In a curricular initiative shortly after her arrival at Wayne State, Provost Nancy Barrett requested that faculty submit proposals to create a group of Freshman Seminars. Inspired to participate, I developed a General Education, English-language course on “The Contemporary French” with the subtitle “Why Are The French So …?” The purpose of this course is to examine issues of cultural difference and similarity, with the goal of helping students to comprehend the multifaceted love-hate relationship between the American and French cultures. One example of this subject’s currency must suffice: commenting on Laura Bush’s visit to France in fall 2003, Adam Gopnik wrote, “The real question isn’t why the French are the way they are but, rather, why so many other people are now like the French” (The New Yorker 13 Oct, 2003). This statement is paradoxical on one hand because, in the brave new world that produced Freedom Fries, Americans generally do not think anyone could (or should) be French-like, least of all Americans, and on the other hand because the French judge themselves as constituting the global cultural exception, thus unlike anyone else at all. Yet, since the start of the American experience in the eighteenth century, our country has maintained its distinction from France while also embracing its many fashions, cultural achievements, and modes of thought.

I propose to discuss this course as an eminently practical and, indeed, necessary response to the implicit query “Que faire?” in the current conjuncture. That is, we can certainly continue to preach to the choir of our French majors while extending the pedagogical goals in literary, linguistic, and cultural domains. However, the students we really want and need to reach are those who are interested in France and French culture, for whatever reason and especially those who enroll in such courses solely to fulfill university requirements. In order to contribute to our reflection on the status of United States-French relations, my presentation explains how I engaged undergraduate non-French majors in this discussion. Linking my presentation to the course’s URL http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/Courses/FRE2720W04/index.html (for the session’s program listing), I will be able to discuss how this course evolved in 2004, based on two full semesters’ teaching, which instructional strategies worked, what limitations arose, and what issues the students most easily grasped or readily resisted. Above all, I will address how the students developed greater awareness of a Franco-American tug of war between attraction and repulsion as one facet of developing their skills in critical thinking, reading, and oral and written expression.