Spring 2013

Reading and Composition (R&C)

Radical Practices and Social Critique in Contemporary Poetry

Lower & Upper-Division Courses 

The Art of Love in Medieval and Early Modern France

39C : Sophomore Seminar

Spring 2013
Instructions: C. Davis

Readings:

Course Reader

Course Description:

This course will explore the development of love as a central theme in French literature during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. Is love
an emotion or an idea? Is it a universal human experience or a uniquely individual one? We will address these questions by examining the representation of love in a variety of literary texts, including medieval lyric and Romance, Early modern drama, the poets of the Pléiade and the essays of Montaigne. The period in question saw significant changes in almost every aspect of human life, from law and government to technology and science; our goal will be to ask how texts that address the theme of love comment on the changing status of the individual in society. We will treat these texts not only as records of the past, but as points of contact, which allow us to confront the role of literary traditions in constructing modern ideas of individuality, family, sexuality and gender.

Additional Information:

Readings and discussions will be in English. Enrollment open to students with freshman or sophomore standing. May be used to satisfy the Arts and Literature breadth requirement in Letters and Science.

Writing in French, 3 sections ("W")

102
Spring 2013
Instructors: V. Rodic; S. Maslan; R. Shuh

Readings:

Course Reader; Other readings as announced.

Course Description:

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

Prerequisites:

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

Additional information:

French 102 is the sole prerequisite to all UCB French courses numbered 103 and above. Course open to non-native speakers of French only. Course conducted in French. This course is designated as “W” (writing intensive) in the French major.

Art and Politics: The Surrealist Revolution ("W")

103B : Language and Culture

Spring 2013
Instructor: S. Tlatli

Readings:

Course Reader

Course Description:

This course will discuss the artistic, political and psychoanalytical aspects of French Surrealism from its first expression in the early 1920’s to the aftermath of the Second World War. We will consider all the artistic components of this multi-faceted movement and our material will include textual sources such as prose, poetry and manifestos, but also films and paintings. This course will address specific topics, such as the relationship between creativity and the unconscious, the important role of psychoanalysis in the development of surrealism, and the relationship between poetic and political revolutionary practices.

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 L & S breadth requirement in Arts and Literature. This course is designated as “W” (writing intensive) in the French major.

George Sand Novels, Music, and Politics

126 : Senior Seminar

Spring 2013
Instructor: M. Lucey

George Eliot wrote of George Sand: “I cannot read six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human passion and its results . . . with such truthfulness such nicety of discrimination such tragic power and withal such loving gentle humour that one might live a century with nothing but one’s own dull faculties and not know so much as these six pages will suggest.” And yet George Eliot’s novels are very much read today by students of literature, and George Sand’s very little. Baudelaire, on the other hand, commented of Sand: “Elle est bête, elle est lourde, elle est bavarde.” In any case, she was one of the most widely read European novelists of the nineteenth century and yet most of her novels are never read today. We will explore her paradoxical reputation and writing through a reading of four novels, La dernière Aldini, Consuelo, Les maîtres sonneurs, and Adriani. These novels have in common a preoccupation with music and musicians, and with the role music plays in society. Music can be both popular and elitist. Maybe it can even be revolutionary. (Sand was famous for living daringly and dangerously, at least in the first part of her life. She would probably have been a big supporter of the Occupy movement!) On the one hand, music brings people together, on the other hand, musicians are decidedly odd, and perhaps dangerous to society. How does Sand deploy these parameters in her novels? Students in this seminar will also be asked to do a little bit of independent research into Sand’s life and various aspects of her social world and historical situation.

French for Teaching and Related Careers

138
Spring 2013
Instructor: R. Kern

Readings:

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

Course Description:

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

Prerequisites:

French 35 and 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

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

Cutting a Path Through Proust's In Search of Lost Time

140D : French Literature in English Translation

Spring 2013
InstructorS. Guerlac

Readings:

Course Reader

Course Description:

Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du temps perdu [In Search of Lost Time] is a monumental work of modern fiction, written in a first person voice. Because it is so huge, and was published over many decades in separate volumes, many people are only familiar with the first part of the novel, which concerns memories of childhood. But Marcel grows up! And Paris changes in the aftermath of WWI. In this class we will read selections from the entire novel, tracing a path from beginning to end in manageable sections. Time, memory, subjectivity, sensation, sexuality, jealousy and art – these are some of the themes we will examine in our study of Proust’s celebrated modern novel. A few critical essays will guide us in our reading. Readings will consist of selections from the novel, in a recently published English translation presented in a course reader that will also include a few critical essays.

Prerequisites:

Open to all students. Course taught in English.

Additional information:

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

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

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

Immigration in Contemporary France -- Le Paris Arabe

162 : Perspectives on History

Spring 2013
Instructor: S. Tlatli

Readings:

Course Reader

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. Our approach will be trans generational in that we will take into consideration the sharp contrast between the first waves of immigration in the mid-fifties and the second generation of French citizens born from immigrant parents. We will address specific topics such as the role of the Algerian War of liberation in determining a stereotype of the Arabs, the increasing importance of Islam and of the status of women in contemporary political debates and practices, as well as the development of a racist political movement such as le Front National. We will pay a close attention to the various cultural ways in which the city of Paris has been shaped and transformed by immigration, throughout the twentieth-century. Our material will be diverse: we will rely on textual sources such as fiction pieces, essays, manifestos and historical texts but also on cultural productions such as songs, films, documentaries and architectural documents.

Prerequisites:
French 102 or consent of Instructor.

Additional information:
Satisfies 1 “Culture” or 1 “Elective” requirement in the French major. Fulfills Letters and Science breadth requirement in Social and Behavioral Sciences or Historical Studies. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Introduction to Cinema

170 : French Films

Spring 2013
Instructor: U. Dutoit

Readings:

Journot, Le vocabulaire du cinéma; Pinel, Le montage; Siety, Le plan

Course Description:

L’inverti: A quoi penses-tu, Geneviève?
Geneviève: Je pense à un mot de Chamfort que je considère presque comme un précepte.
L’inverti: Et que dit-il ton Chamfort?
Geneviève: Il dit que l’amour dans la société c’est l’échange de deux fantaisies et le contact de deux épidermes…
— in La Règle du jeu, by Jean Renoir

This course will consider cinema as the art of movement, and violence and sensuality as manifestations of this movement. We will study the basic vocabulary of cinematographic language using films by Renoir, Vigo, Resnais and Godard. The interactions of the different mechanisms of film language will allow us to explore the creation of non-passive cinema. In addition to scheduled course meetings there is a weekly screening on Wednesdays, 4-6.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor. Film Studies students should consult the instructor about French language preparation and prerequisites.

Additional information:

Weekly film screening (required): Wednesdays 4-6 in B4 Dwinelle. Satisfies one “Culture” or one “Elective” course requirement in the French Major. Satisfies L & S breadth requirement in Arts and Literature. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Fantastic Voyages, Fantastic Spaces in French Medieval Literature

180A : French Civilization

Spring 2013
Instructor: C. Davis

The Middle Ages are not typically thought of as an age of exploration and discovery. Nevertheless, the period from the 11th to the 15th centuries saw the development of vast new routes of trade and pilgrimage, major migrations of people, and the emergence of aggressively expansionist political states. The series of conflicts known as the Crusades transformed the cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean world, resulting in an unprecedented exchange of knowledge, technology and culture, often through violent means.

This course will approach larger issues of cultural and national identity by examining the themes of travel and encounter with the other—both real and imagined—in medieval French texts. These include the proto-nationalist epic, La Chanson de Roland, the crusade chronicles of Joinville, and the fabulous travel narrative of Marco Polo, as well as medieval maps, manuscripts and other historical documents. At the same time, we will ask how fictional descriptions of travel and fantastic spaces in the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the faux-historical Roman d’Alexandre, and Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, might reflect historical anxieties and aspirations during this crucial period of transition. This class will be taught in French.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

By exception for Spring 2013 only, this course satisfies one “Literatue”, one “Culture” or one “Elective” requirement in the French major. Course also satisfies one Historical Period Requirement in French Major. This course satisfies the College of Letters and Science breadth requirement in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Graduate Courses

The Romance of the Rose and the Tradition of Medieval Allegory

210A : Studies in Medieval Literature

Spring 2013
Instructor: D. Hult

Course Description:

This course will combine a detailed reading of the Roman de la Rose and its critical heritage with a study of the medieval tradition of allegorical writing. Annex texts will include those written by some of the great predecessors of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, including selections from Saint Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius and Alain de Lille. The latter few weeks of the course will concentrate on extended passages from the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé, which not only illustrates the move to translation in the later Middle Ages, but also exemplifies a type of exegetical reading, issuing from the theological tradition, applied to a manifestly secular (and frankly immoral) text, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Additional topics will include the rhetorical mode of personification, verbal and visual modes of allegorical representation, Biblical exegesis, and symbol vs. allegory. Work for the course will include a class presentation and a substantial research paper or alternate written assignment. Class will be conducted in English and no knowledge of medieval French is presupposed, though reading knowledge of modern French will be helpful, as the Rose will be read in a dual-language edition, with facing page Old French and modern French translation. Since the class will center on close readings, a certain amount of class time will be reserved for discussion of linguistic and translation issues.

Molière: Stage, Page, Patronage
230A : Studies in 17th Century French Literature

Spring 2013
Instructor: N. Paige

Course Description:

Crafted to appeal to a mixed urban audience as well as to the court and King, running the generic gamut from farce and Latin comedy to a new kind of satire that provoked, in the words of a contemporary, a silent “rire dans l’âme,” Molière’s theatrical output is astonishingly varied. In addition, his plays (of which we’ll be reading a selection) offer a profound engagement with the politico-cultural mutations of the 1660s, a decade that in hindsight has appeared to many as the founding moment of modernity in France. Our seminar will take the measure of the main lit-critical approaches as well as canvass more recent attempts to understand his work in the context of the institutions that shaped it. Readings in French and English; discussions mostly in French but English speakers welcomed.

Topics in the History of the Book and Manuscript Studies -- The Circulation Of the Written Word In Early Modern France and Italy (1450-1800)

245B : Early Modern Studies

Spring 2013
Instructor: D. Blocker

Readings:

Two readers/course companions will be used alternatively for this seminar and constitute required purchases:

— David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader, 2nd edition, London and New York, Routledge, 2006.

— Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (eds), A Companion to the History of the Book (in Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture series), Oxford, Wiley Blackwell, 2009.

Most secondary readings, rare books and manuscripts will be available for bSpace.

Course Description:

This seminar introduces students to the fundamentals of book history (the invention of the printing press, development and policing of the book market, and the material forms of the book), but also to what in the field is now called scribal culture, that is the continued circulation of manuscripts during the age of the printing press and, more generally, the lasting and constant competition between books and manuscripts in the high culture of early modern Europe.

The main aim of this seminar is to provide students with a wide panorama of how the written world circulated in early modern Europe (dealing also, though marginally, with posters and letters). Its central practical purpose it to make students more capable of finding, analyzing, and adequately using print and manuscript sources they will need to study in the context of their dissertations, so as to make them proficient at extracting from these materials the information they need.

We will be doing some early modern paleography and a minimal amount of codicology. We will also be thinking about how European libraries and archives developed and are currently organized when it comes to early modern materials (as this is often a consequence of the early modern circulation and conservation of these very materials and constitutes important practical knowledge to have when working in those archives). One session of the seminar will be devoted to an in-depth discussion of Dr. Filippo de Vivo’s (History, Birkbeck College) current research project on the comparative history of archives in late medieval and early modern Italy (this research project is funded by a four-year European Research Council Starting Grant).

The course will also address the growing availability of early modern print and manuscript sources over the internet, discussing in practical terms how they can best be found, searched and utilized, but also raising epistemological questions regarding the drawbacks of immaterial formats when one is studying the material production and circulation of texts.

This course will be useful both to students of literature (in French as well as in Italian, but also in English, Spanish and Portuguese or German, as many of the fundamentals of this history are similar in the rest of Europe) and to historians in general. Historians of art and music will also find the course of interest, given how important rare books and manuscripts sources now are for these fields as well. Historians of philosophy with a curiosity for the materiality of ideas will also benefit from it.

We will work both from primary sources (rare books and early modern manuscripts, whether at the Bancroft Library or in digital formats) and from the vast body of secondary literature that has now developed in the field of book and manuscript studies.

Additional information:

The course is taught entirely in English, but for those students wishing to do the assigned paleography and codicology exercises on either French or Italian materials a reasonable reading knowledge of French and/or Italian will be needed. For those students possessing reading knowledge neither of French nor of Italian, alternative paleography and codicology exercises in either English, German, Latin and/or Ancient Greek can be set up, in consultation with the instructor. All students will be required to read all secondary readings in the English language, even when French and/or Italian materials are discussed therein.

Countercurrents
250A : Studies in 19th Century French Literature

Spring 2013
Instructor: S. Guerlac

Course Description:

This seminar will focus mainly on the first half of the 19th c. and examine literary and non literary works that are central to grasping developments that prepare the way for what we call the “modernism” of the second half of the century. We will begin with Mme de Staël’s post- revolutionary essay “Comment Terminer la Revolution?” which introduces a new figure of the writer and examine her analysis of literature in relation to a discussion of the notion of “civilisation” presented in lectures by the historian Guizot. We will move on to consider both “right” and “left” versions of romanticism, through figures such as Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo and think about how these developments impact notions of realism and pure art in the 1830’s. Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris will introduce us to issues of popular culture, his Préface de Cromwell and Hernani will present the issue of the mixture of genres (sublime and grotesque) and the romantic challenge to the classical esthetic in the theatre. Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir will introduce us to questions of ambition and authenticity in a world of social transformation. We will also look closely at some of Hugo’s engaged poetry ( La fin de Satan or some of Les Châtiments) and consider Renan’s romantic discourse of humanism in L’Avenir de la Science. We might end with Villiers de l’Isle -Adam’s l ‘Eve Future. We plan to conduct this seminar as a real seminar, with students setting up research /writing projects for themselves early in the semester and leading the way in the discussion of the works they have chosen for us to read.

What Literary Form Can Do -- Bourdieu, Sartre, and Genette with Flaubert, Mallarmé, and Proust
270B : Literary Criticism

Spring 2013
Instructor: M. Lucey

Required Readings:

Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art, Seuil-Points Essais, ISBN: 978-2020349758

Gustave Flaubert, L’éducation sentimentale, Flammarion, ISBN: 978-2080711038

Marcel Proust, A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Gallimard Folio Classique, ISBN: 978-2070380510

Marcel Proust, Contre l’obscurité, Editions La Nerthe. ISBN: 9782916862323

Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann, Gallimard Folio Classique, ISBN: 978-2070379248

Jean-Paul Sartre, Questions de méthode, Gallimard-Tel. ISBN: 978-2070707676

Recommended Readings:

Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction, Minuit, ISBN: 978-2707302755

Jacques Dubois, Pour Albertine: Proust et le sens du social, Seuil, ISBN: 2020300559

Pascal Durand, Mallarmé: Du sens des formes au sens des formalités, Seuil, ISBN: 9782020654319

Gérard Genette, Figures II, Seuil-Points Essais, ISBN: 978-2020053235

Gérard Genette, Figures III, Seuil, ISBN: 978-2020020398

Course Description:

How and why do we relate to culture and to cultural objects? What do culture and its objects do for us? Bourdieu once said in an interview when speaking about La distinction that “dans un post-scriptum où je me réfère à Proust . . . j’évoque à la fois les jouissances spécifiques que donne le rapport à la culture et les souffrances spécifiques que procure le désenchantement culturel. Proust, qui était un admirable sociologue avait dit avant moi mais dans son langage – c’est-à-dire que personne ne l’a entendu – ce que dit La distinction.” In this seminar we’ll have a chance to look in some detail at both Bourdieu’s Les règles de l’art and La distinction, two of the most imposing works of twentieth-century French critical thought, as part of an effort to understand what literary works do, how, via the work of form, they become instruments of analysis that provide us with a critical experience both of language and of the world. We’ll juxtapose Bourdieu’s approach to cultural objects with that of Sartre and of Genette in order to give ourselves a wider sense of the competing impulses that have shaped recent French critical thought about cultural objects, and about literature specifically. Texts by Mallarmé, Flaubert, and Proust, as well as some recent criticism of those authors. You might like to have read Mallarmé’s “Crise de vers” and “Le Mystère dans les lettres” before the start of the seminar.

Advanced First Year

302 : Teaching French in College

Spring 2013
Instructor: S. Chavdarian

Readings:
Kern, Literacy and Language Teaching — Applied Linguistics

Course Description:

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

Prerequisites: French 301

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

Advanced Level

303 : Teaching in French

Spring 2013
Instructor: D. Pries

Readings:

Course Reader

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

Prerequisites: French 301 and 302.

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