les intersections possibles entre d’un côté les formes esthétiques, les modes, les genres narratifs et de l’autre, les mutations urbaines ayant affecté Paris et sa banlieue depuis le 19ème siècle (hausmannisation des années 1850, « néo-hausmannisation » post-coloniale des années 1960) ? Comment les écritures urbaines françaises de la « modernité », de la « post-modernité » négocient-elles formellement la transformation des modes de production, ainsi que les déplacements des sites de production (en particulier du centre de la ville moderne vers ses marges, et du local vers le global)? Quelles réalités, quels imaginaires sociaux, politiques, temporels, sont « projetés » sur l’espace, par le travail littéraire, théorique de l’urbain ? À l’élaboration de quelles figures précaires les écritures actuelles participent-elles? Quels en sont les ancêtres ? Quelles relations nos textes établissent-ils entre la marginalisation socio-spatiale, ethno-spatiale et l’événementialité des soulèvements populaires (de 1871, de 2005, en particulier) ? Dans quelle mesure la notion de précarité propose-t-elle un point d’entrée dans cette question complexe qu’est celle de la valence politique des formes esthétiques contemporaines ?

Le programme de lecture n’est pas définitif à ce stade mais nous lirons fort probablement des oeuvres (ou sections d’oeuvres) de Balzac, Zola, Apollinaire, Aragon, Céline, Mounsi, Vasset, Rolin, Volodine, en dialogue avec des textes théoriques de Marx, Benjamin, Ross, Lefebvre, Debord, Jameson, Augé, Bourdieu, Wacquant, Castel, Balibar, Mbembé (extraits ou articles, le plus souvent).

French Theory
274 : Traditions of Critical Thought

Spring 2014
Instructor: S. Tlatli

Readings:

See Description

Course Description:

La période qui couvre les années 1960 et 1970, marque une profonde rupture dans les rapports des sciences humaines à l’objet textuel, en même temps que l’émergence du post-structuralisme. Dans ce séminaire, nous analyserons les enjeux théoriques de ces nouveaux rapports au texte. Nous nous interrogerons, en particulier, sur le rôle que la psychanalyse, la linguistique et l’anthropologie a joué dans cette nouvelle compréhension de la production textuelle. Nous analyserons, en particulier, les textes de Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan et Lyotard. Nous tiendrons compte également de la survivance de ces débats, dans les polémiques intellectuelles contemporaines aux Etats-Unis, en France et en Allemagne. Les textes seront disponibles en français mais aussi en anglais, et de même, la discussion sera poursuivie dans les deux langues.

Advanced First Year
302 : Teaching French in College

Spring 2014
Instructor: S. Chavdarian

Readings:
Kern, Literacy and Language Teaching — Applied Linguistics

Course Description:

Provides an understanding of the teaching methods used in French 2, to help instructors effectively implement techniques specifically designed for the French language classroom at Berkeley. This course provides a forum for discussing issues in language pedagogy, and experience in creating and adapting instructional materials and designing tests for use in the UC Berkeley French language program. GSIs are also required to attend a pilot class, taught by Seda Chavdarian, on select dates and as indicated on the lesson plans.

Prerequisites: French 301

Additional information: This course is required for all GSIs teaching French 2 for the first time in the Berkeley French Department. This course is offered in the Spring semester only.

Advanced Level
303 : Teaching in French

Spring 2014
Instructor: D. Pries

Readings:

Course Reader

Course Description
Provides an understanding of the teaching methods used in French 3 and 4, to help instructors effectively implement techniques specifically designed for the French language classroom at Berkeley. French 303 provides a forum for discussing issues in language pedagogy, and experience in creating and adapting instructional materials and designing tests for use in the UC Berkeley French language program. Also provides training in webdesign and preparation for the job market. One two-hour meeting per week.

Prerequisites: French 301 and 302.

Additional information: This course is required for all GSIs teaching French 3 or 4 for the first time in the Berkeley French Department.