FRE 5060 - Graduate Reading Knowledge French – Dr. Doris Gray
Designed to present structures of the French language and vocabulary to prepare graduate students majoring in other disciplines to read learned journals, books, and monographs written in French useful for the student's research in humanities, natural or social sciences.
FRE 5900 – Post-Colonial Cultures in France – Dr. A. Hargreaves
International migration from former colonies has brought a new cultural vibrancy to France. This course focuses on the hybrid cultural practices being forged in France by new generations of writers, film-makers and musicians mixing elements from African, Caribbean, French, American and other sources. Particular attention is given to artists emerging from among France’s largest post-colonial minority, whose origins lie in the Maghreb, i.e. the North African states of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The course is taught in French, their main language of expression. It explores their participation in a variety of cultural spaces and seeks to identify the extent to which these new voices are being marginalized or incorporated into the mainstream of French culture. Among the works studied are novels, autobiographies and films by writers and directors such as Mehdi Charef, Yamina Benguigui, Faïza Guène and Malik Chibane, who will discuss his work with students on this course during a visit to FSU arranged by the Winthrop-King Institute.
FRW 5587 - French 17th and 18th Century Literature – Dr. W. Cloonan
In France the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have more in common than historical proximity. Together they contain the stirrings of French national identity, the creation of a literature which would reflect this new sense of self, the breakdown of religious hegemony and the creation of a rival belief, the confidence that mankind’s problems could be confronted and resolved through the use of human reason and logic. This is a period which began with a family of arrivistes scrambling onto the French throne, and eventually creating the most brilliant court in Europe and imposing French culture as the model which others would strive to emulate. This same period would witness a shift in power from the nobility to the bourgeoisie, tremendous advances in the physical and social sciences, and ultimately a revolution which would bring to the fore humanity’s finest qualities and gravest flaws. This course will trace the evolution/devolution of these two hundred years or so through an examination of the literary and visual arts. In the seventeenth-century theater was not simply an art form, but a metaphor for social life, and we will discuss this in the works of dramatists such as Racine, Corneille and Molière. We will see how prose, considered an inferior vehicle for artistic expression, was often confined to women who, like Madame de Lafayette, would make brilliant use of it. We will examine how Descartes and Pascal transformed philosophy, not simply by what they said, but by how they said it. As we move into the eighteenth-century we will note that le philosophe has become more of a political scientist than an academic philosopher, and while progress will characterize so much of the age, it will be the men who advance, much more so than women. In works such as Les Liaisons dangereuses we will encounter a woman who refuses to accept that gender is destiny, and in Manon Lescaut we will examine how fluently men discuss women without perhaps ever really understanding the subject of their conversation. Our period ends with the French Revolution, an event which combined liberty and catastrophe on a scale the world had not previously seen, and whose implications linger with us today.
FRW 5599 - French 20th Century Literature: The Forties – Dr. J. Tarpley
The forties, in France, were certainly not just any decade. War, occupation, resistance, collaboration, deportation—even today, France continues to grapple with all that transpired during that key period of the twentieth century. In this class, we will examine French literature from the forties and about the forties, as well as some essential films. Some of the authors we will study are Antelme, Camus, Clouzot, Giraudoux, Kofman, Sartre, and Vercors. This course will be conducted entirely in French. Contact the instructor for further details at jtarpley@fsu.edu.
FRW 5775 - Black Literature of French Expression: Introduction to Francophone Caribbean culture – Dr. Martin Munro
The Francophone Caribbean consists primarily of the French Départments d’outre mer (DOMs) of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Guyane, and the Republic of Haiti, independent since 1804. While these territories share a common history involving colonialism and plantation slavery, they also have widely divergent experiences in terms of political status and economics. This course will introduce students to the history and culture of these fascinating places, identifying similarities and considering differences between the DOMs and Haiti. The focus will primarily be on the period from the mid-twentieth century to the present. In the DOMs, this period begins with the Négritude movement, moves through Frantz Fanon’s critique of Négritude, Edouard Glissant’s Antillanité, and ends with the Créolité movement. In Haiti, the period covered begins with the Indigenist movement, and moves through the Duvalier era, reading and viewing works that challenge traditional, masculinist versions of Haitian history. Recurring themes will include: race and color; social class; language; exile; history; and memory. Works studied will include poems, novels, films and some recent visual art from Haiti. The course is taught in French.
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