Spring 2022

Reading and Composition (R&C)

No homo: same-sex sexuality and identity
R1B.001 : English Composition through French Literature in Translation
Spring 2022
Class No: 24443
262 Dwinelle
Tu/Th
Ty Blakeney
12:30-2
In this course, we will explore forms of same-sex sexuality that do not fall easily under the banner of homosexual or gay identity. Recent years have seen claims of the “pansexual revolution” among millennials, according to which sexual identity categories have come to have less and less meaning. We will start in the current moment, and then go back in time to see the ways in which individuals with same-sex attraction have given a name to their sexuality in a way that does not always fit easily within the homo/hetero binary. The texts we read will be varied, from social media and films to novels and poetry.

READINGS/FILMS: Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah I
André Gide, The Immoralist
Jean Genet, Journal of a Thief
Hervé Guibert, The Compassion Protocol
Call Me By Your Name
Love, Simon
Social media posts (TikTok and YouTube)

“This Could All Be Yours Someday” – Building the Nation Through Literature
R1B.002 : English Composition through French Literature in Translation
Spring 2022
Class No: 33470
4104 Dwinelle
MWF
Michael Arrigo
10-11
Required Texts:

Imagined Communities (excerpts)

Sab

The Suns of Independence

Persepolis

The Class

The Stranger

The Meursault Investigation

Supplementary readings provided in Course Reader or on bCourses

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will be oriented toward the development of research skills and the production of two papers. Its theme will focus broadly on how literature shapes the “nation” and mediates our relationship to it. Using concepts from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities as a starting point, this class will focus on a variety of texts, principally from traditions of French expession, meant to consider various themes and questions literature helps to answer in creating and sustaining the imaginary of the nation: who belongs to the nation? how should the nation be represented? What is its genesis story? What versions of history should constitute the nation’s shared memory? Texts will range from Kourouma’a masterwork of disenchantment The Suns of Independence to Bégaudau’s fictionalized account of his experience as French teacher in a schoolroom in Paris in modern France. Beyond textual readings, students will develop practical skills involved in the research process including searching for secondary sources, notetaking, bibliographical curation, as well as further improving analytic and argumentative writing skills.

Undergraduate Courses 

Practice Phonetics Listening
35
Spring 2022
Class No: 28769
30 Wheeler
Tu/Th
Rachel Weiher
12:30-2 pm
This multimedia course concentrates on pronunciation and listening comprehension skills and provides a new understanding of the French language. Theoretical and practical concepts are taught as necessary, in order to familiarize students with the wide range of pronunciation systems that span the Francophone world, as attitudes and ideologies associated with them. While honing their own pronunciation, students are encouraged to critically evaluate what it means to “sound French.” This course is strongly recommended before study, work, or travel in French-speaking countries, particularly for Education Abroad Program students.

Prerequisites:

A passing grade in French 3 at UC Berkeley, or the equivalent. If you have questions about placement, see the Placement Guidelines on French Department website.

Additional information:

Course not open to native or heritage speakers of French.

Francophone Crime Fiction
43B : Aspects of French Culture
Spring 2022
Class No: 30374
83 Dwinelle
Tu/Th
Karl Britto
12:30-2 pm
In recent decades, many postcolonial authors writing in French have produced novels that engage with a variety of sub-genres within the field of crime fiction, including the “hardboiled” detective novel, the roman noir, and the serial killer novel. What might account for this literary turn toward the dystopian, toward texts constructed around mysteries and often marked by shocking descriptions of extreme violence? In what ways do the genres of crime fiction allow writers to engage with long and complex colonial and post-colonial histories, and to address issues of social, political, and economic injustice? How do postcolonial writers push the generic boundaries of crime fiction, and to what ends? In this class, we will discuss these questions through a consideration of a variety of novels and films with links to France, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. A comparative approach will allow us to understand postcolonial texts alongside and against earlier narratives of crime. Authors considered will likely include Ousmane Sembène, Driss Chraïbi, Patrick Chamoiseau, Didier Daeninckx, Yasmina Khadra, and Alain Mabanckou. Readings and discussions in English.

Paris: A Historical Anatomy of the World’s Most Romantic City
80 : Cultural History of Paris
Spring 2022
Class No: 28567
B4 Dwinelle
Tu/Th
Mairi-Louise McLaughlin
11-12:30 pm
This class will offer students an in-depth exploration of the urban artifact that is Paris. That is, rather than attending to a selection of events having transpired in Paris over its history, we will be proceeding “forensically,” peeling back what is visible to today’s observer in order to uncover the competing ambitions, economic pressures, and ideologies that have produced one of the most visited cities in the world.

Taught in English.

Read, Write in French, 3 sections
102
Spring 2022
R. Shuh, M. Szarke, S. Tlatli
Readings:

Course Reader; other readings as assigned by Instructor

Course Description:

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

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

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

Prerequisites:

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

Additional information:

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

Montreal: Colonization, Urbanization, Migration
103B : Language and Culture
Spring 2022
Class No: 24462
241 Cory
MWF
Will Burton
2-3
Like those in any North American city, Montreal’s writers and filmmakers have long found in colonisation, urbanisation, and migration both artistic inspiration and an aesthetic challenge. But Montreal’s status as the second-largest French-speaking city in the world has also produced a distinctive political and artistic culture in comparison to the continent’s other metropolises. In this course, we will read and watch works from the past century or so that grapple with the city’s double identity. Our material is grouped into four categories: (1) francophone settlers’ efforts to construct a uniquely North American voice; (2) the social, moral and economic dislocations and changes caused by North American-style industrialisation; (3) Indigenous resistance to colonisation in and around Montreal; and (4) migration to the city in the wake of slavery and war in the francophone world.

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.

Tentative list of works to be studied in whole or in part:

Berthelot Brunet, Les Hypocrites (roman) (extraits)
François Girard, Hochelaga, terre des âmes (film de fiction)
Dany Laferrière, Comment faire l’amour avec un n— sans se fatiguer (roman)
Émile Nelligan, Poésies (sélections)
Alanis Obomsawin, Kanehsatake, 270 ans de résistance (film documentaire)
Gabrielle Roy, Bonheur d’occasion (roman) (extraits)
Sherry Simon, L’Hybridité culturelle (essai)
Michel Tremblay, Les Belles-Sœurs (pièce de théâtre)

Image: Gabor Szilasi, Club Supersexe et cinéma Palace, 696-698, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, Montréal, 1979

Elles: Solidarity, Desire and Conflict between Women
121B : Theme, Genre, Structures
Spring 2022
Class No: 30375
126 Wheeler
MWF
Will Burton
10-11
The feminist and lesbian movements of the 1970s imagined a utopia of solidarity between all women. But by the 1980s, many activists across the French– and English-speaking world determined that the mainstream movements’ treatment of decolonisation, language, race, and sexuality was inadequate and they founded their own groups. For the former, feminism represented the common will of womankind. But for the latter, the intersections between womanhood and other political issues sapped the viability of any singular definition of “woman.”

Both this utopian drive and critiques of it inspired innovative literary and cinematic depictions of women’s relationships to each other: in solidarity and conflict, in friendship and love, and across generations. In this course, we will study an international selection of such works and the urgent personal and political questions they raise. What do women owe one another? Where is the line between friendship and love? Is there a historical women’s and/or lesbian tradition? How does a heterosexual woman live a feminist life? Is lesbianism “the feminist solution”? How can white women and Black and Indigenous women work together? How to reconcile the demands of feminism and other ideologies (nationalism, socialism)?

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.

Tentative list of works to be studied in whole or in part:

Nicole Brossard, Amantes (poésies)
Maryse Condé, Moi, Tituba sorcière noire de Salem (roman)
Assia Djebar, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (roman)
Naomi Fontaine, Kuessipan (roman)
Linda Lê, Les Trois Parques (roman)
Léa Pool, Anne Trister (film)
Céline Sciamma, Bande de filles (film)
Monique Wittig, Virgile, non (roman)

Image: Alexander Rothaug, Die drei Parzen, ca. 1910

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
126 : Senior Seminar
Spring 2022
Class No: 26509
106 Wheeler
Tu/Th
Susan Maslan
12:30-2 pm
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most controversial and contradictory figure in the history of French literature and culture. He was a moralist who wrote of his compulsion to expose himself to female passers-by, a misogynist who dreamed of being spanked by his love objects and who created a huge female audience for his works, a theoretician of democracy who was homeless and stateless. Rousseau’s contradictions were enormously productive: he invented modern autobiography; he was the foremost novelist of his day—he wrote what was the runaway best-seller of the century and he came to epitomize and to disseminate a new culture of emotion and sensibility that spread throughout Europe and that lasted well into the nineteenth century. But while Rousseau was the father of Romanticism, he was also the most rigorous political analyst of the Enlightenment. He posed the most fundamental and radical questions: why is there inequality among human beings? How can states and societies be ordered so that people are free and equal? Why do some command and some obey? Why some have too much, and others have nothing? What is the self and how is it formed? How should children be educated? These questions, along with the life and personality of Rousseau, inspired the French revolutionaries. Was he a crank? Was he the original theorist of totalitarianism, as some have claimed, was he the founder of modern democracy, as others have argued? Our seminar will be devoted to exploring these questions and more as we study one of the greatest writers and thinkers in the French tradition.

Readings include: Les Confessions (part 1); Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité; Emile (excerpts); Essai sur l’origine de langues; Du contrat social; Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire.

French for Politics / Le Français Politique
137 : French for Economics, Business, and Politics
Spring 2022
Class No: 32133
109 Dwinelle
MWF
Claire Tourmen Perron
2-3
This class provides a solid introduction to French-speaking political cultures, with an emphasis on European countries like France, Belgium and Switzerland, but with discussion of other geographic areas (Québec, francophone Africa) as well. The course’s cultural objectives are coupled with linguistic objectives to help you speak about political issues in French. Whether you want to work with or within French-speaking countries, in diplomacy or international affairs, politics, medias, academia, or NGOs, this class will help you build domain-specific linguistic skills as well as intercultural competencies to be able to better interact with people from French-speaking public organizations, NGOs, and media; to develop your capacity to search for and make sense of information in French-speaking media; to develop a better understanding of the core political issues discussed during the French electoral season of 2022. You will also learn how to conduct a semi-directive interview on political matters in French.

Learning outcomes

After this class, you will be able to:
- Navigate French speaking media and decipher their different political orientations;
- Read, listen to, and discuss current political matters in French, with the use of specialized vocabulary;
- Understand the unique features and challenges of French-speaking political systems and the French administration;
- Conduct a semi-directive interview in French.
Required Textbook:
Edward Ousselin (2018). La France : histoire, société, culture. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
Course Organization
Each class will involve a mix of teacher and student presentations, discussions, role plays, and analysis of authentic documents (texts, audio, video etc.). The class will be conducted entirely in French. This will be an interactive class, aimed at maximizing your time interacting in French. Your grammar does not need to be perfect; we will focus on being understood and accurate (both linguistically and culturally).
The class will be organized around 5 textbook chapters and the day-to-day development of the French presidential election:

Introduction: you will reflect on why French people are so passionate about politics;
Chapter 1 (Political Life): you will learn about French political parties and the chief politicians and institutions in France in order to follow daily news about the French Presidential election during the Spring of 2022;
Chapter 2 (Medias): you will learn how to navigate French speaking media in Europe, Canada and Africa;
Chapter 3 (Administration): you will learn how to interact with l’Etat providence (the Welfare State);
Chapter 4 (World Stage): you will learn how to understand French-speaking countries’ positions on the world stage;
Chapter 5 (Hot Topics): you will discuss and deliberate on some of the most divisive topics of French politics today: How to address social inequalities and unemployment in times of capitalism? Why are laïcité (secularism), national identity and immigration so controversial? Are ecologists winning the political agenda, but launching new culture wars? We will also discover hot political topics in other French speaking countries.
Special feature of the class: the 2022 French Presidential Election will unfold in front of us. We will closely follow the election (to be held April 10 and April 24, 2022) by watching and commenting on the televised debates between the candidates and viewing and commenting on the election nights (April 10 and April 24, 2022).

This class will expose you to a great deal of authentic materials (newspaper articles, journal articles, websites, television shows, videos, songs…), including texts from famous French thinkers such as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the economist Thomas Piketty, and others. We will welcome a few
French speaking guest lecturers from other Departments (sociology, economy) in class.

Instructor:
Claire Tourmen Perron
Lecturer at UCB French Department, tourmen@berkeley.edu
A French native, Claire Tourmen was trained in humanities, philosophy and political sciences at La Sorbonne (Paris I) before becoming a researcher in Education at AgroSup Dijon-University of Burgundy, where she specialized in professional learning, intercultural learning, and program evaluation. Claire did her PhD research within a consulting firm in Lyon, France, while performing public program evaluation for the European Union and various national and local organizations in France. She also taught program evaluation at the Master level at Sciences Po Lyon, Sciences Po Rennes, and other universities. She is a reviewer for journals in political science such as Evaluation, American Journal of Evaluation, The Canadian journal of program evaluation, Revue Française d’Administration Publique. Since 2017, she has been a lecturer in the UC Berkeley French Department.

Literary Histories of Sexuality and Gender
140D : French Literature in English Translation
Spring 2022
Class No: 30376
Social Sciences 54
Tu/Th
Michael Lucey
11-12:30 pm
Why are gender and sexuality so important in modern French literature? Are ways of understanding sexuality and gender linked to certain times and places? That is, are ideas about gender and sexuality somehow culture-specific? Is there something “modern” or “western” about certain ways of thinking about sexuality and gender? Do we distort things about the past if we look at it through our contemporary lens? Here’s a different version of that question: does the past change for us as our own ways of thinking about sexuality and gender evolve, as new forms of understanding and new identities emerge? We will ask these questions, and also notice that other people asked these (or similar) questions in earlier times (the nineteenth century, for instance) as we read a selection of critical and literary texts, as well as some work by contemporary writers on these kinds of questions. We will read some of Michel Foucault’s classic History of Sexuality, along with parts of contemporary works of scholarship like Rachel Mesch’s Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France. We will also read a series of literary works drawn from key literary movements of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries: Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin; Colette, The Pure and the Impure; Rachilde, The Juggler; Gide, The Immoralist; Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers; Taïa, A Country for Dying.

Taught in English.

Translation Methods
148
Spring 2022
Class No: 29180
242 Dwinelle
MWF
Claire Tourmen Perron
1-2 pm
Required textbook: Hervey, Sándor and Ian Higgins, (2002) Thinking French
Translation (hard copy or e-book)

How do translators decide how to render texts accurately (and beautifully) into a different language? What makes one translation “better” than another? What can the act of translating teach us about French and English? This course brings together aspects of translation theory and translation methodology in order to develop our skills as translators and as readers.

In this course, we will translate both from French into English and from English into French, paying particular attention to the formal and linguistic differences that can pose problems for translators. One of the main questions we will address is the role of intercultural knowledge in the act of translation. How can we translate idioms and cultural references without betraying the initial text, but still be relevant in another cultural and linguistic context?

We will also explore the benefits and limits of dictionaries (paper, online, bilingual and monolingual), automated translation tools (like Google Translate), and search engines, to use them as efficiently as possible to produce the best translations.

Prerequisites:
French 102 or equivalent.
Additional Information:
This course satisfies 1 "Culture"; or 1 "Elective"; course requirement in the French Major. Satisfies one course requirement in the French Minor. Course conducted in French.

French-language cinema and the collective
178B : Studies in French Film
Spring 2022
Class No: 32170
33 Dwinelle
Tu/Th
Maya Sidhu
2-3:30 pm
French filmmakers such as Jean Renoir, Agnès Varda, and Céline Sciamma among others have used the medium of film as a tool to tackle larger issues of politics, class, and race. To achieve these goals, film directors have worked with collectives as a form of political engagement aimed at transforming French society. In this course we will consider how film collectives such as: Ciné-Liberté, Les Insoumuses, Le Collectif 50/50, and Kourtrajmé aim to intervene into or disrupt traditional models of filmmaking. Beyond fiction films, we will also consider documentaries and newsreels by political groups such as the feminist organization, La Femme Nouvelle. Alongside a weekly film screening, we will read essays, manifestos, and major works of theory that add context to the films and cast light on some of the questions they raise. This class is open to both French and Film majors, though a knowledge of French is required (Film students will not be assessed on their competency in French). Students counting this course towards the major or minor in French must submit all written work in French. Class discussions are in French.

Please note that students will watch films independently before class on Thursday. The screenings on Tuesday at 3:30 will not occur in person this semester.

LITTERATURE ET COLONIALISME : L’IMAGINAIRE COLONIAL
185 : Literature and Colonialism
Spring 2022
Class No: 31040
258 Dwinelle
MWF
Soraya Tlatli
12-1pm
The goal of this course is to explore the process of colonization and the building of the vast French colonial empire through the analysis of historical, literary and visual productions. We will first take into consideration the ideology as well as the legacy of French colonialism in the Caribbean, North Africa and Indochina. We will then analyze the intersections of gender, sexuality and orientalism in the works of Gilles Manceron, Assia Djebar, Albert Camus, Aimé Césaire and Marguerite Duras. Through a series of close-readings, we will seek to explore the ways in which these various authors have built a colonial imaginary.

Graduate Courses

Reading and Interpretation of Old French Texts
211A
Spring 2022
Class No: 30377
4226 Dwinelle
W
David Hult
1-4 pm
La Chanson de Roland, ed. I. Short; Lais de Marie de France, ed. Harf-Lancner (ISBN 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.

17 &18th Century Theater
245A : Early Modern Studies
Spring 2022
Class No: 30378
4226 Dwinelle
Tu
Susan Maslan
2-5 pm
Theater was France’s pre-eminent art form from the seventeenth- through the early nineteenth centuries. Theater was also a public, collective social experience as well as a cultural institution often in contention with other institutions—religious and political.

We will study some major plays of the 17th and 18 th centuries (Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Marivaux, Voltaire, Beaumarchais). We will seek to understand some of the important literary and aesthetic stakes of these works, as well as to investigate the social and political history of the theater (organization of theater troupes, audiences and their social composition, censorship practices, etc.). We will think about the role
and the effects of genre (tragedy vs. comedy; the rise of “drame”). We will study contemporary debates about the theater and trace theater’s importance as a crucible for the formation and expression of public opinion. We will study censorship—an ever-present force that shaped French theater. We will discuss
representations of class and of gender. We will also study the representation of cultural others—e.g. Islam, the New World. We will examine anti-theatrical discourse and seek to understand how theater was simultaneously a sign of the French monarchy’s hegemony and a practice of dangerous subversion.

Teaching French in College - First Year
302
Spring 2022
Class No: 24463
4226 Dwinelle
Friday
Richard Kern
2-4 pm
Bi-weekly lectures on methodology, grading and testing in French 2. Demonstration class with required attendance five times per week; laboratory observations; supervised classroom practice. Additional seminars and discussion sections on methodology. Required for all Graduate Student Instructors teaching French 2 for the first time.

Teaching French in College - Advanced
303
Spring 2022
Class No: 24464
4226 Dwinelle
Thursdays
Vesna Rodic
1-3 pm
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.