• FRT5555 - Immigration and National Identity in France - Dr. Alec Hargreaves
• FRE5900 - Franco-American Cultural Wars - Dr. William Cloonan
• FRW5595 - Studies in 19th Century Literature - Dr. Aimée Boutin
  

FRT5555 Immigration and National Identity in France - Dr. Alec Hargreaves

Immigration is one of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary France. The Islamic headscarf affair, the rise of the extreme-right National Front and the urban riots of 2005 are just some of the issues which have emerged in the last twenty years. In exploring these developments, this course examines the ways in which immigration and ethnicity have been helping to reshape the contours of French society. Working within an inter-disciplinary and comparative framework, students are invited to consider how far France can be said to display a distinctive profile in the field of ethnic relations compared with other countries such as the United States and Great Britain. After a theoretical and historical introduction, the course focuses on the period between the 1980s and the present, when minorities originating in Third World, especially Islamic, countries, have been at the center of key debates in French politics, society and culture. Among the topics covered are minority ethnic settlement, multiculturalism, nationality and citizenship, racism, extreme-right politics and anti-discrimination policy. The course is taught in English and may be taken by students without a reading knowledge of French. The core reading list (in English) is complemented by a reading list in French which students with a reading knowledge of that language are encouraged to use. The course may count for major or minor credit in French provided the written work is done in French

FRE5900 Franco-American Cultural Wars - Dr. 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.

FRW5595 Studies in 19th Century Literature - Dr. Aimée Boutin

Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil 150 Years After / Charles Baudelaire et Les Fleurs du Mal 150 ans après

This seminar will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Considered by many to be the father of modern poetry and an undisputed precursor of Modernism, Baudelaire modernized the sonnet, developed the prose poem and wrote important essays (on his contemporaries, on intoxicants, on music), translations (of E. A. Poe) and art criticism. We will examine Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal in their broader literary, historical and critical context, relating the poems to his prose writings, comparing them to his contemporaries’ works and situating them in relation to figurative or critical concepts such as self and other, love and suffering, good and evil, memory and loss, time and space, spleen and ideal, flânerie and modernity. In the words of Claude Pichois, one of the foremost Baudelaire scholars: « L’œuvre de Baudelaire n’est pas une œuvre poétique parmi d’autres ; elle est une révolution, la plus importante de toutes celles qui ont marqué le siècle ; elle décide de ce qui désormais portera à nos yeux les couleurs de la poésie ».