Spring 2018

Reading and Composition (R&C)

Ut Pictura Poesis, Paris-New York: Trans-Atlantic Exchanges between Poets and Painters, 1850 to the Present
R1A (Section 1) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2018
Class No: 24376
Instructor: M. Evans

Readings:

See Description

Course Description:

Ut Pictura Poesis, “As is painting, so is poetry” wrote the Roman poet Horace, a rather prophetic statement given the number of poets that have ever since been fascinated with, even sought employment in, the visual art world—perhaps more and more so since paintings have become surrounded by many over types of images: photographs, films, prints, and the digital files that make so immediately accessible paintings that one used to have travel the world to see.

In this course we’ll examine the poetic tradition often called ekphrasis (poetry about painting, loosely translated) as it informs the cultural exchanges between poets writing in America and Paris. Some of our focus will fall on the perceived shift (in the mid-twentieth century) of the center the international art-world from Paris to New York; but we’ll also think about the role these great metropolises play in modern poetry. A guiding question will be how we can contrast and compare this common interest in painting across American and French poetry. What does this common passion tell as about the more or less reciprocal influences French and American poets have on one another? Or the differing ideas and programs these poets have about what poetry is, what meaningful differences they find between verse and prose, form and content, image and sound?

Reading excerpts along the way from the classic formulations of the relationship between poetry and painting by Horace and Lessing, we’ll begin with the poetry and art criticism of Charles Baudelaire and discuss his relationship to the Realist and Impressionist movements in 19th century French painting. After visiting the turn of the century poets Mallarmé and Paul Valéry, we’ll spend some time looking at the early 20th century art movements of Cubism and Dada through the lens of poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Pierre Reverdy, as well though the works of two American poets, Gertrude Stein and Mina Loy, living in Paris at the same time. Over the second part of the semester, we’ll look closely the American Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1940s and 50s and read the New York poets (and art critics) John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, and Barbara Guest, considering the marked influence of French poetry on their own writing about painting. Time permitting, we’ll likely also look at work by Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, W.H. Auden, Aimé Césaire, the Surrealist movement in poetry and painting, Henri Michaux, Francis Ponge, Anne Portugal, Yves Bonnefoy, and André du Bouchet.

As this course fulfills the University’s R1A requirement, our focus will be less on secondary sources and independent research, than it will be on sharpening our interpretive and analytical skills as we read poetry and art criticism by poets. Not assuming any prior familiarity with modern poetry, we’ll employ poet’s attempts to understand or interpret works of art as a guide to approaching the seeming difficulty or impenetrability much ‘modern’ poetry exhibits.

All reading and discussion will be done in English, with many texts translated from French. Students will be expected to produce a number of short papers (3 pages in length) in response to set questions and exercises, as well as two drafts of a longer final paper on a topic students will begin to develop after Spring break. Readings will made available in a course reader that students will be required to procure.

Additional Information:

French R1A fulfills the first half of the Reading and Composition Requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Class conducted in ENGLISH.

"This Could All Be Yours Someday" -- Building the Nation through Literature
R1B (Section 1) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2018
Class No: 24378
Instructor: M. Arrigo

Readings/Films:

Imagined Communities – Benedict Anderson

God’s Little Bits of Wood – Ousmane Sembene

Métronome, l’histoire de France au rythme du métro parisien – Lorànt Deutsch

Persepolis

Battle of Algiers

Course Reader

Course Description:

This course 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 Ousmane Sembene’s masterwork God’s Little Bits of Wood, to the recent controversial French history Métronome produced for popular consumption, to de Gaulle’s memorable “Vive le Québec libre!” speech of 1967. 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. This course will be oriented toward the development of research skills and the production of two papers.

Additional Information:

French R1B fulfills the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Class conducted in ENGLISH.

Flying Away
R1A (Section 2) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2018
Class No: 39668
Instructor: Singer

Readings:

Texts may include : Selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Montaigne’s “Of practice.” Poems by, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, William Carlos Williams, W.H. Auden, and Rita Dove. John Keene’s “Acrobatique.” Molière’s flightless The Flying Doctor. Cyrano de Bergerac’s The States and Empires of the Moon. Euripides’ Medea. Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. Marie NDiaye’s Three Strong Women (Part III). Augustown by Kei Miller. Works by Pieter Bruegel, Edgar Degas, Christian Schad, Kiki Smith, Francesca Woodman, and Kara Walker.

Course Description:

Our fascination with flight has led to literary representations of heroic feats and tragic transformations. Humans sprouting wings, levitating, devising prosthetic machines, and turning into birds, are found in both canonical and popular texts. These characters are rescued, incite revolutions, terrorize humble people, deliver messages, and promise technological progress. In this course we will look at how flying characters are lauded and condemned, as well as the narratives, language, and gender politics used to bestow these evaluative claims. How does flight shift narrative perspective, function as a plot device, or help create genres? We will practice forming clear, concise, evidence-based arguments to interpret textual and visual media. This course will also introduce students to the university library, its collections and databases, and making arguments within a scholarly community.

Additional Information:

French R1A fulfills the first half of the Reading and Composition Requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Class conducted in ENGLISH.

Laughter and Tricky Topics
R1B (Section 2) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2018
Class No: 24379
Instructor: C. Stofle

Texts/Films:

— Voltaire : Candide (1759)

— Muriel Barbery: The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2008)

— Matthieu Kassovitz : La Haine (1994)

— Roberto Benigni: Life Is Beautiful (1997)

— Lionel Steketee : Case Départ (2011)

A course reader will include:

Jonathan Swift: “A Modest Proposal” (1729)
Baudelaire: De l’essence du rire (1855)
Bergson: Le rire (excerpts) (1900)
Freud: Appendix to Jokes and their relation to the unconscious (1927)
Ménil: “Humor: Introduction to 1945” (1945)
David Sedaris: Essays from Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013)

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.

Additional Information:

French R1B fulfills the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Class conducted in ENGLISH.

Love in Perspective(s)
R1B (Section 3) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2018
Class No: 24380
Instructor: K. Levine

Readings:

Letters from a Peruvian Woman by Françoise de Graffigny, trans. David Kornacker (MLA Texts & Translations, 1993)

Course Reader

Recommended: Writing Analytically by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen

Course Description:

In this course, which builds upon the skills developed in R1A, we will read a variety of texts – ancient, medieval, and modern – that highlight questions of point of view and present different ideas of romantic love. While analyzing formal and pragmatic considerations – who is speaking, and when? What information is given to or withheld from the reader? Is the story focused on the same characters throughout, or does the focus shift? – we will explore the ways in which the concept of love and its importance, or not, differs from one period to another. To supplement our thinking about these questions, we will read critical essays from theorists and scholars such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner.

We will work on interpreting literature, producing close readings, developing solid literary arguments, understanding literary theory, doing and presenting outside research, and analyzing and critiquing theoretical work in class discussions and writing assignments.

Additional Information:

French R1B fulfills the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Class conducted in ENGLISH.

Demand the Impossible! France in the 1960s
R1B (Section 4) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2018
Class No: 24377
Instructor: K. Koerner

Readings:

Georges Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

Kristin Ross, May ’68 and Its Afterlives

Course Description:

In this course we will study some of the tumultuous events that occurred in France during the 1960s 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 society 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 and literary 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).

Additional information:

French R1B fulfills the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Class conducted in ENGLISH.

"... that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good:" Evil and the Satanic from Prometheus to Camus
R1B (Section 5) : English Composition through French Literature in Translation

Spring 2018
Class No: 39643
Instructor: S. Rogghe

Readings/Films:

Goethe, Faust ISBN-10 019953621X
Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor ISBN-10: 0872201937
Camus, The Stranger ISBN-10: 0679720200
Course Reader including excerpts from:Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil
Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil
Hannah Arendt, The Banality of evil
+ Relevant critical essays

Course Description:

In this course, we will look at different interpretations of “evil,” from the grotesquely Satanic to the mundanely banal. Starting with Greek Antiquity, we will see how man’s “animal nature,” as embodied by the god Dionysus, later becomes demonized, culminating in the image of Luciferian rebellion we find in the 19th century, and eventually turning into banality as we make our way into the 20th century. In our encounter with the satanic, we will also consider it as an essential pole in the human struggle: moral dilemma, good versus evil, true knowledge versus blind obedience – these conflicts make up our human condition, and we will see how these contradictions recur in different forms in the texts we read. Alongside literary texts, we will read theoretical essays that help us think about key topics in these texts, expressing points of view we may argue against, agree with, or take as points of departure for our own, personal struggle with the complexity of good and evil.

Because this is a writing course, student writing will be examined and dissected in group discussions and in smaller peer review groups, as a way to provide constructive feedback and learn from each other’s writing. In addition, we will also address methods for doing critical research, including exercises devoted to library resources and bibliographical information.

Additional Information:

French R1B fulfills the second half of the Reading and Composition Requirement in the College of Letters and Science. Class conducted in ENGLISH.

Lower & Upper-Division Courses 

Films of the French New Wave -- The Essentials
43B : Aspects of French Culture

Spring 2018
Class No: 39649
Instructor: N. Paige

Readings/Films:

Movies screened will be subtitled and will include works by Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Demy, Rohmer, Maker, and others. Students may attend scheduled screenings or stream the films on their own.

Course Description:

This course will introduce students to a number of classic films of the French New Wave, perhaps the most important and emblematic moment in modern cinema, and still a point of reference for filmmakers ranging from Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to Alfonso Cuarón and Wong Kar-Wai. Along the way, we will look at the theoretical and cultural factors that help explain this extraordinary flowering of filmmaking talent in the late 1950s and early 1960s; and we will also be reading some important short essays from the period that will help bring the films’ originality into focus. General points to be explored include: France and American popular culture; post-war economic transformations and consumerism; changing norms of sex and gender; the documentary image; the subversion and pastiche of genre; the ideology of form. Movies screened will be subtitled and will include works by Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Demy, Rohmer, Maker, and others. Students may attend scheduled screenings or stream the films on their own.

Additional Information:

This course satisfies the College of Letters and Science breadth requirement in Historical Studies or in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Course taught in English; knowledge of French not required. Optional weekly screening Mondays, 5-7pm.

Writing in French, 2 sections
102

Spring 2018
Class No: 24403 and 24404
Instructor: D. Blocker, M. McLaughlin

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 Letters and Science breadth requirement in International Studies.

Littérature, cinéma et colonialisme
103B : Language and Culture

Spring 2018
Class No: 24406
Instructor: T. Tlatli

Readings:

A reader from “Copy Central” will be available

Course Description:

Dans ce cours, nous analyserons la manière dont des penseurs, cinéastes et écrivains du vingtième siècle ont pris parti pour ou contre la formation d’un empire colonial français et l’indépendance des pays colonisés. Les questions suivantes seront discutées: la fascination de l’exotisme, les guerres de décolonisation, la torture et l’état, la déshumanisation coloniale. Parmi les auteurs que nous lirons, il faut compter: Jean-Paul Sartre, Henri Alleg, Frantz Fanon et Aimé Césaire. Nous verrons les films suivants: “La Bataille d’Alger”, “Avoir vingt ans dans les Aures”, “Drowning by bullets”, “Indigènes”.

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 or International Studies.

The French Enlightenment and its Afterlife
118B : Eighteenth Century Literature

Spring 2018
Class No: 39613
Instructor: S. Maslan

Readings:

Readings will include: Voltaire, L’Ingénu; Montesquieu, Les Lettres persanes; Graffigny, Lettres d’une péruvienne; Diderot, Le Supplément au voyage de Bougainville; Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses; Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro.

Course Description:

At the end of the eighteenth century Immanuel Kant tried to answer the question: What is Enlightenment? He came up with this answer: The Enlightenment was the time during which and the process by which human beings finally emerged from their own self-imposed childhood. The Enlightenment meant shaking off traditional authorities—kings, priests, fathers—and refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of handed-down ideas. Everything was up for grabs: ideas about politics, religion, sex, the family, and the nation. Both the content of beliefs and the methods by which beliefs were formed came up for scrutiny as writers and thinkers turned their studies away from the supernatural and the metaphysical toward the natural, the physical, and the social. Moreover, Enlightenment was a public process. Reading, thinking, writing, criticizing was something no one person could accomplish by him or herself. “Dare to know” was the watchword Kant retrospectively assigned to the readers and writers of the Enlightenment.

Recently, this heroic account of the Enlightenment has come under attack. For Horkheimer and Adorno, the Enlightenment was the origin of the kind of instrumental reason that led to fascism. More recent scholars accuse the Enlightenment of having contructed a “universal man” who is nothing but a cover for white, western, male power. Other critics of the Enlightenment complain that it made our society too secular and too licencious—that it dissolved the basis for morality itself. In this class we will try to decide for ourselves. The Enlightenment was also shaped by the censorship rigorously exercised by the monarchy; we will discuss censorship and the repression of writers. We will revisit many of the classic works of the French eighteenth century, trying to take Kant’s injunction as our watchword as we seek to discover the relation between our own complicated societies and the legacy of the Enlightenment. We will read plays, novels, and philosophical texts.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

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 L & S breadth requirement in Arts and Literature or International Studies. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

Victor Hugo: The Poet as Activist
126 : Senior Seminar

Spring 2018
Instructor: S. Guerlac

Readings:

See Description

Course Description:

Victor Hugo’s life spanned almost the entire 19th century, a period of radical social transformation. He became a successful poet under the Restoration King at a very young age and then proceeded to transform French poetry and his own political and social ideas. He wrote plays, novels, and essays that launched the movement of literary Romanticism. But he was not only an artist. He was also an activist. He spoke out in favor of social justice and women’s rights, and against slavery, the death penalty, and the oppression of the poor. He also spoke out against the emperor Napoleon III, who took power after the revolution of 1848 by a coup d’état. For this he was punished with twenty years of exile, which he spent in the Channel Islands, returning to France only after it was proclaimed a Republic.

In this seminar we will study Hugo’s literary works (prose, drama, and poetry) in relation to his evolving social concerns and the changes underway in French culture. We will read his poetry and trace its evolution as his social commitments intensified. We will read works that galvanized the Romantic challenge to classical esthetics: La Préface de Cromwell, the play Hernani (which created a scandal) and the poem “Réponse à un acte d’Accusation.” We will read short selections from two very long novels (Les Misérables and Notre Dame de Paris) supplemented by film treatments of them. We will also examine how Hugo treats the death penalty (and incarceration generally) in both fictional works and militant essays, and how he uses poetry to convey ferocious anger at a tyrant. Victor Hugo has a lot to teach us about engaging passionately and uncompromisingly with the world around us both as artists and as activists.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Additional Information:

This course satisfies 1 “Literature/Genre” or 1 “Elective” course requirement in the French major. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature or International Studies. Senior standing recommended, but not required.

France, Europe, and the Refugee "Crisis": Exploration in Fiction and Film
141 : French Studies in an International Context

Spring 2018
Class No: 39616
Instructor: D. Sanyal

Readings/Films

Selected Readings in Course Reader; Films to be announced.

Course Description:

This course investigates the itineraries and narratives of refugees today. Contemporary French fiction and film will help us reconstruct aspects of a refugee’s flight and chart their perilous journey across land and sea into Europe. We will pay particular attention to the forms of personhood that emerge or are put into crisis by such experiences as clandestine passage, detention, surveillance, encampment, deportation, the asylum application, undocumented labor, and so forth. We will also consider the importance of narrative in organizing histories and selves in ways that are audible and visible for a refugee’s place of sanctuary. How is the refugee currently “situated” in historical, conceptual and geopolitical terms? How pertinent are previous histories of racial violence (e.g., slavery or the Holocaust) for thinking about refugees today? What are the possibilities and limits of humanitarian approaches to refugees? Of human rights discourses on refugees? What are some possible relations between hospitality and artistic form? To what extent can art transform existing frames of representation and protection? These and other questions will be pursued through readings of literature and film.

Prerequisites:

no language prerequisites

Additional Information:

All reading, writing and discussion are in English. Fortnightly screenings of films will be scheduled. This course satisfies “Outside Elective” course requirement in the French major. This course does not satisfy requirements for the French Minor.

This course also satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature or International Studies.

Translation Methodology and Practice
148

Spring 2018
Class No: 39617
Instructor: M. McLaughlin

Readings:

Hervey, Sándor and Ian Higgins, (2002) Thinking French Translation

Course Description:

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

Prerequisites:

French 102 or equivalent.

Additional Information:

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

Introduction to French Cinema
170 : French Films

Spring 2018
Class No: 39629
Instructor: M. Sidhu

Readings:

Jacques Aumont et al., Esthétique du film, 3e édition (Armand Colin); Jean-Pierre Jeancolas, Histoire du cinéma français, 2e édition (Armand Colin)

Course Description:

This class explores the rich history of French cinema in terms of larger issues in French culture, society, and politics. We will examine some of the major movements in French film style from poetic realism to the Nouvelle Vague. We will also read works of French film theory, which ask how film is a distinctive medium of expression and can take up issues of gender, class, and race. In addition to considerations of film history and theory, this class provides an introduction to the study of the moving image. We will learn how to analyze a film closely through examining how image, sound, editing work together to produce meaning.

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): Tuesdays, 4- 6 pm. Satisfies one “Culture” or one “Elective” course requirement in the French Major. Satisfies College of Letters and Science breadth in Arts and Literature or International Studies. Priority enrollment for declared French majors.

L’impact de la guerre d’Algérie dans la France contemporaine
183A : Configurations of Crisis

Spring 2018
Class No: 39622
Instructor: S. Tlatli

Readings:

A reader from “Copy Central” will be available

Course Description:

Le but de ce cours est d’analyser les évènements historiques de la guerre d’Algérie (1954-1962) mais aussi ses conséquences dans la vie politique et culturelle contemporaine. Nous étudierons en détail, selon une perspective littéraire et historique, la manière dont la guerre d’Algérie a bouleversé le paysage politique français, mais aussi la manière dont elle a affecté les populations en Algérie et en France jusqu’à présent. Parmi les auteurs que nous lirons, il faut compter des écrivains classiques tels que Mouloud Feraoun, Albert Camus, et Mohamed Dib, mais aussi contemporains (2017), tels que Brigitte Giraud et Alice Zeniter.

Prerequisites:

French 102 or consent of instructor.

Additional information:

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

Graduate Courses

Second Language Acquisition: Concepts, Theories, and Debates
206 : Special Topics in French Linguistics

Spring 2018
Class No: 39628
Instructor: R. Kern

Readings:

Ellis, Rod. (2015). Understanding Second Language Acquisition: Second Edition. Oxford UP.

Atkinson, Dwight. (2011). Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition. Routledge.

Course Description:

What age is best to learn a second/foreign language? Why are some people better at learning languages than others? Is it a matter of aptitude? length of exposure? practice? motivation? Does instruction really make a difference? What is the relationship between language and thought? Language and culture? Language and identity? And why is language education such a highly politicized field? This course is an introduction to the broad and diverse body of research dealing with how children and adults learn a language other than than their mother tongue. It will deal with canonical (psycholinguistic and interactional) theories of second language acquisition as well as more recent sociocultural and ecological/emergentist theories. We will focus on some of the main concepts and issues in SLA research: competence and performance, form and meaning, interlanguage, fossilization, consciousness and awareness, input and interaction, aptitude and motivation, discourse and culture, mediation, the Zone of Proximal Development, identity issues, language socialization, and classroom-based second language acquisition. The class will also consider research methods associated with these various approaches.

Philology, Manuscript Studies and Book History Among the Disciplines (1300-2000)
245B : Early Modern Studies

Spring 2018
Class No: 39633
Instructor: D. Blocker

Readings:

1) Robert Black, Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2001), 2) Antony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge, MA, Harvard U.P., 1997); 3) James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities (Princeton, Princeton U.P., 2014) ; 4) H.R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts,1558-1640 (Oxford, Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1996), 5) Friedrich Schleiermacher, Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato, translated from the German by William Dobson (Cambridge, UK, J. & J.J. Deighton, 1836, available at: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001223255) ; 6) August Boeckh, On interpretation & Criticism, translated and edited by John Paul Pritchard (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968); 7) Dinah Ribard and Nicolas Schapira, « L’Histoire par le livre, XVIe-XXe siècle », Revue de Synthèse, 6th series, vol. 128, n°1-2 2007, p 19-25, available here: https://synth.revuesonline.com/login.jsp?articleId=31693) ; 8) Filippo de Vivo, Andrea Guidi, Alessandro Silvestri (eds), Archivi e archivisti in Italia tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, Rome, Viella, 2015 (available at: http://digital.casalini.it/9788867285440). All other readings will be excerpted and circulated in PDFs via bCourses. (Cambridge and Oxford U.P. books can be pricey when new, but they can also fairly easily be acquired on-line second hand at a fraction of the price. I encourage you to do so.)

Course Description:

This seminar aims to collectively investigate the place of what we currently call “philological practices” in the development of humanistic studies in the Occidental world from 1300 to our contemporary moment. In the first third of this seminar, we will study the erudition practices of Italian humanists, as they were developed in Florence, Venice, and Rome in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries (3 sessions). We will then move on to examining the development of philology in early modern France and in 19th century Germany, focusing more specifically, in the later case, on the hermeneutics of F. Schleiermacher and A. Boeckh (3 sessions). In the remaining part of the seminar (7 sessions), we will consider the place of philology and of its modern day avatars — i.e., Manuscript Studies and Book History — in the epistemological practices of today’s humanities. To do so, we will pragmatically envisage how Philology, Manuscript Studies, and Book History are currently mobilized in — and across — a variety of humanistic disciplines (Classics; Cultural, Social and/or Political History; Literary Studies; Continental Philosophy; Art History; Musicology; Library Science and Archival History, etc.), focusing principally, but not exclusively, on how they are used in the field of Early Modern Studies. This seminar will therefore not only introduce students to the history of philological practices. It will also systematically expose them to the various ways in which these practices are currently being put to use in humanistic enquiries. As such, the class aims principally to generate a critical reappraisal of these practices: when, why and how can/should these protocols of enquiry be used, what can they do (and not do) for humanists of all creeds and makings, are there good (and bad?) ways of mobilizing them and, if so, how could we possibly tell the difference, in practical terms?

Additional Information:

Some knowledge of French, Italian, German, Arabic, Hebrew and/or Latin or Greek would certainly be most helpful, but no foreign language skills are mandatory to take this class. All foreign language literature assigned will be summarized in English during in-class discussions.

This seminar welcomes interested students from ALL the humanistic disciplines represented on campus — whether or not they are early modernists — while concurrently serving as the “methods and tools” seminar for the DE in REMS for Spring 2018 (http://rems.berkeley.edu).We will work collectively to generate a thoroughly interdisciplinary dialogue across humanistic disciplines, as well as across time periods. The seminar will be held in the Bancroft Library and the second half of each seminar will be devoted to the hands-on investigation of manuscripts and rare books currently held in the library’s collections, relating in one way or another to the session’s primary readings. Last but not least, three to four guest speakers from across campus will be invited to come to talk to the seminar about how their humanistic research currently engages with “philological practices.” Students will be asked to write term papers of methodological/epistemological scope engaging specifically — in whatever manner they choose to — with the Bancroft’s vast collections.For additional information about this seminar prior to the beginning of classes, please feel free to contact the instructor at dblocker@berkeley.edu.

Francophone Literature and the Shameful State
251 : Francophone Literature

Spring 2018
Class No: 24451
Instructor: K. Britto

Readings:

See description.

Course Description:

Alternative facts, kleptocratic regimes, vulgar authoritarians who claim to speak in the voice of the people—for generations, francophone authors have grappled with these and other aspects of postcolonial rule. In this seminar, we will read a number of literary texts that narrate uneasy passages from the colonial period through the era of independence and on into variously configured neocolonial states and totalitarian regimes. In the first part of the semester, we will focus primarily on novels from the 1970s and 1980s, all of which register deep disillusionment with postcolonial nationalism. In the second part of the semester, we will consider a group of more recent novels that extend the critique of nationalism even as they take on contemporary dynamics of globalization, debt, and private indirect government. Throughout our discussions, we will focus on the literary forms and stylistic practices that characterize these texts, paying particular attention to questions of narrative structure, generic affiliation, and the experimental use of language and writing to represent the tortuous speech of the dictator, as well as the possibility of its undoing. In addition to selected secondary material, readings are likely to include: Aimé Césaire, La tragédie du roi Christophe; Maryse Condé, Heremakhonon (En attendant le bonheur); Sony Labou Tansi, La vie et demie; Ousmane Sembène, Le dernier de l’Empire; Henri Lopes, Le Pleurer-Rire; Aminata Sow Fall, L’ex-père de la nation; Ahmadou Kourouma, En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages; Mongo Beti, Trop de soleil tue l’amour; Alain Mabanckou, Verre Cassé; Boubacar Boris Diop, Kaveena; Yasmina Khadra, La dernière nuit du Raïs.

Recent Work in French -- Nature / milieu / habit / life (course also accepted in DE in Critical Theory)
270A : Literary Criticism

Spring 2018
Class No: 39634
Instructor: S. Guerlac

Readings:

See Description.

Course Description:

“The nature within us,” wrote Merleau-Ponty, “must have some relation to Nature outside us … It is no longer a matter of constructing arguments but of seeing how all this hangs together.”

In this seminar, we will explore how notions of nature, milieu, habit and life “hang together” (or do not) as we travel through writings by philosophers, physiologists, psychologists and philosophers of science. Readings will include works (or extracts of works) by figures such as Descartes, Kant (Critique of Teleological Reason), Félix Ravaisson (On Habit), Claude Bernard (Introduction to the Studies of Experimental Medicine, with special attention to the notion of “interior milieu”), Théodule Ribot (on attention and memory), Xavier Bichat (from Physiological Researches upon Life and Death), Bergson (especially Matter and Memory, considered in relation to Ravaisson), Georges Canguilhem (“The Normal and the Pathological”), Merleau-Ponty (especially Nature, Notes from the Collège de France but with extracts from The Philosophy of Perception) and Georges Simondon (on individuation and milieu). We will also consider more recent writings: Mark Sinclair (on Bergson and Ravaisson), Brian Massumi, and Isabelle Stengers. In the course of our travels we will keep in mind Merleau-Ponty’s reminder that “The concept of Nature is always the expression of an ontology – and its privileged expression,” and Georges Canguilhem’s insistence that milieu has become “an indispensable category of modern thought.”

Additional Information:

This course also accepted for 240 course requirement in DE in Critical Theory.

Reading knowledge of French would be helpful but not essential, as most of our readings will be available in English translation.

Teaching French in College: First Year
302

Spring 2018
Class No: 24486
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.

Teaching French in College: Second Year
303

Spring 2018
Class No: 24487
Instructor: V. Rodic

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.