Courses

• CAS LF 502: The Structure of French: Syntax
  Investigation of the syntactic and logical relations in French, with occasional comparison to Quebecois, and to English and other languages. Students will discover structural properties through frequent problem sets.
• CAS LF 504: History of the French Language
  Prosodic, phonetic, and morphosyntactic changes from Classical Latin to Modern French, highlighting common roots between French and other Romance languages. Sociopolitical events in the history of French. Standardization, linguistic unification of France post-Revolution, and the worldwide spread of French. Conducted in French.
• CAS LF 506: Topics in French Linguistics
  Topics vary by semester. Taught in French. Also offered as CAS LX 506.
• CAS LF 550: Studies in Eighteenth-Century French Literature
  Topic for Fall 2013: Seductive Fictions. The novel's flourishing and firm establishment as a modern genre in pre-Revolutionary France. Eighteenth-century narrative techniques and theories of storytelling as, for better and worse, an art of seduction. Novelists include Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau, Laclos, and Charrière.
• CAS LF 551: Modern French Theatre
  Origins and definitions of major theatrical forms, especially tragedy. Close analysis of both theoretical and theatrical texts. Application of dramatic theory (Artaud, Grotowski) to plays by Claudel, Cocteau, Giraudoux, Anouilh, Genet, Beckett, and others.
• CAS LF 555: The Epistolary Novel
  Fictional letter writing, 1669-1784, as inspired by Ovid, Héloïse and Abélard, and letter-writing manuals. Masterpieces by Guilleragues, Montesquieu, Mme de Grafigny, Laclos, and Mme de Charrière. Revivals of epistolary storytelling in twentieth century novels by Colette and Gide.
• CAS LF 556: French Cinema and Literature
  Analysis of classic French films by Vigo, Renoir, Carné, Malle, Bresson, Godard, and Truffaut as well as later twentieth and early twenty-first century works. Weekly screenings, reading of literary models and film theory.
• CAS LF 558: Colonial Fictions: Modern French Writing and the Colonies
  Literary representations of the people, cultures, and places of the former colonies in works by Baudelaire, Camus, Céline, Duras, Gide, Leiris, and Robbe-Grillet. Attention to colonialist discourse in historical perspective, including exoticism, primitivism, and fetishism.
• CAS LF 565: Medieval Courtly Literature
  Just what is "courtly literature"? Using le roi Arthur, Guenièvre, Lancelot, and Merlin as guides, this course follows the intertwined evolution of courtly romance and Arthur's very particular court romances. Also analyses issues of authorship and authority, social critique, and the emergence of "fiction".
• CAS LF 569: Topics in Francophone Writing
  Topic for Fall 2012: Algeria in Words and Images: from Yesterday to Today. Close reading of selected texts and films by major writers and filmmakers. Attention to postcolonial criticism, imaginary, imagery, gender, location. Focus on re-appropriation of history, writing of violence, exoticism, memory, migration.
• CAS LF 570: Topics in Twentieth Century/Twenty-First Century French Literature
  Topic for Fall 2012: French Lives. A consideration of three generations of French intellectual history through the lives and major autobiographical texts of three masters of French prose. Readings include André Malraux's Antimémoires, Claude Lévi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques, and Régis Debray's Loués soient nos seigneurs.
• CAS LF 571: Topics in Nineteenth-Century French Literature
  Topic for Spring 2013: Decadence. The literary and philosophical roots of the Symbolist movement and the paradoxes of an anti-progressive vanguard; readings from such fin-de-siècle masters as Baudelaire, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Huysmans, Laforgue, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Bloy.
• CAS LF 575: Later French Renaissance
  Emphasizes the impact of the discovery of the New World, the Wars of Religion, and early print culture on French society and letters. Special attention given to Montaigne's Essays. Additional authors studied may include Du Bellay, Rabelais, de Léry, or Marguerite de Navarre.
• CAS LF 586: Reading Narrative Film (in English translation)
  Explores how European filmmakers have approached filmmaking more as a theoretical activity than as entertainment. Students learn the tools of cinematic analysis and apply them to a series of seminal (predominantly French) films, each suggesting a particular theory of film itself. Class conducted in English; films with subtitles.
• CAS LF 590: Topics in Early Modern Culture
  Topic for Fall 2011: Social Comedy and Its Translations. French social comedy centered on the works of Molière, its origins in Italian commedia and its evolution in English Restoration theater, staging social debates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Authors studied also include Regnard, Behn, Marivaux, Shadwell, Wyncherly, Gouges.
• CAS LG 111: First-Semester German
  For beginners or according to placement test results. Introduction to grammar, vocabulary, structure of German, emphasizing the four basic skills: speaking, writing, listening, and reading. (If CAS LG 112 or a more advanced college-level course has been completed, this course may not be taken for credit.)
• CAS LG 112: Second-Semester German
  Continues study and practice of the basic skills of speaking, writing, and reading German. Conversational dialogues, reading of short texts, grammar sessions, compositions. Conducted in German. (If a more advanced college-level course has been completed, this course may not be taken for credit.)
• CAS LG 211: Third-Semester German
  Further development of communicative skills acquired in the first year, emphasizing both production (speaking, writing) and comprehension (listening, reading). Grammar review. Reading and discussion of selected short stories, poetry, and plays as well as nonliterary texts. Conducted in German.
• CAS LG 212: Fourth-Semester German
  Continued development of communicative skills and strategies for functioning socially in German-language contexts. Students learn to understand literary and nonliterary texts. Conducted in German.
• CAS LG 250: Masterpieces of German Literature (in English translation)
  Introduction to the major works of German literature, emphasizing methods of close reading and the art of critical writing. Essays, plays, fairy tales, poetry, prose by Luther, Goethe, Grimm brothers, Heine, Nietzsche, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Rilke, Hesse, Christa Wolf. Carries humanities divisional credit in CAS.

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