91576

FREN   201   

 Intermediate French I

Odile Chilton

M T . Th .

8:50 am -9:50 am

OLINLC 118

FLLC

For students with three to four years of high school French or who have acquired a solid knowledge of elementary grammar. In this course, designed as an introduction to contemporary French civilization and culture, students will be able to reinforce their skills in grammar, composition and spoken proficiency, through the use of short texts, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as video.  Students will meet in small groups with the French tutor for one extra hour per week.  Interested students should consult with Prof. Eric Trudel prior to registration. Class size: 20

 

91577

FREN   202   

 Intermediate French II

Matthew Amos

. T W Th .

1:30 pm- 2:30 pm

OLINLC 206

FLLC

For students with three to four years of high school French or who have acquired a solid knowledge of elementary grammar. In this course, designed as an introduction to contemporary French civilization and culture, students will be able to reinforce their skills in grammar, composition and spoken proficiency, through the use of short texts, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as video. Students will meet in small groups, with the French tutor for one extra hour per week.  Interested students should consult with Prof. Eric Trudel prior to registration. Class size: 20

 

91575

FREN   215   

 French through Translation

Odile Chilton

M . W . .

10:10am-11:30 am

OLINLC 118

FLLC

Intended to help students fine-tune their command of French and develop a good sense for the most appropriate ways of communicating ideas and facts in French, this course emphasizes translation both as an exercise as well as a craft in its own right. The course will also address grammatical, lexical and stylistic issues. Translation will be practiced from English into French, and vice versa, with a variety of texts drawn from different genres (literary and journalistic). Toward the end of the semester, students will be encouraged to embark on independent projects.   Interested students should consult with Prof. Eric Trudel prior to registration.  Class size: 20

 

91949

FREN   240  

 WHY LITERATURE? TOPICS IN

 French Literature

Matthew Amos

. T . Th .

3:10 pm -4:30 pm

OLINLC 208

FLLC

Serving as an overview of modern French literature, this class will focus on an assortment of texts (novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays) that reflect on themselves as texts, on themselves as literature.  From a variety of different perspectives, they all ask the question: why literature?  How can literature serve as a response to a problem (be it personal or political), or, taken from another angle, why is the questioning at the heart of literature often seemingly the sole solution?  This class will explore many of the ways in which, over the past three and a half centuries, literature has attempted to grasp its own essence.  Readings from Diderot, Rousseau, Stendhal, Balzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Breton, Sartre and Duras (among others). Taught in French.  Interested students should consult with Prof. Eric Trudel prior to registration. Class size: 20

 

91950

HR 245   

 HUMANISM AND ANTIHUMANISM IN 20TH CENTURY FRENCH THOUGHT

Eric Trudel

. T . Th .

3:10 pm - 4:30 pm

OLIN 202

HUM

See Human Rights section for description.

 

91951

FREN   344   

 THE LOST AND FOUND ART OF CONVERSATION: FROM MONTAIGNE TO BECKETT

Marina van Zuylen

. . W . .

1:30 pm -3:50 pm

OLIN 301

FLLC

Since Socrates, conversation has been admired for its seamless ability to perform thinking, to integrate knowledge into society, and to supplement savoir (knowledge) with savoir-vivre (the art of living).  But conversation, precisely because it clashes with the useful, has often been condemned as merely artful, dangerous for its proximity to the decadent and the idle.   In his Essais, Montaigne dwells on the relationship between idle conversational banter and self-reflection.  With Pascal, idleness becomes the cornerstone of our existential malaise.  With the advent of the bourgeoisie, the art of conversation will retreat backstage, replaced by a relationship to work that Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law) describes as an excuse for not tackling la vie elle-même.  Paradoxically, work has become an escapist diversion and the time to rest and to converse has been usurped by the false plenitude of mechanical labor.  Proust’s In Search of Lost Time adds a new twist to this dichotomy: for the social climber, conversation becomes work, a laborious exercise in appearing rather than being.  This course examines how these tensions are played out both on a rhetorical and on a thematic level.  After reading a selection of critiques of “pure” work (Aristotle, Marx, and Nietzsche), we will examine texts that expose the vanity of conversation (Pascal’s Pensées, Molière’s Le Misanthrope), novels that thematize the tensions between work and conversation as social and cultural phenomena  (Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir), and works that offer up possible aesthetic theories of conversation (Proust, Contre Sainte Beuve and excerpts from La Recherche).  We will also scrutinize instances where conversation becomes a mere filler (Beckett’s Waiting for Godot).  Students will also read Paul Lafargue’s Le Droit à la paresse and Corinne Maier’s Laziness, the recent French bestseller attacking the dangers of work.  Taught in French.  Class size: 15

 

91530

LIT   264   

 Memorable 19th Century Continental Novels

Justus Rosenberg

M . W . .

10:10 am- 11:30 am

OLIN 303

ELIT

 

91783

HIST   2139   

 Atlantic North America: 1492-1765

Christian Crouch

M . W . .

11:50 am -1:10 pm

RKC 102

HIST

 

91775

PHIL   260   

 Feminist Philosophy

Daniel Berthold

. T . Th .

10:10 am- 11:30 am

OLIN 201

HUM/DIFF