Courses

• CAS LF 305: Advanced Written Expression
  Intensive study of the art of writing. Development of individual style through explications de texte, free composition, and written reports. Reading and discussion of manuscripts; translation and transcription; individual projects and conferences.
• CAS LF 306: Advanced Oral Expression
  Advanced training in rapid and idiomatic French speech. Oral reports. Role playing; vocabulary building; targeted work on pronunciation, intonation, and aural comprehension. Lab required.
• CAS LF 341: Topics in Contemporary French Culture
  Through current articles and headlines, films, songs and French comedians, this class explores the meaning and preservation of French "Culture"; looks into areas of social debate from a French perspective; and considers the identity crisis generated by globalization.
• CAS LF 348: France Past to Postmodern: French Civilization Through Film
  Examines France's classic cultural symbols and evolution from monarchy into the revolutionary nation that introduced notions of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Survey of events in today's post-modern and post-colonial state. Uses film, video, articles to explore contemporary culture and politics.
• CAS LF 350: Introduction to Analysis of French Texts
  Development of techniques for reading and interpreting French literary texts. Special attention to the study of lyric poetry, drama, and short narrative. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS LF 351: Introduction to the French Novel
  Close readings in the French novel from its origins to the nouveau roman. Attention to narration, themes, symbols, and schools. Investigation of the roman d'analyse, Romantic prose, realist fiction, and other types of narrative. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.
• CAS LF 369: Topics in Francophone Literature and Film
  Topic for Summer 2013: Youth and Migration in Literature and Film. Examines questions of displacement, postcolonial culture, and indentity in works that represent "youth" in West Africa and France. Topics include post-colonial urban youth, the myth of France/the West, and concepts of "home," "here," and "there" across generations.
• CAS LF 401: Senior Independent Work
  
• CAS LF 402: Senior Independent Work
  
• CAS LF 452: The Age of Versailles
  Seventeenth-century developments in classical theater, the novel, poetry, and fairy tales in relation to the vision of an all-powerful monarchy. Creative responses to a culture of constraint, as seen in works of Corneille, Racine, Molière, LaFayette, La Fontaine, Aulnoy. Cannot be taken for credit in addition to CAS LF 562.
• CAS LF 453: The French Enlightenment
  Topic for Spring 2013: Confession, Autobiography, and the Enlightenment Self. Focus on reading Rousseau's landmark Confessions (1782, 1789) in dialogue with precursors (Augustine, Montaigne) and later French (existentialist, avant-garde, feminist) reinventions of autobiography. Enlightenment cultural milieux. Motives, forms, plots, styles, enduring challenges of narrative life writing and subjectivity. Confession in everyday life and the contemporary blogosphere.
• CAS LF 456: The Postcolonial Novel
  An examination of postcolonial novels by contemporary writers. Discussion of linguistic and literary issues related to the process of decolonization, including debates about continued use of French by modern African novelists.
• CAS LF 457: Medieval French Literature
  Explores French literature at the time of France's political and cultural emergence. Analyzes France's nation-formation through military expansion, relationship with the Catholic Church, cultivation of language, and France's cultural prestige through chivalric ideals, women's roles and voices, scholastic education.
• CAS LF 459: French Lyric Poetry
  A survey of French poetry from Ronsard to Apollinaire. Concentrates on the giants of the nineteenth century: Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Rimbaud. Poems read in detail, and placed in historical and cultural context. Attention to the emergence of new forms: the prose poem and vers libre.
• CAS LF 460: Twentieth-Century French Literature II
  A close study of the major literary movements from the beginning of the century to the "Nouveau Roman," through an analysis of representative works by Proust, Gide, Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Valéry, Apollinaire, and René Char.
• CAS LF 469: Nouvelles Identités Françaises: Immigration et Citoyenneté dans le Cinéma Francophone
  Examines the shaping of French identity in French and Francophone films. Special attention to issues of family and education, discrimination, religion, and language. Questions of marginalization and of citizenship are discussed in relation to immigration and ethnicity.
• CAS LF 475: Senior Seminar
  Topic for Fall 2011: The Gaze in the French Novel. Study of texts, from La Princesse de Clèves to Proust's La Prisonnière, in which the gaze plays an important, dynamic role. Topics include gender and the gaze; theories of looking in art, literature, and cinema.
• CAS LF 491: Directed Study: French
  Application Form available in department.
• CAS LF 492: Directed Study: French
  Application Form available in department.
• CAS LF 500: French Phonetics
  Students work to improve their own pronunciation through study of the distribution and articulation of French sounds, liaison, "mute e," and intonation, and through oral practice in the language laboratory. Written exercises and phonetic transcription reinforce theoretical points. Conducted in French.

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