FRT3520

Francophone Cinema
Dr Martin Munro

This course focuses on the cinematic traditions of the non-metropolitan Francophone world, chiefly from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. Students will learn of the historical, cultural, and social contexts in which filmmakers have produced their work. The emphasis will be on analysis and discussion of key themes and questions of style. The selection of a diverse range of films from different countries and different periods will encourage students to think comparatively, and to consider how divergent histories and cultures have created particular cinematic traditions in each country. Key themes will include: colonialism and its legacies; social class; color and race; the role of education; gender; childhood; exile, memory, and language.

FRW 3100
Survey of French Literature: From its origins through the 17th Century
Dr. Marie-France Prosper

This course is a survey of early-modern French literature, from the Middle Ages through the 18th century. Students will be introduced to the major literary genres of each period and their cultural and historical contexts, while perfecting their command of written and spoken French. The course includes recent historical movies on these periods and other cultural materials relating to early-modern French.

FRE3244
Intermediate Conversation
Dr. Marie-France Prosper

This course is designed to help intermediate learners of French improve their oral communication skills. Based on the textbook A table! The gourmet culture of France that integrates a wide variety of cultural issues, this course allows students to engage in vocabulary building and extensive practice of spoken French through class and small group discussions and debates, role-play, presentations, and interviews. Supplementary materials will include videos and movies.

FRE4410
Advanced Conversation
Dr. Marie-France Prosper

This course is designed to help advanced learners of French improve their oral communication skills, while developing their cultural knowledge and understanding of the Francophone world. Using contemporary materials such as magazine and newspaper articles, videos, films and songs that address a broad range of issues, this course allows students to focus on vocabulary building and engage in extensive practice of spoken French. Regular activities include class and small group discussions/debates, presentations, as well as interviews. This class can substitute for the Phonetics course (FRE 3780) in French major requirements.

FRW 4480
20th Century French Literature
Dr. William Cloonan (in French)

This course intends to provide an overview of French literary and visual culture from the beginning of the century up to World War II and the immediate postwar period. The emphasis will be for the most part on texts that are innovative, either stylistically or thematically. Importance will be given to the relation between literature and the evolving social/political situation in France. Because we have separate courses in poetry and francophone literature, our concentration will be on prose works and paintings originating in the Hexagon.

FRW 4761
Media and Minorities in France (in French
Prof. Hargreaves

The mass media play a major role in representing and shaping relations between majority and minority ethnic groups. In France, immigrant groups from former colonies, most notably the North African states of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, have attracted huge media coverage especially with the growing visibility of Islam. Drawing on first-hand sources such as television, newspapers, cinema and the internet, this course focuses on three key aspects of the relationship between these minorities and the media in France: representation, production and reception. In examining media representations, we consider how far the dominant media may be said to construct one-sided or misleading images of minority groups. It is often said that misrepresentations can only be corrected through the participation of minorities in the production of media outputs. We test these claims by looking at TV programs and other media outputs produced by professionals of minority ethnic origin. Finally, we look at the reception of media outputs by majority and minority audiences, asking how far these audiences are fragmented or united in their patterns of media consumption. The course is taught in French, giving students the opportunity to research at first hand current media outputs in genres such as hard news, documentaries, sit-coms and reality shows.

FOW 4540
Franco-American Culture Wars
Prof. William Cloonan.

Through the study of literary texts and examples selected from the visual arts this course will trace a shift in the cultural balance of power between the United States and France. The course begins with an examination of the nineteenth-century American sense of inferiority before the France's achievements in literature and painting, and then will trace how a variety of aesthetic developments and political events will precipitate the slow decline of French preeminence and the inexorable rise of twentieth-century American dominance in the cultural as well as political realms. Taught in English.