Fall 2015

Reading and Composition (R&C)

Marginal Perspectives
R1A (Section 1) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2015
J. Singer

Readings and Films:

Journal du dehors, Annie Ernaux. Trans. Tanya Leslie

Lettres d’une Péruvienne, Françoise de Graffigny. Trans. David Kornacker

Ballad of the Sad Café. Carson McCullers

The Passion, Jeannette Winterson

Part 3 of Trois femmes puissantes, Marie Ndiaye. Trans. John Fletcher

“Des Boyteux” from Montaigne’s Essais. Trans. Donald Frame

Story 67 from Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron. Trans. P.A. Chilton

Selected poetry of Anne Sexton (Transformations) and Mary Szybist (Incarnadine)

The Piano, Jane Campion

La Cérémonie, Claude Chabrol

Description:

In this course we will read about people living on the margins of themselves and their world. If an outsider both belongs to a community and is rejected from that community, how are the lines of belonging drawn and how does this marginalized perspective work? We will consider how marginal status is constructed within a text and how a marginal point of view shapes a narrative. How do different texts form and question a person’s place in the world?

This course will focus on critical reading and the process of forming a coherent argument. Through a variety of written assignments and revisions we will work on clarifying what we are observing and thinking and how we are communicating those ideas.

Additional information:

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

Guests, Visitors, and Other Nuisances
R1A (Section 2) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2015
E. Ritchey

Readings and Films:

Rosenwasser and Stephen, Writing Analytically

Bradbury, Ray, “The Visitor”

Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot

Homer, The Odyssey

Keats, John, “La Belle dame sans merci”

Marie de France, “Guigemar”

Moliere, Tartuffe

“Ms. Wakefield” (King of the Hill, TV episode)

Perrault, Charles. “La Belle au bois dormant”

Plantez (fabliau)

Renoir, Jean, “Boudu saved from drowning” (film)

Roblès, Emmanuel, “Le Rossignol de Kabylie”

Sweeney, Julia, “Godless America” (radio, This American Life)

Veber, Francis, “Le Dîner de cons” (film)

Description:

The figure of the visitor is one of mystery, novelty- and quite often, trouble. He or she may tell tales, offer gifts, invite self-reflection, and even become an object of love. However, the visitor may also humiliate, curse, or lead his or her host into a snare. The roles associated with giving and receiving hospitality allow the reader to better explore themes of generosity, gratitude, and betrayal. The figure transcends genres as well, from medieval verse to film, from science fiction to farce. In this course we will read, analyze, and discuss works that feature the arrival of a guest or visitor as a driver of plot and characterization. These readings and discussions will feed into the composition of several analytical papers over the course of the semester, along with other writing exercises designed to develop critical thinking, composition, editing, and presentation skills.

Additional information:

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

From Solitary Strolls to Silly Walks: Walking and Modernity in France and Elsewhere
R1A (Section 3) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2015
M. Evans

Readings and Films:

List subject to change; final list to be provided the first day of class.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Reveries of a Solitary Walker

Andre Breton – Nadja

Raymond Queneau – Odile

Georges Perec – An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

Robert Walser – The Walk

Tom McCarthy – Remainder

Course Reader to feature Balzac, Baudelaire, Montaigne, Guy Debord & the Situationist International, Frank O’Hara, Jacques Roubaud, Michel de Certeau, Sophie Calle, Will Self, Rebecca Solnit, Pierre Alferi, Daniel Buren.

Films: Agnes Varda – Cleo from 5 to 7; Vagabond

Kelly Reichardt – Old Joy

Description:

How does the way we walk and the way we think about walking frame and reflect the way we humans define ourselves? How do the walks we go on and the walking we do evolve over time and space, between cultures, between genders, between perceived categories of abilities and disabilities? This course will take up these questions as we look at the way in which walking has been thematized or sometimes just sneaks into some important moments in the history of French literature. From Rousseau’s rambling reveries to Baudelaire’s flaneur and the Situationists’ drunken dérives, there is a long tradition of French authors thinking through walking as mediator in how we’re put together as subjects and how we put together the world around us. We will bring our focus on walking as it relates to ideas of modernity, of what it is to be modern, and what kinds of cultural or artistic practices can properly be called modern. Do we walk through this modern world as mechanical objects, fixed in our ideas about where we should go and how we should get there? Or can walking open onto something new or unexpected? Our readings will be predominantly literary, but we will take forays into the histories of cinema, photography, performance art and elsewhere

Additional information:

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

Demand the Impossible! France in the 1960s
R1B (Sections 1 and 2) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2015
M. Koerner

Readings:

George Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

Kristin Ross, May ’68 and Its Afterlives (optional)

Description:

In this course we will study some of the tumultuous events that occurred in France during the 1960s, including the massive student occupation of universities and the largest labor strike in French history in May ‘68. Situating these events in relation to their broader, global context – decolonization, the emergence of the “society of the spectacle,” and mass demonstrations against the wars in Algeria and Vietnam – this course offers students an overview of one of the most transformative decades of the twentieth century. In challenging traditional social norms and existing forms of authority and representation, young people across the globe were calling the society they inherited into question. Through novels, philosophical texts, manifestos, films and poetry, this course investigates the legacies of these movements as well as the historical narratives that have since come to frame these events.

In connection with our theme, this Reading and Composition course focuses on the critical analysis of texts, images, and sounds (literary works, historical documents, speeches and manifestos, as well as photographs, posters, film and music related to the period we are studying). In addition to gaining skills in literary and rhetorical analysis, students will strengthen their capacities to produce informed responses to materials encountered in class, formulate compelling research questions, and build persuasive arguments. Writing assignments emphasize drafting, revising, and responding to feedback. In addition to several in-class writing exercises, students should expect to write two short response essays (2-3 pages) as well as a final research paper (8-10 pages).

Additional Information:

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

Upper-Division Courses 

Writing in French, 3 sections
102

Fall 2015
S. Chavdarian, N. Paige, R. Shuh

Readings:

Course Reader; other readings as assigned by Instructor

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 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.

Le Portrait de l’artiste
103A : Language and Culture

Fall 2015
R. Shuh

Readings:

See description

Course Description:

Du peintre à la cantatrice, du musicien au poète, comment met-on en scène la figure de l’artiste? En lisant un choix de textes, nous nous demanderons ce que la représentation du créateur nous dit sur la conception de l’art dans des époques différentes, sur les rapports entre l’art et la vie, sur les moyens d’expression et sur les possibilités mêmes de la représentation. Nos textes se regrouperont surtout au XIXe siècle, moment critique où l’artiste change de statut dans la société post-révolutionnaire. Nous lirons des textes théoriques, notamment de Baudelaire, ainsi que des nouvelles d’auteurs tels que Balzac, Sand, et Yourcenar. Pour terminer le semestre, nous nous lancerons dans un roman de Zola, L’œuvre, histoire de la génération des impressionnistes en même temps qu’autobiographie et méditation sur la nature de la création. Etant donné notre thème, les étudiants auront l’occasion de faire un exposé sur un mouvement, un genre ou une figure artistique liés à nos lectures.

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.

Medieval Literature
112A

Fall 2015
D. Hult

Readings:

The Chanson de Roland, ed. Short (ISBN 978-2-253-05341-4); Tristan et Iseut, ed. Walter (ISBN 978-2-253-05085-7); Chretien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la Charrette (ISBN 978-2-253-05401-6); Le Chevalier au Lion (ISBN 978-2-253-06652-1); Kibler, Intro to Old French.

Course Description:

The subject of this course is the most creative period of medieval literature, in which the epic still flourished but courtliness and the romance were born. Among the topics will be oral tradition, the chanson de geste, the troubadours of southern France and the rise of courtliness, the women troubadours, the values of courtly society, the invention of romantic love, adultery and faithfulness, the transmission of Celtic themes in the matière de Bretagne, the legends of King Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Iseut, as well as medieval manuscripts (including a session viewing manuscripts in the Bancroft Library). Most of the texts will be read in modern French, but instruction in the Old French language will be an important component of the class and key passages will be read in their original linguistic form.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor.

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 French Enlightenment and its Afterlife
118B : Eighteenth Century Literature

Fall 2015
S. Maslan

Readings:

Voltaire, Traité sur la tolerance; Montesquieu, Les Lettres persanes; Graffigny, Lettres d’une péruvienne; Rousseau, L’Origine de l’inégalité; Diderot, La Religieuse; Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro.

Course Description:

Recent, tragic events in France have put the French Enlightenment front and center in national and international debates. Once again Voltaire has become a bestseller as people in France try to come to grips with issues that define national and cultural identity and even modernity itself. The cartoons in Charlie Hebdo, the murderous attacks on the artists and writers, the massive reaction the attacks provoked, all of these send us back looking for answers to questions first publicly debated in the eighteenth century, questions like what is freedom of expression? What is, or should be, the relation between religion and the State? What do secularism or freedom of religion really mean? What do we mean when we talk about freedom and equality?

At the end of the eighteenth century Immanuel Kant tried to answer the question: What is Enlightenment? He came up with this answer: The Enlightenment was the time during which and the process by which human beings finally emerged from their own self-imposed childhood. The Enlightenment meant shaking off traditional authorities– kings, priests, fathers—and refusing to acknowledge the authority of handed-down ideas. Everything was up for grabs: ideas about politics, religion, sex, the family, and the nation. Both the content of beliefs and practices and the methods by which concepts and practices were formed came up for scrutiny as writers and thinkers turned their studies away from the supernatural and the metaphysical toward the natural, the physical, and the social. Moreover, Enlightenment was a public process. Reading, thinking, writing, criticizing was something no one person could accomplish by him or herself “Dare to know” was the watchword Kant retrospectively assigned to the readers and writers of the Enlightenment. But this process was shaped by the censorship rigorously exercised by the monarchy; we will discuss censorship and the repression of writers. We will revisit many of the classic works of the French Enlightenment trying to take Kant’s injunction as our watchword as we seek to discover the relation between our own complicated societies and the legacy of the Enlightenment.

Prerequisites: French 102 or consent of Instructor.

Additional information:
This course satisfies one “Literature” or one “Elective” in the French major; satisfies one Historical Period requirement in French major. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Literary Manifestos of the 20th and 21st Centuries
120A : Twentieth-Century Literature

Fall 2015
E. Colon

Readings:

André Breton, Manifeste du surréalisme (1924)

Guy Tirolien, « Prière d’un petit enfant nègre » (1943, considéré comme le manifeste poétique du mouvement de la « négritude »)

Maurice Blanchot, « Manifeste des 121. Pour le droit à l’insoumission dans la guerre d’Algérie » (1960)

Alain Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman (1963)

Simone de Beauvoir, « Manifeste des 343 salopes » (1971)

François Le Lionnais (Oulipo), « La Lipo » (1963), « Second Manifeste » (1973)

Edouard Glissant, Traité du tout-monde (1997)

Antoine Volodine, Le post-exotisme en dix leçons, leçon onze. (1998)

Antoine Volodine, « Écrire en français une littérature étrangère » (2002)

Jean-Michel le Bris (eds), Pour une littérature-monde (2007)

Mohamed Razane (& collectif) « Qui fait la France ? » (2007)

Course Description:

Dans ce cours, nous retracerons une histoire de la littérature française et francophone, des années 1920 à nos jours, à partir d’un type de texte particulier, le manifeste, par lesquel certains des mouvements littéraires du vingtième siècle se sont définis. Nous ferons la généalogie du manifeste, étudierons ses formes et principes, depuis ses origines politiques, jusqu’à son utilisation par les avants-gardes de la modernité. Nous verrons aussi ce qu’il reste du manifeste à l’époque contemporaine, alors que le mot a tendance à s’effacer.

En ancrant ces textes dans leur contexte artistique, littéraire, politique et social, nous lirons donc certains des manifestes les plus importants de l’histoire de la littérature moderne et contemporaine, française et francophone : manifeste du « surréalisme », du « nouveau roman », de l’ « Oulipo », et plus récemment pour un « tout-monde », une « littérature-monde » ou encore une littérature « post-exotique ». À l’occasion, nous lirons des extraits d’oeuvres littéraires qui mettent en application les principes de ces manifestes. Nous rapprocherons aussi ces textes de manifestes politiques ou sociaux, rédigés et signés par des figures littéraires majeures, tels que les manifestes pour la décolonisation de l’Algérie et pour le droit des femmes à disposer de leur corps. Enfin, nous étudierons un manifeste de jeunes écrivains « issus de l’immigration » postcoloniale, rédigé après les émeutes des banlieues de novembre 2005.

L’ objectif de ce cours est de vous introduire aux mouvements littéraires et politiques majeurs des 20ème et 21ème siècles, tout en vous amenant à réfléchir à la manifestation littéraire, c’est-à-dire à la nécessité de rendre explicites les relations entre les formes littéraires et les projets esthétiques et/ou politiques qui les travaillent.

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. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

The Cultures of Franco-America
142AC

Fall 2015
K. Britto

Readings:
See description

Course Description:
PLEASE NOTE: This course fulfills the Berkeley campus American Cultures (AC) requirement. The course will be taught in English, and knowledge of French is not required.

In this course, we will consider a broad range of literary and cultural texts that emerge out of the long history of the French in North America and of Americans in France. Our readings will include novels, poetry, and short stories—including the earliest known work of African American fiction, written in French and published in Paris in 1837. Alongside these literary texts produced by French writers in America and American expatriates in France, we will consider travel narratives and missionary accounts describing interactions between European and Native American populations; historical, ethnographic, and political writings; foodways and other popular cultural forms such as music, comic strips, films, and television programs.

Throughout the semester, our discussions will focus on the politics of representation—which is to say that we will work to understand the processes through which categories of “race” are shaped over time through the interplay between Anglo- and Franco-American cultures and ideologies, even as these categories are challenged from the perspectives of minority populations. As we trace these processes of racialization, we will be particularly attentive to intersections between “race” and class, gender, and sexuality; at the same time, we will consider the ways in which all of these categories of identity are inflected by language, by regional and national forms of belonging and exclusion, and by the presence of “mixed-race” communities.

Over the course of the semester, our readings will include selections from the following texts/authors: The Jesuit Relations, François René de Chateaubriand, Alexis de Tocqueville, Hippolyte Castra, Armand Lanusse, Victor Séjour, Kate Chopin, Louisiana Story (dir. Robert Flaherty), Jean Arceneaux, J’ai été au bal (dirs. Blank & Strachwitz), James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Bennett, Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker (cinematic performances), William Gardner Smith, M.F.K. Fisher, Samuel Chamberlain, Julia Child, Michael Pollan.

Prerequisites:
No knowledge of French is required. All lectures and discussions in English.

Additional information:
Satisfies UC Berkeley American Cultures requirement; satisfies 1 “Outside Elective” in the French major; counts for the Minor in French.

Introduction to French Linguistics
146A

Fall 2015
M. McLaughlin

Readings:

There are two recommended texts, no required texts:

Battye, Adrian, Marie-Anne Hintze and Paul Rowlett (2000) The French Language Today: A Linguistic Introduction, London – New York: Routledge

Walter, Henriette (1988) Le Français dans tous les sens, Paris: Robert Laffont.

Course Description:

This course provides an introduction to the linguistic analysis of Modern French. You will develop the basic skills of linguistic analysis in order to understand how the French language works. We consider four different levels: the phonology (sounds), the morphology (internal structure of words), the syntax (ordering of elements within the phrase) and the lexis (vocabulary). The course places considerable emphasis not just on the system but also on places where there is variation: we will consider, for example, why the negative particle ne is often dropped in spoken French, why some speakers use on instead of nous and how speakers decide between tu and vous in a given context. We use real linguistic data as much as possible, so you will find yourself analyzing transcripts of conversations, excerpts from films or short scientific texts.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Additional Information:

This course satisfies one “Culture” or one “Elective” requirement in the French major. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Social and Behavioral Science.

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

Fall 2015
S. Maslan

Readings:

Marguerite de Navarre, L’Heptaméron; Louise Labé, Sonnets; Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves; Madame de Sévigné, Lettres; Molière, Les Femmes savants; 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, envelopes, 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.

Francophone Africa
151A : Francophone Literature

Fall 2015
S. Tlatli

Readings:

See description.

Course Description:

In this class we will examine the political as well as the literary connotations of francophonie. We will historically contextualize this notion by retracing the story of the French colonization and Africa struggle for decolonization. We will then discuss a series of literary works by authors such as Senghor, Glissant, Césaire, Djebar, and Sembène. An important part of this course will be devoted to the relationship between films and literary works in the depiction of a Francophone Africa.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Additional Information:

Satisfies one “Culture” or one “Elective” course requirement in the French Major. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth requirement in Arts and Literature. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Islam in Contemporary France: are we all "Charlie"?
162B : Perspectives on History

Fall 2015
S. Tlatli

Readings:

See description.

Course Description:

This course is shaped by the tragic events that recently took place in France. On January 7, 2015 a terrorist attack on the satirical paper “Charlie Hebdo” left twelve people dead. It was followed, two days later, by an attack on a kosher supermarket that left four Jewish people dead. In reaction to this bloodshed more than a million people marched in the streets of Paris as a show of unity, claiming “Je suis Charlie”.

We will first retrace these events in their historical context. We will then examine the complex situation of Islam in contemporary France as well as questions such as: freedom of speech, satire and secularism. We will also focus on the question of political Islam as instrumentalized by both the French government and fundamentalist groups. The material for this class ranges from articles, essays, media footage, films and documentaries

Prerequisites: French 102 or equivalent.

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 Historical Studies or in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Graduate Courses

Reading and Interpretation of Old French Texts
211A

Fall 2015
D. Hult

Readings:
La Chanson de Roland, ed. I. Short; Lais de Marie de France, ed. Harf-Lancner (IBN 978-2-253-05271-X); Chrétien de Troyes, Tristan et Iseut, ed. P. Walter; Kibler, Introduction to Old French

Course Description:
Introduction to the study of medieval French language and literature of the 12th and 13th centuries. Through a careful analysis and critical interpretation of certain canonical works (La Chanson de Roland; Béroul and Thomas, Tristan; selected lais of Marie de France; selected romans of Chrétien de Troyes; Le Roman de la Rose) we will study Old French language and some main dialects; verse and prose composition; theories of the oral tradition; editorial problems; and the material aspects of the manuscript work (including some work on codicology and paleography). Class will be conducted in English.

Additional information:
No previous knowledge of Old French language or literature is expected. This course fulfills the Medieval Literature component of the historical coverage requirement.

The Epistolary Novel: From the Canon to the Archive
245B : Early Modern Studies

Fall 2015
N. Paige

Readings:

Guilleragues, Lettres portuguaises; Montesquieu, Lettres persanes; Graffigny, Lettres péruviennes; Rousseau, Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise; Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses

Course Description:

The epistolary novel is a particularly curious literary artifact: unlike the third-person and the first-person novel, which have historically proven to be robust and adaptable forms, the letter novel enjoyed a spectacular if relatively brief moment of hegemony before fading into quaintness. This seminar has two aims. Mostly, we’ll be studying a series of five canonically important representatives of the genre, and acquainting ourselves with a variety of scholarly attempts to “motivate the device” of letters: it’s a form that has long been linked to the culture of sociability, to sentiment and sensibilité, to the advent of the private sphere, and even, recently, to the growth of the postal service itself. But we’ll also save part of the semester for thinking about how to approach the history of a form from below—that is, by developing ways of studying the whole archive of epistolary novels, the ones that, to use Franco Moretti’s image, never survived literature’s “slaughterhouse.” How, exactly, do forms catch on? Are periods of domination matched by formal regularity? Is decline sudden? Availing ourselves of the resources of mass digitization, we’ll spend the last part of the semester exploring such questions.

Photographic Practices and Literary Seeing in 19th C. France
250B : Studies in Nineteenth-Century French Literature

Fall 2015
S. Guerlac

Readings:

See description.

Course Description:

Many argue that the emergence of photography in the 19th century produced entirely new modes of seeing. We will consider various modalities of photographic image capture in the 19th century and their impact on the literary field, leading up to Breton’s definition of Surrealism, in the early 20th century, as a “photographie de la pensée.” We will begin with Daguerre and diorama images (at the intersection of painting, the theatre, and photographic experimentation), consider how ideological appropriations of photographic practices (Arago’s report to the Chambre de Députés on the invention of the daguerreotype, for example) structure discourses concerning photography and so also the terms of debates concerning relations between photography and literature (Baudelaire’s critique of photography, etc.).

Other issues that will come up include: time, traces, materiality (Balzac’s “théorie des spectres”), memory, framing, ekphrasis, human/machine relations, subjectivity/objectivity, the construction of social (and ethnographic) types, celebrity culture (Disdéri and Nadar), and the ruin (or as Maxime du Camp put it “la ruine ruinée”). We will examine how the impact of photographic image practices cuts across genres and literary schools – realism, the fantastic, travel writing, symbolism – with special attention to the prose poem.

Readings will include writings by authors such as Jules Janin, Lamartine, Gautier (Pompéi), Maxime du Camp (Egypte …; Le Nil; Mémoires d’un Suicidé), Balzac (Le Cousin Pons), Disdéri, Baudelaire, Villiers de l’Isle Adam (L’Eve Future), Zola, Mallarmé, Rimbaud and Rodenbach (Bruges-la- morte). We will look at images by Daguerre, Fox Talbot, Victor Hugo, Maxime du Camp, Gustave Le Gray, Disdéri, Nadar, and Zola, among others, as well as portrait of writers such as Baudelaire, Balzac, etc

Recent Work in French -- Théories et pratiques littéraires du mondial (1990-présent)
270A : Literary Criticism

Fall 2015
E. Colon

Readings:

Les textes au programme seront sélectionnés parmi la liste ci-dessous. Le programme final sera annoncé dans les semaines à venir.

Textes litéraires

Olivier Rolin, L’invention du monde

Laurent Mauvigner, Autour du monde

Alain Mabanckou, Bleu Blanc Rouge

Nicole Caligaris, Les Samothraces

Antoine Volodine, Songes de Mevlido

Jean Rolin, Un chien mort après lui

Fatou Diome, Le ventre de l’Atlantique

Manifestes d’écrivains

Edouard Glissant, Traité du tout-monde

Antoine Volodine, “Écrire en français une littérature étrangère”

Michel le Bris et alii, Pour une littérature-monde

Théorie et critique (extraits, le plus souvent)

Marc Abélès, Anthropologie de la globalisation

Emily Apter, Against World Literature

Pascale Casannova, La république mondiale des lettres

Jérôme David, Spectres de Goethe. Les métamorphoses de la littérature mondiale.

Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Toward a Global Idea of Race

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire

Alec G. Hargreaves (ed.) Transnational French studies : postcolonialism and littérature-monde

Fredric Jameson (ed.), The Cultures of Globalization

Achille Mbembé, Critique de la raison nègre

Jean-Luc Nancy, La création du monde ou la mondialisation

Gayatri Spivak, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization

Suzan Suleiman & Christie McDonald (eds.), French Global

Course Description:

Dans ce séminaire, qui aura lieu en français, nous étudierons trois types de textes dans les relations qu’ils déploient avec la mondialisation et/ou la globalisation: des romans et récits publiés depuis la fin des années 1990, des manifestes d’écrivains, et des ouvrages critiques et théoriques majeurs de ces dernières années.

L’objectif de ce séminaire est de dresser une cartographie (nécessairement incomplète) des pensées et théories actuelles de la mondialisation et de la globalisation, tout en organisant une réflexion sur la façon dont les formes de narrativité contemporaines sont à la fois inventions et pratiques du monde. Nous privilégierons essentiellement des oeuvres qui se donnent à lire comme des récits de migration ou de déplacement, dans un contexte à la fois néo-capitaliste et post-colonial.

Centré sur les études françaises et francophones contemporaines, ce séminaire retracera toutefois la généalogie du concept de “littérature-monde” (chez Goethe notamment, et pendant la période moderne avec Pascale Casanova), et nous déportera ponctuellement, hors des champs français et francophone, vers des approches critiques complémentaires (l’Empire de Hardt et Negri, l’Atlantique Noir de Gilroy, la théorie globale des races de Ferreira da Sliva, par exemple).

Teaching French in College: First Year
301

Fall 2015
S. Chavdarian

Readings: Lightbown, How Languages Are Learned

Course Description:

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 inservice 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, taught by Seda Chavdarian, 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.

Additional information:

Attendance at the appropriate session (301 for French 1; 302 for French 2) is required of all instructors teaching French 1 and 2 for the first time. GSIs are also required to attend a pilot class, taught by Seda Chavdarian, on select dates and as indicated on the lesson plans.