Fall 2017

Reading and Composition (R&C)

Emotional Unavailability
R1A (Section 1) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2017
Class No: 14735

Instructor: M. Arrigo
Readings/Films:

forthcoming — please check back in two weeks

Course Description:

When we read and when we write we are engaging in an inherently social process; the author and his or her audience and the texts that link them are connected by many of the same fundamental processes of interaction that mark our engagement with the people we know in our everyday lives.

The link between writing and reading, both in the real world and in literature, is fraught with difficulty, as it is contingent upon a second party who may or may not be available, who may or may not be receptive, to our efforts, to our reaching out for connection.

This course will seek to understand emotional unavailability both on the level of its depiction in literature as well as its deployment as a literary device. It will also explore how the very act of writing mediates our attempts to seek out, understand, and fill the void between us and these desired persons..

This class will introduce students to approaching textual material critically, and will stress the idea of writing as a process through a variety of assignments and revisions geared to guide the development and clear expression of coherent argumentation.

Additional Information:

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

Love, Actually: French Edition
R1B (Section 1) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2017
Class No: 14698
Instructor: S. Postoli

Readings/Films:

see Description.

Course Description:

“The more the heart grows, the less useful words become,” declares a French proverb. Writers, poets, and cinematographers of the French and Francophone traditions seem to have taken issue with this proverb: for centuries they have turned to matters of the heart and composed works relating its joys, pains, and — more nterestingly — its complications.

This course will explore a sample of works from the tradition of French/Francophone literature and film in which love becomes a primary or prominent subject. Our discussions of these works will focus on different conceptions and permutations of love across genres and periods — and, of course, the many complications that inevitably accompany it: marriage, family, gender and sexuality, power relations, status, jealousy, betrayal, manipulation, transgression, sex, violence, etc.

Students will be encouraged to consider how love develops and is manifested, used, or abused within each work. As we turn our attention to new works, they will be expected to make connections and trace developments of the dimensions of love across works, periods, and genres. Our classroom discussions and the students’ individual research will inform and deepen our understanding of each work in itself, as well as how it relates to its respective period — both from a literary and socio-political point of view.

The materials for this course will include entire works or selections from the Medieval period (Tristan et Iseult, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, Lais de Marie de France), the Renaissance and Early Modern periods (Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, poems of the Pléiade, Heptaméron), the 17th century (Phèdre, Tartuffe, La Princesse de Clèves), the 18th century (Les Liaisons dangereuses, les Bijoux indiscrets, Paul et Virginie, Justine), the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries (Le Rouge et le Noir, Madame Bovary, Bel-Ami, Cyrano de Bergerac, L’immoraliste, Gigi, Le Journal du voleur), as well as a sampling of acclaimed films from earlier decades and from more recent years (Jules et Jim, Belle de jour, Le Souffle au coeur, Jeux d’enfants, Les Amours imaginaires).

This class will introduce students to approaching textual material critically, and will stress the idea of writing as a process through a variety of assignments and revisions geared to guide the development and clear expression of coherent argumentation.

Additional Information:

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

What are you laughing at? Humor and tricky topics
R1A (Section 2) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2017
Class No: 14736
Instructor: C. Stofle

Readings/Films:

— Rabelais : Pantagruel (1532)

— Voltaire : Candide (1759)

— Mérimée : Tamango (1829)

— Milan Kundera : The Joke (1967)

— Muriel Barbery : The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2006)

— Matthieu Kassovitz : La Haine (1994)

— Roberto Benigni: Life Is Beautiful (1997)

— Lionel Steketee : Case Départ (2011)

— Stand-up shows by Louie CK and Dave Chappelle

A course reader will include essays by Baudelaire, Freud, Bergson, Genette, Ménil and more.

Course Description:

In the millennia-long search for the elusive causes of laughter, scholars have succeeded in agreeing on one thing: There is nothing funny about the study of laughter. As the editor of le Traité sur les causes physiques et morales du rire — an eighteenth-century survey co-authored by Montesquieu — pointed out, manuals on the causes of ire or fever would not be expected to make the reader either angry or feverish; much in the same way, a treatise on humor should not (necessarily) elicit laughter. In this course, we will explore various theories of humor — from the baudelairian construct of laughter as evil to the freudian theory of relief — that will help us decipher and discuss ludic processes in literary texts, films, memes, and stand-up acts. We will focus particularly on humoristic expression that occurs in contexts considered too serious for lightheartedness, such as death, race, and disenfranchisement. Together, we will wonder whether everything can be a laughing matter, if irony is even funny, and what it means anyway. Should laughter occur throughout the semester, its causes will be dutifully analyzed and become the object of full-length papers.

This class will introduce students to approaching textual material critically, and will stress the idea of writing as a process through a variety of assignments and revisions geared to guide the development and clear expression of coherent argumentation.

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 (Section 2) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2017
Class No: 14699
Instructor: M. Koerner

Readings/Films:

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Georges Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

Jean-Luc Godard Tout Va Bien

Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

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

Course Description:

In this course we will study some of the tumultuous events that occurred in France during the 1960’s beginning with the Algerian War, and later 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, post-war, 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 and “demanding the impossible!” Through essays, 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 course fulfills the R&C requirement. Discussions and written work will focuses on the critical analysis of texts, images, and sounds. 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 reading and class discussion, students should prepare to write frequent discussion board posts, two formal essays (2-3 pages) as well as a final research paper (8-10 pages).

This class will introduce students to approaching textual material critically, and will stress the idea of writing as a process through a variety of assignments and revisions geared to guide the development and clear expression of coherent argumentation.

Additional Information:

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

Mad Love
R1A (Section 3) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2017
Class No: 45027
Instructor: S. Rogghe

Readings/Films:

Euripides, The Bacchae and Other Plays (Penguin 2006, 978-0140447262)

Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (Penguin 2004, 978-0140445213)

André Breton, Mad Love (Bison Books 1988, 978-0803260726)

Course reader, available at Krishna Copy, 2001 University Ave.

Containing:

Plato, Symposium

C.G. Jung, Aion (excerpts)

Ovid, Orpheus and Eurydice

Ovid, Echo and Narcissus

Tristan and Isolde (fragments)

Robert Desnos, poems To the Mysterious One

Gérard de Nerval, “The Tale of Caliph Hakim”

Gérard de Nerval, Aurelia (excerpts)

Zarina Zabrisky, “It”

Recommended texts:

Writing Analytically by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White

Course Description:

“I dreamt so much of you that you lose your reality…” Thus goes the first line one of the famous love poems by the surrealist Robert Desnos, marking a shift from reality into the dream world. In this course, we will explore literary works that deal with love not merely in the conventional sense, i.e. as a love story between two people, but we will focus on texts that display what the surrealist André Breton called “Mad Love” and “Convulsive Beauty:” works in which love takes on a distinctly mystical, otherworldly dimension. The works we will read in this course all share this surrealist quality, in that they portray a love whose object can be a phantom, an immaterial idea, or an illusion. From Narcissus falling in love with his own reflection, to Tristan and Isolde being fatefully joined by a magic potion, or Gérard de Nerval mistaking “an ordinary woman of this century” for a poetic muse, all of these works display a tragic archetypal constellation that mixes love with a touch of (divine) madness.

Through a close reading of texts ranging from Antiquity to the present day, as well as by drawing parallels and making comparisons between these different texts, this course will sharpen critical reading skills as well as promote clear, argumentative writing. To this goal, there will be a variety of writing exercises and essays in response to the texts read.

This class will introduce students to approaching textual material critically, and will stress the idea of writing as a process through a variety of assignments and revisions geared to guide the development and clear expression of coherent argumentation.

Additional Information:

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

Stuff and Things: Objects and Identity in Literature
R1B (Section 3) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Fall 2017
Class No: 21954
Instructor: M. Phillips

Readings/Films:

Short Stories/Essays:

“Solid Objects” – Virginia Woolf

“Fetishism” – Sigmund Freud

“The Fetishism of the Commodity” – Karl Marx

“Sole Mate: Christian Louboutin and the Psychology of Shoes” – Lauren Collins

Films:

Documentary short: “The Story of Stuff” – dir. Louis Fox

Clutter – dir. Diane Crespo

Novels:

Things: A Story of the Sixties – Georges Perec

The Final Reminder: How I Emptied My Parents’ House – Lydia Flem

Poems:

The Nature of Things – Francis Ponge

Course Description:

Hoarding, shoe fetishes, consumerism, commodities, souvenirs, collections, household goods, art — material objects have great significance in our lives and in our stories. They can hold memories, represent desires, and help us define ourselves. In this course we will explore the meaning of stuff and things in literature, and how objects create and contribute to identity. We will study these connections through short stories, essays, films, novels, and poetry, and then analyze them while developing research and writing skills. With a focus on how to conduct scholarly research and how to use scholarly sources in academic writing, assignments include short response essays, an annotated bibliography and a final research paper. Extensive rewriting and feedback will be a central part of coursework.

This class will introduce students to approaching textual material critically, and will stress the idea of writing as a process through a variety of assignments and revisions geared to guide the development and clear expression of coherent argumentation.

Additional Information:

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

Lower & Upper-Division Courses 

Slow Reading Dangerous Liaisons
24 : Freshman Seminar

Fall 2017
Class No: 22668
Instructor: N. Paige

Readings/Films:

See Description.

Course Description:

Innocence, pleasure, pride, entrapment, consent, revenge, desire, repression, hypocrisy, deceit, aggression, force, persuasion, faith, virtue, nobility, corruption, manipulation, sex, love: all this and much, much more in one of world literature’s most diabolically intelligent novels, Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons. In addition to reading the novel (in English), we’ll also be viewing some of the work’s numerous film adaptations.

Additional Information:

Course taught in ENGLISH. No knowledge of French is demanded. Optional meetings will be arranged for students who would like to work on some passages in the original French.

Priority enrollment for Freshmen.

Professor Paige teaches mainly classes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature and culture, with special interest in the history of the novel.

Citizenship and Identity in France
43B : Aspects of French Culture

Fall 2017
Class No: 21971
Instructor: S. Maslan

Readings/Films:

Readings will range from enlightenment philosophers to contemporary fiction. We will watch films from the 1930s through the present

Course Description:

What does it mean to be a citizen? One quick answer is to say that a citizen is a person who is is recognized as belonging to a State, as having rights and protections, as being a member of a political and social order. But even this quick definition raises more questions than it answers. In our age of globalization, of refugee crises, of Brexit, of HB1 visas, and of border walls, how do we decide if someone “belongs”? Questions about citizenship and immigration are not only questions about rights, they are also, inevitably, questions about national identity. Who “we” are is shaped by our beliefs about and actions toward those whose status is precarious, liminal, or, seemingly, non-existent.

In this course we will study French idea about citizenship and belonging, about participation and protection, from the early modern period through the present. France sees itself as the birthplace of human rights and as a refuge for those fleeing persecution. But these beliefs have been tested throughout French history by internal tensions and external crises.

We will study the ways in which France today tries to reconcile its often opposing cultural and political imperatives. We will study fiction, philosophy, and politics from the eighteenth century through the twenty-first. We will study ideas about cosmopolitanism and universalism. We will study some crucial historical moments: the Dreyfus affair, the refugee influx of the 1930s, and the Algerian war. We will study the most recent examples in which France faces challenges as it seeks to integrate new identities, new practices, new modes of belonging within French citizenship. We will pay attention to the politics of recent elections, the prolonged state of emergency, the “burkini,” and more. We will think about the ways in which France experiences the tensions and transformations of our times differently from the ways the United States does. (Course taught in English; knowledge of French not required.)

Additional Information:

Course taught in English; knowledge of French not required. This course satisfies the College of Letters and Science breadth requirement in Historical Studies.

Writing in French, 2 sections
102

Fall 2017
Class No: 14731, 14732
Instructor: R. Shuh, N. Timmons

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. Satisfies course requirement in French major and French minor. Effective Fall 2017, satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in International Studies.

The Refugee "Crisis": Itineraries and Narratives
103A : Language and Culture

Fall 2017
Class No: 14746
Instructor: D. Sanyal

Readings/Films:

The majority of texts will be provided in a reader. Students should purchase

Bienvenue: 34 Auteurs pour les réfugiés (Points, 2015) ISBN 2757858610

Shumona Sinha, Assommons les pauvres! (Points, 2012) ISBN-10: 275782998X

ISBN-13:978-2757829981

Course Description:

This course will examine the itineraries and narratives of refugees who are seeking asylum in France today. Contemporary fiction and film will help us reconstruct the stages of their flight and journey. 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 kinds of trauma and suffering fall under the Geneva Convention’s definition of persecution, and what forms do not? What type of evidence is 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, extra-territorial spaces of detention and the asylum interview.

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.

Theater and Power in 17th century France
117B : Seventeenth-Century Literature

Fall 2017
Class No: 45123
Instructor: D. Blocker

Readings:

1) Pierre Corneille, Le Cid and Polyeucte, excerpts from the texts of the querelle du Cid, as well as excerpts from Corneille, Trois discours sur le poème dramatique

2) Molière and the querelle de l’École des Femmes (La Critique de l’Ecole des Femmes and L’Impromptu de Versailles), Le Tartuffe and George Dandin

3) Jean Racine, Iphigénie and Esther

Course Description:

In France, theater as we know it only began to take shape at the beginning of the 17th century. This class investigates the emergence of French classical theater under Louis XIII and Louis XIV by studying how this new genre interacted with monarchical power. The King and his ministers both attempted to develop public playhouses and police the stage, displaying simultaneously distrust for the theater and a desire to use it to political ends. In doing so, the King and his entourage were also attempting to keep the Catholic Church at bay, while modeling civil society in ways they hoped could serve the Crown.

As we read plays by three of the most famous French classical playwrights (Corneille, Molière and Racine), we will work to understand how the ethical and aesthetical canons of French classical tragedy and comedy (such as verisimilitude, and bienséances) were established, in constant negotiation with these conflicting political, spiritual and societal demands. We will also examine how kings and their counselors were represented on the French stage, and to what extent it was possible to reflect critically on the limitations of monarchical power in a genre that so depended on the King’s support.

This class invites students to think about the development of some of the most extraordinary plays of the Occidental tradition in a specific historical context, that of the rise of French absolutism. It will also allow them to reflect on the origins of modern drama more generally. Whenever possible films and recordings will be used to support students’ reading of classical French plays.

Prerequisites:
French 102 or consent of Instructor. Course conducted in French.

Additional information:
This course satisfies one “Literature/Genre” or one “Elective” course requirement in the French major; satisfies one Historical Period requirement in French major. Satisfies one course requirement in the French minor. Satisfies L & S breadth requirement in Arts and Literature.

qu’est-ce qu’un poète moderne? – le cas de Paul Valéry
120A : Twentieth-Century Literature

Fall 2017
Class No: 45166
Instructor: S. Guerlac

Readings/Films:

Nous étudierons des textes de Valéry tels que Charmes (extraits), “La Jeune Parque,” La poésie perdue, “Monsieur Teste,” “L’idée fixe,” “La Crise de l’esprit”, “Littérature”, “La nécessité de la poésie”, “Dans, Degas, Dessin,”; de Jean Paul Sartre, Qu’est-ce-que la littérature? (extraits) et de Breton, tels que Manifeste du Surréalisme, Les Champs Magnétiques (extraits), et “Notes sur la poésie”.

Course Description:

Paul Valéry (1871-1945)’était non seulement un poète célèbre, mais aussi un critique important, et un penseur qui a engendré certaines conceptions essentielles concernant la poésie et la modernité. Partisan de la “poésie pure,” il est devenu une figure quasiment mythique en France, un des hommes de lettres les plus cités du 20e siècle. Comment a-t-il pu obtenir une autorité culturelle si vaste? Qu’est-ce qu’il entend par “poésie pure?” et par ” la politique de l’esprit,” et quelle serait la relation entre les deux?

Dans ce cours nous allons interroger le mythe de Paul Valéry, étudiant plusieurs de ses textes de genres variés (poemes, poemes en prose, récits, essais critiques et fragments philosophiques) et nous référons aussi à une étude sur lui par Daniel Oster, Monsieur Valéry. Nous allons situer l’oeuvre et la pensée de Valéry par rapport à d’autres positions qui contestent la sienne, notamment celle d’André Breton (chef des Surréalistes, qui a fameusement réécrit un texte de Valéry en le détournant) et celle de Jean- Paul Sartre (partisan de “littérature engagé”). Nous interrogerons les différences et les proximités inattendues entre ces trois perspectives sur l’art littéraire qui ont eu une importance internationale et durable au 20e siècle.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of Instructor.

Additional Information:

This course satisfies 1 “Literature/Genre” or 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French major. Satisfies one course in the French minor. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature.

Staging Tyranny in France from Pierre Corneille to Aimé Césaire (1600-2000)
121B : Literary Themes, Genres, Structures

Fall 2017
Class No: 45154
Instructor: D. Blocker

Readings:

Pierre Corneille, Médée (1635); Jean Racine, Bajazet (1672) ; Voltaire’s La Mort de César (1736), Victor Hugo’s Cromwell (1827), Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1896), Albert Camus’ État de siège (1948), Ionesco’s Rhinocéros (1959) and Aimé Césaire’s La Tragédie du Roi Christophe (1964), as well as a variety of theoretical texts, such as excerpts from Corneille’s Trois discours sur le poème dramatique, Victor Hugo’s Préface de Cromwell, and excerpts from Le Théâtre et son double by Antonin Artaud.

Course Description:

Tyranny often plays out as a bewildering spectacle. This class will however observe the theatricality of tyrants from a literary perspective, asking why and how it is that, in the French theatrical tradition — from the 17th century until today — so many major plays are centered on figures of authoritarian rulers, be they men or women. For what reasons was the spectacle of tyrants so important for the development of French classical theater and why did such spectacles remain pervasive on the French stage well into the 19th and 20th centuries, i.e. even after the French Revolution?

Conversely, in what ways did the depiction of these authoritarian rulers — as well as the women or men they loved, the crimes they committed, the revolts they generated and, more often than not, their bloody demise — shape not only the French stage, but also France’s understanding of monarchical power, and, later on, its conceptions of the ideal polity? How is emotional and physical violence represented in these plays and to what ends? Can theatrical tyrants be comical — and, if so, are they still credible as tyrants? Furthermore, how do efforts to resist tyranny play into spectacles of tyranny? Is a play centered on tyranny always, in some way, a play about freedom?

This class offers an extensive and detailed survey of French drama over four centuries, with emphasis on genre development and dramatic theory. Based on the study of works by major French and Francophone authors, it also functions as an introduction to French political culture, allowing for the parallel exploration of how the French imagine and portray political rule across their history. Films and recordings will be used to support students’ reading of the plays assigned, and a class outing will be organized to see Albert Camus’ État de Siège, as staged at Cal Performances by the Parisian troupe of the Théâtre de la Ville (Oct. 21-22 2017).

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional Information:

This course satisfies one “Literature/Genre” or one “Elective” course requirement in the French major; Satisfies one course requirement in the French minor. Satisfies L & S breadth requirement in Arts and Literature.

The Cultures of Franco-America
142AC

Fall 2017
Class No: 45125
Instructor: K. Britto

Readings:

Selected 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— 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; satisfies one course requirement in the French minor.

Introduction to French Linguistics
146A

Fall 2017
Class No: 22467
Instructor: M. McLaughlin

Readings/Films:

In addition to selected readins, 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.

Immigration and the Question of Islam in France
162A : Perspectives on History

Fall 2017
Class No: 45157
Instructor: S. Tlatli

Readings:

See Description for selected readings.

Course Description:

This course is designed as an introduction to the history of North African immigration in France in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. We will first focus on the main historical events that rendered the massive North African immigration possible and sometimes unavoidable. We will also pay close attention to the various political and ideological discourses that consider immigration through the particular viewpoint of Islam and the threat it poses to national identity. We will discuss sociological, political and literary texts, such as Mémoires d’immigrés, by Yamina Benguigui, Soumission, by Michel Houellebeq and La Double absence by Abdelmalek Saayed.

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.

French and Francophone Literature and Philosophy
176 : Literature and Philosophy

Fall 2017
Class No: 46245
Instructor: S. Maslan

Readings:

Selected Readings

Course Description:

Philosophy has been intertwined with literature at least since Plato and Aristotle explored the merits of poetry and poets. During the Enlightenment, however, French authors such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot forged what contemporary philosopher Alan Badiou termed a “singular alliance” between literature and philosophy as they sought to create and popularize new scientific knowledge, critique and reform the political and social orders, and bring into being new forms of subjectivity and personhood, all while establishing themselves as among the foremost stylists in the French language.

These “philosophes” made major specific ethical, political, and aesthetic contributions; in so doing, they also reflected on general questions that animate the “alliance” of literature and philosophy, such as:

How do properly literary works participate in philosophical and ethical inquiry?

How can philosophical investigation explain the power of literary works?

How does literature self-consciously reflect on its own role in the creation of ethical culture?

How can specific literary forms and genres (theater, novel, lyric) address specific philosophical demands or ethical obligations?

In addition, we will examine the, often overlooked, contribution of women to the French Enlightenment as writers, translators, and interlocutors. We will ask: could a woman be a “philosophe”?

French 176 will study these fundamental problems as it engages deeply with the works of the French “philosophes.” We will also consider the material and structural conditions for the creation and dissemination of knowledge: censorship, the book trade, exile, and more.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

This course satisfies one “Culture” or one “Elective” requirement in the French major. Course also satisfies one Historical Period Requirement in French Major. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Philosophy and Values or Arts and Literature. Accepted for French minor.

The Experience of Modernity in 19th-Century Paris
180C : French Civilization

Fall 2017
Class No: 45158
Instructor: D. Sanyal

Readings/Films:

Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot (GF Flammarion no. 826/2006)

Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris (Livre de poche/2003)

Gustave Flaubert, L’Education Sentimentale (GF-2013: isbn 9782081309425)

Emile Zola, Nana (GF 2000 ) ISBN 2-08-071106-7

Rachilde, Monsieur Venus, roman materialiste (MLA 2004/ISBN 9780873529297)

Course Description:

This course explores the experience and representation of urban modernity in 19th century Paris. Drawing on classic literature of the period along with readings in cultural criticism and art history, we will consider the novel and the poem \ as laboratories for new forms of knowledge. The works we will study address the revolutionary upheavals and cultural transformations of the period: the legacies of revolution and class struggle; the shocks of industrialization and capitalism; theories of social reform and progress; the transformation of history and urban life into spectacle; shopping, fashion and consumer culture; new forms of private and public space; scientific and medical discourses on gender, class and race. Along with major social and historical transitions of the period, we will also address key aesthetic movements such as realism, naturalism and decadence.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

This course satisfies 1 “Culture” or 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French major. Satisfies one course requirement in French minor. This course also satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature, Historical Studies or Social and Behavioral Sciences. Course conducted in French.

Graduate Courses

Proseminar
200

Fall 2017
Class No: 14669
Instructor: N. Paige

Course Description:
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. All French Department graduate students are welcome to those meetings devoted to more general practical and intellectual topics. 1 unit.

Additional information:
Course enrollment limited to new graduate students in French.

History of the French Language
201

Fall 2017
Class No: 46014
Instructor: M. McLaughlin

Readings:

Ayres-Bennett, Wendy (1996) A History of the French Language through Texts, London-New York: Routledge.

Course Description:

This course covers the history of the French language from its Latin roots through to contemporary usage. Both internal and external history will be considered so that students acquire a firm grounding in the linguistic evolution of the language, coupled with an understanding of its development in relation to a range of social and cultural phenomena. The course will be structured around our analysis of the wide range of texts from different genres presented by Ayres-Bennett (1996) and which date from 842 CE to the present day. We will use the relatively new historical sociolinguistic approach to try to capture what Anthony Lodge (2009) has called “une image multidimensionnelle de la langue du passé”

Romances and Novels
230A : Studies in 17th-Century Literature

Fall 2017
Class No: 45161
Instructor: N. Paige

Readings:

d’Urfé, L’Astrée (part 1)

Sorel, Francion

Scarron, Le Roman comique

Lafayette, Zayde

Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves

Course Description:

Romance vs. novel. It’s one of the most basic distinctions in literary history, and it goes back a good 350 years: the old, obsolete form is replaced by the modern. But is the narrative sound? We’ll be reading a selection of classic and recent criticism on the topic and five celebrated works that may or may not document the transition from romance to novel: d’Urfé’s L’Astrée, Sorel’s Francion, Scarron’s Le Roman comique, and two works by Lafayette, Zayde and La Princesse de Clèves. All primary and most secondary works will be available in English for those who need them.

Le Surréalisme et la Francophonie
251 : Francophone Literature

Fall 2017
Class No: 45162
Instructor: S. Tlatli

Dans ce cours, nous analyserons dans un premier temps la poétique surréaliste de l’image à travers un certain nombre d’extraits littéraires et théoriques du groupe surréaliste. Dans un deuxième moment, nous interrogerons la question de l’influence surréaliste, aussi bien à propos de la politique coloniale de la France, qu’à propos de l’écriture poétique elle-même en prenant comme exemple principal le corpus d’Aimé Césaire et l’oeuvre de Kateb Yacine.

Poetic thinking – Valéry before and after Jacques Derrida
260B : Studies in 20th-Century Literature

Fall 2017
Class No: 45164
Instructor: S. Guerlac

Readings:

See Description.

Course Description:

With the success of Charmes, Paul Valéry became the public face of poetry in 20th– century France. He was also an influential prose writer (“Monsieur Teste”), a theorist of poetics, and an author of prose poems. In private, he was a wide-ranging thinker who kept Notebooks for decades, in which he addresses issues of language, science, politics, time, and images from, we could say, the perspective of a thinking poet.

It has been noted that the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who wrote a number of essays on Valéry, alludes to him frequently and often elliptically throughout his work. Some believe that Valéry anticipated Derrida on a number of important questions; others note that Valéry appears to haunt Derrida’s work.

The first part of our seminar will be devoted principally to reading a range of Valéry’s works – poems, prose pieces, critical essays and some fragments from the Notebooks, along with a few critical essays on Valéry (Adorno). One of the questions we will pose is: what does it mean to think from the vantage point of a poet?

This question will lead us to consider a few essays by Derrida on Valéry, and a few other texts by Derrida that allude only indirectly to Valery. Does reading Derrida enrich our understanding of what is at stake in the poetics and thinking of Valéry? Along the way we will consider how the “brand” Valéry enters into debates about literature, first in Sartre’s What is Literature?) and then in the context of the group Tel quel which challenges Sartre from the perspective of Valéry in 1960, before going on to publish the major thinkers of “French Theory” including Jacques Derrida.

Readings will include works such as the following of Valéry: Charmes, Monsieur Teste, Idée Fixe, Degas, Danse, Dessin, Le Cours de Poétique, La Crise de l’Esprit , La Politique de l’esprit, and selections from the Cahiers; essays by Adorno and Sartre, What is Literature; and works by Derrida (L’autre Cap, Qual quelle, L’Animal que donc je suis, and Psyché: Inventions of the other).

I Confess: Self-Narration and Self-Representation From the Novel to New Media
265A : Modern Studies

Fall 2017
Class No: 45163
Instructor: D. Young

Readings:

See Description

Course Description:

Is the “self” of Rousseau’s Confessions the same as the self of the 21st century digital selfie? To what extent is subjectivity bound up in the means of its technical mediation? This course stages an encounter between histories of autobiography, theories of the subject/subjectivation, and recent developments in media theory. We will ask how the “private self” of an earlier colonial modernity was given form in the novel and the autobiography, then explore how the invention of photography and film refashioned the subject as “ideally visible,” before considering how digital media cultures generate forms of subjectivity for which the defining imperative would no longer be confession but rather circulation.

We will spend some time with Foucault’s discussions of the confessional imperative that situates sexuality at the opaque foundation of the modern subject, reading them in relation to critical commentaries on the production of the “I” in literature and philosophy (works by Butler, Paige, Lucey, De Man). We will explore the interrelation of medium, subjectivity, and apparatus in theoretical works by Althusser, Deleuze, Debord, Baudrillard, Stiegler, Preciado, and others. Throughout, we will draw on specific examples of autobiography and/or self-portraiture in various media forms, from Rousseau to Proust, Varda, Godard, Sophie Calle, and contemporary vloggers. Taught in English, with texts available in French or English translation.

Additional Information:

Meets the Graduate Certificate in Global Urban Humanities elective requirement

Teaching French in College: First Year
301

Fall 2017
Class No: 14730
Instructor: S. Chavdarian

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.