FRE1120 - Elementary French I – Multiple Sessions

Oral comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing are stressed. May not be taken by native speakers. May not be taken concurrently with FRE 1121 and/or 2200.

 

FRE1121 Elementary French I – Multiple Sessions

Oral comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing are stressed. May not be taken by native speakers. May not be taken concurrently with FRE 1121 and/or 2211.

 

FRE2211 - Intermediate French – Multiple Sessions

Prerequisite: FRE 1121 or equivalent. Completes language requirement for baccalaureate degree. May not be taken by native speakers. Rapid review of basic French structures and introduction of some of the finer points of French grammar. May not be taken concurrently with FRE 1120 and/or 1121.

 

FRE2220 - Reading and Conversation – Multiple Sessions

Prerequisite: FRE2211 or equivalent. May not be taken by native speakers. Expansion of French reading skills while introducing the student to oral expression through a discussion of the readings. May not be taken concurrently with FRE 1120 and/or 1121.

 

FRE 3244 - Intermediate French Conversation

Through readings about contemporary issues facing French society-such as the evolving role of women, unemployment, immigration, economic change in the new Europe and urban renewal, this course aims at developing oral communication skills in a broad cultural context. Prerequisite FRE 2220.

 

FRE 3420 - French Grammar and Composition I – Dr. J. Tarpley

Prerequisite: FRE 2211 or its equivalent. An in-depth study of French grammar emphasizing some subtleties of written expression.

 

FRE 3421 - French Grammar and Composition II – Dr. N. Parrat

Prerequisite FRE 3420 or its equivalent. Further study of the subtleties of written expression in the French language.

 

FRE 3501 - Contemporary France – Dr. Doris Gray

Ce cours est une exploration en profondeur de la culture er de la civilisation française contemporaine. Ce cours considéra non seulement la vie quotidienne en France, mais aussi les arts, la politique, la religion, l’immigration. Le but de ce cours est aussi de faciliter votre adaptation à la culture française si vous décider de séjourner en France à l’avenir.

 

FRE 4410 - Advanced Conversation – Dr. N. Parrat

Prerequisite FRE 3421 or equivalent. Based on contemporary materials, this course is intended to develop near-native fluency.

 

FRE 4422 - Advanced Grammar and Composition – Dr. Lori Walters

In this course students will improve their command of French grammar and stylistics by doing workbook exercises, by writing a series of short compositions and a final paper. They will also apply their newly acquired grammatical and stylistic know-how through class discussion. Discussion will center on “portraits de l‘Autre” in Ourika, a short novel about a female slave educated in early-nineteenth-century France, and the recent French bestseller, Truismes, by Marie Darrieussecq.  In this short novel a young woman is transformed into a sow, truie in French.  “Treat a woman like a pig, and she will act like one,” is only one of the truisms that the author explores in this work of stinging social criticism.

 

 

FRE 4930-01 - France and Algeria: National and Human Rights – Dr. Alec Hargreaves

This interdisciplinary course examines the political and ideological struggles which have been at work in relations between France and Algeria from colonial times to the present. Drawing on the work of writers, intellectuals, film-makers, historians, politicians and activists, the course gives particular attention to the interplay between competing discourses of national and human rights. In advancing rival national claims, how far have French and Algerian political actors justified their positions in terms of human rights? In violent conflicts such as those opposing French and Algerian nationalists, to what extent is it possible to safeguard humanitarian interests? Can terrorism or torture be justified on political or ethical grounds? How far may the situation of Algerian migrants and asylum-seekers in France be understood in bilateral terms and to what extent is it subject to a wider code of human rights? In the post 9/11 world, what lessons can be learned from the French experience in Algeria with reference to today’s war on terror? These are among the questions studied with reference to a range of printed, audio-visual and electronic documents. 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 counts for major or minor credit in French provided the written work is done in French.

 

 

  FRW 3101 - Survey French Literature 18th Century to Present Day – Dr. Aimée Boutin
This course will introduce you to a selection of well-known works of modern French/Francophone Literature and their cultural contexts. The readings have been chosen to exemplify the most significant literary movements of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including le siècle des Lumières, le romantisme, le réalisme, la modernité, dada et le surréalisme, l’existentialisme, and le nouveau roman. This course will be taught in French. By reading, writing and participating in French, you will increase your comprehension and oral proficiency in the language.

 

FRW 3391 - French Cinema – Dr. Reinier Leushuis
This course, taught in English, will introduce students to the rich history and development of the French cinema, from the first films of the Lumière brothers in 1895 until the youngest generation of French filmmakers. Within a chronological and thematic framework, we will analyze films from the major directors and movements of French filmmaking. One of the leading questions of this course will be: what makes French cinema particularly “French”? In order to answer this question, we will keep two sets of objectives in mind throughout the course: 1) to reach an understanding of French cinema in its relationship to modern France. What is the social, historical, and political context of the film? How does the film reflect this context and address its audience accordingly? 2) to study the contribution of French cinema to film as an art form. What was the unique creative vision of the director, screenwriter, producer, etc., and/or the ‘school’ to which they belonged? What were the esthetical and theoretical concerns of French cinema, how did these develop over time and how did the directors try to give shape to these concerns in the artistical elements of the movie. Please note: 1) this course fulfills credit toward the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics minor in World Literature & World Film; 2) this course fulfills credit toward a minor in French if this is your only French course taught in English. Otherwise, in order to let this course count toward a minor in French the rule for credit toward the French major applies (see #3); 3) this course fulfills credit toward a major (or minor in certain cases) in French if a substantial amount of the written work is done in French. Please see the instructor in the first week of classes to discuss this issue.
Films include François Truffaut’s Day for Night [“La Nuit américaine”] The 400 blows [“Les quatre-cents coups”] and The Last Metro [“Le dernier métro”]; silent films by the Lumière Brothers, George Méliès, René Clair, and Louis Buñuel (Un chien andalou); Marcel Carné’s Daybreak [“Le jour se lève”]; Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion [“La Grande illusion”]; Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise [“Les Enfants du paradis”]; Jean-Luc Godard’s, Breathless [“À bout de souffle”]; Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour; Bertrand Tavernier’s Life and Nothing But [“La vie et rien d’autre]; Philippe Faucon’s, La Trahison [“The Betrayal”]; and Agnès Varda’s Vagabond [“Sans toi ni loi”]

FRW 4460 - Paris in the Nineteenth Century – Dr. Aimée Boutin

Paris is not merely the privileged decor of the 19th-century French novel. Paris, the city of Lights, is one of its most prominent and colorful protagonists. Whether contemplated, lived, dreamed, adored or despised, Paris attained mythical status in the nineteenth-century. Writers attempted to read and decipher its intriguing cultural codes and languages, and understand its changing dimensions as it grew into a modern metropolis at the center of the Western world. This class will take students on a tour of aristocratic and popular neighborhoods, old and new Paris, the criminal underworld and the artists’ Bohemia, working-class Paris and the universe of Parisian women, through the writings of Balzac, Sand, Baudelaire and Zola as well as Puccini’s opera La Bohème based on Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème (performed by FSU Opera in Nov ’07) and Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris. This interdisciplinary course will include discussions of novels, poems, paintings, photographs, and opera.Taught in French with all readings in French (?). Open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Questions about prerequisites and eligibility should be addressed to the professor: aboutin@fsu.edu  

Taught in French (with readings available in English translation for non-Majors).

 

FRW 4930-02 - French 18th Century Literature: The Enlightenment in France – Dr. William Cloonan

This course will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the Enlightenment as it manifested itself in France. The central thesis of Enlightenment thought is that human problems, be they political or personal, can be, and must be, dealt with exclusively in terms of the capacity of the human mind to clarify, analyze, evaluate and judge. This is not to say that Enlightenment thinkers were necessarily irreligious or even anti-clerical; the impact of the Enlightenment is really much more radical than that. For these people religion as a social institution could be either stabilizing  or harmful depending upon circumstances. However, under no circumstances could religious faith be considered a source of knowledge. Humanity, as Kant put it, was emerging from its infancy and the force behind this emergence was confidence in the capacity of the human mind to identify and resolve human problems.  Nonetheless, as deeply as were the Enlightenment intellectuals committed to the rule of logic and reason, there remains a strong current of emotionalism in their thinking and most certainly in their creative works. We will follow the emergence and development of Enlightenment thought as it manifested itself in essays, literature and the visual arts.

Among the texts that will be studied are Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment,” Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, Voltaire’s Candide, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie,   Laclos’s Dangerous Alliances, and  Rousseau’s Reveries. The course will end with two twentieth century texts: Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Michel Foucault’s essay, “What is Enlightenment.” These two works will help us evaluate the relevance of the Enlightenment for the post-Auschwitz world.

 

FRT 3140 - French Literature in Translation: Women in Love/Women on Love (France, 1160-1700) – Dr. Lori Walters

This course explores the treatment of romantic love in stories written for the most part by women. On the one hand these writers represent love as a passion having the potential to realize women’s deepest aspirations for emotional fulfillment.  On the other hand, they also see it as a feeling leading potentially to women’s subjugation in personal and societal relationships. The reservations toward love expressed by writers such as Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, and Annie Ernaux, reservations that we may think of as typically modern, have their precedents in earlier periods of French literature. 

In this course we will turn our attention to depictions of the joys and the dangers of this universal emotion in texts ranging from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century.  Basing ourselves on Christine de Pizan’s claim that literature and life would be quite different had more women been writers, we will place our emphasis on women’s experience as expressed by women. Paying close attention to the audiences for which these works were written, we will investigate the alternatives proposed by women for a love experience that had proven to be a disappointment for various reasons: because of the woman’s abandonment by her lover, because of her lover’s death, or because of the nature of romantic love itself.

Readings include the Lais of Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot, Christine de Pizan’s Duke of True Lovers and Three Virtues, sonnets by Louise Labé, and Madame de Lafayette’s Princess of Clèves.

Students can take this course for French credit as FRW 4930-03 with written coursework done in French (permission needed from the instructor). Either of these courses can also be used to fulfill the requirements for the undergraduate minor in Medieval Studies. Students can receive graduate credit for the course by signing up for FRW 6938-01.

 

FOW 3240-01 - Literature and Sexuality – Dr. R. Leushuis

In this course we will study the ways in which modern Western fiction stages the relationship between sexuality and society. We will focus in particular on the notion of sexual identity and the way in which literary works represent the effects of the individual's sexual identity on his or her functioning within society. This will involve themes such as sexuality as oppression; sexual exclusion and victimization; sexuality, gender and sexual difference in Judeo-Christian religions; the political implications of sexual identity; social categorizations of sexuality as either homosexual or heterosexual, etc. We will not attempt to analyze these thematics from a historical or sociological point of view, but we will study the way in which literary works, in particular the modern novel, interpret, stage, question, and criticize them. At the same time, in doing so we will make use of a contemporary theoretical context of European and American critical writings, most notably those of the French thinker Michel Foucault.
Readings include Plato’s Symposium, Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Michel Foucault’s edition of the Memoirs of Herculine Barbin, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Marguerite Duras’s The Lover, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Manuel Puig’s The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Georges Bataille’s Mme Edwarda, and one modern American novel.

Students who want to let this course count toward Major or Minor credit in French by doing some of the readings and written work in French should first obtain permission from the instructor.