FRENCH

CRN

10054

Distribution

D

Course No.

FREN 106

Title

Basic Intensive French

Professor

Odile Chilton / Marina van Zuylen

Schedule

Mon Tu Wed Th Fri 8:50 am - 9:50 am LC 210

Mon Tu Wed Th Fri 11:30 am - 12:30 pm LC 210

8 credits. This course is designed for students who wish to acquire a strong grasp of the French language and culture in the shortest time possible. Students with little or no previous experience of French will complete the equivalent of three semesters of college-level French. The semester course meets ten hours a week, using the French in Action video series as well as other pedagogical methods, and will be followed by a four-week stay at the Institut de Touraine (Tours, France). There the students will continue daily intensive study of the French language and culture while living with French families.

CRN

10055

Distribution

D

Course No.

FREN 202

Title

French through Film

Professor

Odile Chilton

Schedule

Mon Th 10:00 am - 11:20 am LC 210
This course explores major themes of French culture and civilization through a study of films from the "cinéma pionnier" to the "cinéma d'auteur" (Melies, Renoir, Truffaut, Kassowitz). Special attention to the evolution of cinematographic narration to see how on the one hand perception of time and space has influenced films and on the other how films have influenced the vision of the world. Prerequisite: French 104, 106, or at least four years of high school French.

CRN

10437

Distribution

B/D

Course No.

FREN 263

Title

Eight French Love Novels

Professor

Andre Aciman

Schedule

Mon Wed 1:30 pm - 2:50 pm LC 120
Designed for students eager to familiarize themselves with the best love novels written in France, this course will present eight novels under a unified thematic rubric. French love novels are frequently ruthless in the critique of human beings and in their capacity for psychological insight. French authors are also far more ironic than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts and their attention to style and clarity is itself not an insignificant aspect of their attention to human passions and dynamics. Readings include: Tristan (Bedier & Thomas), Madame de LaFayette, La Princesse de Cleves, Prevost, Manon Lescaut, Laclos, Les liaisons dangereuses, Constant, Adolphe, Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme, Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Proust, Swann in Love.

CRN

10056

Distribution

B/D

Course No.

FREN 305 Upper College Seminar

Title

Contemporary French Thought

Professor

Marina van Zuylen

Schedule

Th 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm LC 118
This course introduces students to the major schools of twentieth-century French thought. The syllabus will draw from a selection of texts that have had particular significance for philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistics, literary theory, and sociology. Close readings from Saussure, Barthes, Breton, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Bourdieu. For those students less proficient in French, it will be possible to work on shorter texts excerpted from larger works (i.e., Derrida's Grammatologie, Deleuze's Anti-Oedipe, or Lacan's Écrits). More advanced students will have the option of concentrating more extensively on authors of their choice. Seminar will be in English, with an additional mandatory hour in French for French speaking students.

CRN

10057

Distribution

B/D

Course No.

FREN 309

Title

The French Theater

Professor

Justus Rosenberg

Schedule

TBA
For those with a fairly good knowledge of French (allowance made for occasional structural and lexical limitations that will be addressed in class) who want to read Corneille, Racine, Molière, Beaumarchais, Anouilh, Giraudoux, Sartre, Genêt, Ionesco in the original. The first of the two weekly sessions consists in practicing dramatic and interpretive reading of significant passages and critical discussion of the work as a whole; students will be asked to substantiate on the basis of the text those aspects of the play they would emphasize if they were to direct it. In our second weekly meeting we will view a taped performance of the play by famous French actors and theatrical companies staged by well-known metteurs en scène and compare that with our own earlier analytical findings.