French (FREN)
This first half of an introduction to the fundamentals of the French language focuses on the acquisition of the basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills and presents an introduction to the cultures of the French-speaking world. This course is restricted to students with no previous study of French. Five class hours weekly. Conducted in French.
Students who have taken any higher level FREN course may not register for FREN 101. No previous knowledge of language.
GPA units: 1.25
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Annually Fall
This second half of an introduction to the fundamentals of the French language reinforces and deepens basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in French as well as knowledge of the cultures of the French-speaking world.
Prerequisite: Students must complete a language placement exam or FREN 101 in order to enroll in this course. Students who have taken any higher level FREN course may not register for FREN 102.
GPA units: 1.25
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
The first half of a review of the fundamentals of French supplemented by reading of literary and cultural material and by practice in oral expression.
Prerequisite: Students must complete a language placement exam or FREN 102 in order to enroll in this course. Students who have taken any higher level FREN course may not register for FREN 201.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
The second half of a review of the fundamentals of French supplemented by reading of literary and cultural material and by practice in oral expression.
Prerequisite: Students must complete a language placement exam or FREN 201 in order to enroll in this course. Students who have taken any higher level FREN course may not register for FREN 202.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Designed for gaining proficiency in oral and written French. Emphasis on developing correctness and fluency in everyday situations. Regular methods of instruction include discussions, web activities, skits, listening comprehension, grammar review. Required for French majors and minors. Recommended for first-year students with advanced placement. Four class hours weekly. French.
Prerequisite: Students must complete a language placement exam, FREN 202 or have French AP credit in order to enroll in this course. Students who have taken any higher level FREN course may not register for FREN 301.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills and stylistic proficiency. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: FREN 301 or equivalent.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
An overview of French life and letters from the Middle Ages to 1800. Focus is on literature, but other types of material are included to provide insights into the cultural, historical, and ideological contexts. Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills and stylistic proficiency. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: FREN 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
An overview of French life and letters from 1800 to the present. Focus is on literature, but other types of material are included to provide insights into the cultural, historical, and ideological contexts. Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills and stylistic proficiency. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: FREN 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Arts will be the thematic focus of the course and will encompass readings on urbanism and architecture, film, advertising, comic books, choreography, equestrian theater, political songs, painting, and photography. Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills and stylistic proficiency. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: FREN 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Paris will be the thematic focus of the course and will encompass a variety of readings on the City of Lights' history, urban design and landscape, landmarks and symbols, cultural institutions, artistic and intellectual neighborhoods. We will also examine how poets, novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers have represented Paris by studying sample(s) of their respective art form. Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres (poetry, theater, novel) and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills and stylistic proficiency. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: FREN 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
The general theme of the Fantastic is the focus of this course. As a literary and cinematic genre, the Fantastic is characterized by the intrusion of the supernatural into our natural world. This intrusion, which can take many forms, destabilizes both the reader/spectator and the characters within the text itself. Students will study a variety of works on the topic. Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills and stylistic proficiency. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: FREN 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
In this course, students analyze works of literature written by francophone authors that feature a voyage, either literal or metaphorical. Focus is on literature, but other types of material are included to provide insights into the cultural, historical and ideological contexts. Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills, and stylistic proficiency. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: French 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
In this course, we will analyze works of literature written by authors of diverse backgrounds based in France. One of the course's goals is to explore the many faces of the country, not just that of the Parisian elite. Focus is on literature, but other types of material are included to provide insights into the culture, historical and ideological contexts. Designed to give students the tools to read and write critically in French. Students will examine texts representative of major genres and will acquire lexical flexibility, rhetorical skills, and stylistic proficiency. The course will bring student' proficiency to the level of accuracy and clarity required for the satisfactory completion of 400-level course. Conducted in French [counts toward the French major and minor. Satisfies the College's Language Common Area Requirement]
Prerequisite: FREN 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course develops advanced French proficiency through the practice of five academic writing exercises (summary of a text, formal analysis, critical review, research paper or dissertation, etc., all in French) and formal oral presentations while fostering cultural comparison through analysis of French versus American traditions of humor and comedy and each cultures rhetorical structures (from Voltaires mastery of irony to Ionescos absurdist plays). Students interpret diverse French cultural products, from Molière's classical theater to contemporary Netflix series Drôle, to understand how comedic practices reveal French social perspectives, political attitudes, and historical evolution. The course examines linguistic diversity within francophone communities and explores how humor functions as both communication tool and political instrument, demonstrating the interplay between French language structures and cultural worldviews.
Prerequisite: FREN 301
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Designed for students who seek to reach an advanced level of proficiency in French. The four skills are stressed. Particular emphasis on exercises that focus on complex language structures.
Prerequisite: Two French courses at the 300 Level.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Through the translation of selected passages, seeks to teach students to write with precision and clarity in both French and English. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: Two 300-level FREN courses or equivalent.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Language Studies
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Even though the French commonly do not believe that one can learn how to become a successful fiction writer by taking courses in creative writing, they admit that there are certain tricks and techniques pertaining to the art of writing that one must know in order to write a fine piece of literature. In this course, we shall take up the challenge. We shall first read samples of fictional works (excerpts, a fable, a tale, a short story, a novel), take them apart to understand how they are fabricated, and analyze each component at play in detail. Students will then compose similar short pieces. By the end of the semester, students will try their hand at a larger piece of fiction in French. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: Two 300 level FREN Courses
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
The major trends and theories by prominent 20th-21st Century novelists are considered. Selected works by authors such as Gide, Proust, Mauriac, Sartre, Colette, Camus, Breton, De Beauvoir, Beckett, Bernanos, Giono, Vian, Queneau, Perec, Pagnol, Tournier, Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, Duras, Hyvrard, Modiano, Sollers, Lainé, Wittig, Roche, Yourcenar, Leduc, Ernaux, Angot, Germain and others. This course fulfills the literature requirement for the major. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite:Two 300-level French courses or the equivalent.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course provides an overview of the development of the French short story in its historical and sociopolitical context, particularly from the nineteenth century to the present day. It discusses the convergence in the modern age of a proliferation of press publications, changes in the status of writers, and the development of the concept of individuality, all of which which led to a wealth of new short works. We will consider the specificities of the genrewhat differentiates the short story from the novel or prose poetry?as well as the qualities of acclaimed short stories in French. Conducted in French. [Counts toward the French & Francophone Studies major and minor. Satisfies the Colleges and the French majors Literature Requirement]
Prerequisite: Two 300 level French courses.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Focuses on current issues in contemporary France. Politics, society, the arts, domestic and international affairs, education, the media, feminism, etc., are among the topics analyzed and discussed. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: Two 300-level FREN courses.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
A critical examination of contemporary Francophone music and new poetic forms such as slamming across Africa, Europe, North-America and spanning genres such as afro-pop, hip hop, reggae, zouk. The course seeks to highlight the use of music and spoken work as instruments to contest the prevailing political discourse and a platform to engage social changes.
Prerequisite: Two 300-level FREN courses.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Arts
Emerging Francophone Classics introduces students to recent texts by renowned Francophone writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and the African diaspora. The course engages students in the examination of issues and themes such as immigration, cultural identity, and gender through authors such as Dany Laferrière (Lénigme du retour), Boubabcar Boris Diop (Le temps de Tamango), Véronique Tadjo (Loin de mon père), Fatou Diome (Celles qui attendent), Maryse Condé (Le Cur à rire et à pleurer), Fawzia Zouari (Ce pays dont je meurs), etc. It explores literary aesthetics associated with the individual writers as well as the linguistic influences of their regions of origin.
Prerequisite: Two 300-level FREN courses.
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Literature
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course focuses on cinematic masterpieces, understood as either popular or critical successes, or both, in order to provide students with an in-depth study of French and French-language filmmaking from its inception in 1895 to the present. We move chronologically, and cover a variety of trends, periods, and genres, including the 1920s Avant-Garde, Poetic Realism, Occupation Cinema, the Tradition of Quality, the French New Wave, Beur and Banlieue filmmaking, the popular comedy, the documentary, and the road movie. We also explore French-language cinema produced outside Metropolitan France. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: Two 300-level FREN courses
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Arts
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
This course introduces students to the politics of representation in contemporary French-language cinema, from France but also other corners of the French-speaking world. We focus specifically on issues of race, gender and sexuality as they emerge in a variety of filmic texts of the last few decades. Other considerations will include class, ethnicity, hybridity and multiculturalism. Key theoretical paradigms such as feminist film studies, queer theory and postcolonial thought will be utilized to contextualize and comprehend these categories. Conducted in French.
Prerequisite: Two 300-Level French courses
GPA units: 1
Common Area: Arts
Typically Offered: Every Third Year
Eligible students may elect one or both of these courses with the permission of the section coordinator. Tutorials are normally offered only to students who have previously taken all other advanced courses offered in a given semester.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring
Eligible students may elect one or both of these courses with the permission of the section coordinator. Tutorials are normally offered only to students who have previously taken all other advanced courses offered in a given semester.
GPA units: 1
Typically Offered: Fall, Spring