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French and Francophone Studies

Spring 2024 Courses

Please Note: Preliminary Schedule Only-Subject to Change

ROFR 60715: From Whispers to Worldviews: Gossip and the Social Network in Nineteenth-Century France

Prof. Madison Mainwaring

The nineteenth century saw the rise of print media and professional institutions. Old-fashioned whisper networks came to be viewed suspiciously as a dangerous, “feminine” pastime for those without lives of their own. Yet the enduring popularity of gossip—in society columns, romans-à-clef, communal laundry rooms, and political caricatures—meant that informal social networks thrived, fueled by a heightened interest in the private lives of famous people. The learning goals of this class extend beyond those of textual analysis and the researched argument to media literacy. Following several scandals across a variety of sources, we will study how information was transmitted via different genres, spaces, and voices in nineteenth-century France, looking at a range of texts from broadsheets to Offenbach operettas. While reinforcing social mores, gossip also provided a means of resistance to the status quo, a way for the marginalized to reframe official narratives and point to the humanity shared across classes and identities. Taught in French.
 

ROFR 63115: Courtly Debates and Disputes: Why Arguing is Good for You

Prof. Johannes Junge Ruhland

This graduate seminar, taught in English, explores the forms, functions, and stakes of a pervasive literary form in French and Occitan literatures from ca. 1150 to ca. 1500: debate literature. From the university classroom to the courtroom and from idyllic orchards to battlefields, debates offered a heuristic for participants and listeners to engage in controversy, put their virtuosity on display, and spark continued reflection on the relationship between self and thought. With a focus on courtly literature, we will examine how debates were set up, performed, and judged, teasing out some of the recurring stakes of this literary tradition. The ability to read in French is necessary, although English translations will be made available where possible.
 

Graduate Seminars

The Graduate Program in French and Francophone Studies provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture in France and in the Francophone world. You can take a wide range of courses covering the entire spectrum of literary history, combined with allied courses in cultural studies, comparative literature, film, literary theory, history, and philosophy.

Fall 2023 Courses

ROFR 60958: Transnational Francophone Cinema: Seeing Between the Lines

Prof. Alison Rice

This course focuses on French-language films that transcend national boundaries, depicting movements - and individuals - that go beyond borders and allow us to understand how current cinematic creations are not limited to "Franco-French" actors and productions, but extend around the globe. We study a number of films that deal with questions of immigration and migration in the French context, recent films that reveal the current multicultural environment within the hexagonal space of France. We also examine films that come from the larger francophone world, from locations such as Algeria and Senegal. Assignments include brief written responses to each of the films under study, an oral presentation, two short papers, and a final paper. We will read two novels that are related to very recent films as well and explore the relationship between the written work and the cinematic creation. The goals of this course are not limited to increasing students' knowledge and understanding of the art (and the politics) of filmmaking; they are also are meant to enhance their appreciation of diverse cultural settings that interact and intersect with France in important ways in a contemporary world marked by postcolonial tensions and "globalized" transnational relations. Taught in French.
 

ROFR 63224: The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

Fr. Greg Haake, csc

What does it mean to paint oneself in prose? This was the great project of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592), a selection of whose famous essays will constitute the object of study in this course. The first essayist and arguably the first real Modern, his texts on subjects as wide-ranging as friendship and fear, as cannibals and coaches, have made him a subject of praise and controversy in equal measure. In this course, we will explore the essays themselves, but also the phenomenon that is Montaigne in French culture and beyond. Taught in English, with texts available both in French and English.

Spring 2023 Courses

ROFR 60635 – La Nouvelle au XIXe Siècle

Alain Toumayan

This course will focus on the development of the genre of short narrative during the nineteenth century in France. Representative works of Balzac, Nerval, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Flaubert, Gautier, Mérimée, Maupassant, Nodier and Villiers de l'Isle Adam will be considered. We will examine distinctive features of the various aesthetics of Romanticism, Realism and Symbolismas well as generic considerations relating to the conte fantastique. Taught in French.

ROFR 63730 – Proust

Barry McCrea

A study of Proust's long masterpiece À la Recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). No previous knowledge of Proust required. Taught in French.

Fall 2022 Course

ROFR 63780 – Documenting Work

Sonja Stojanovic

This seminar will examine representations of labor from the 19th-century to the present and explore the drive to document the realities of work through fiction. We will start with Émile Zola (“The Experimental Novel” and selections from his Rougon-Macquart cycle) and proceed withcontemporary texts whose approach to documentation is heavily influenced by the  social sciences, making up what Dominique Viart has termed “littératures de terrain” (fieldwork literatures). Taught in French.

 

Spring 2022 Courses

ROFR 63960 – Global Writers in Paris

Alison Rice

Women writers from around the world, from places as diverse as Algeria and Vietnam, Slovenia and South Korea, are currently exerting an influence on the Parisian literary landscape. These singular individuals hail from very different locations, but many of their experiences as French-language authors in the French capital are quite similar, particularly when it comes to perceptions of them as foreigners. Even if they often feel excluded and even ostracized, these writers continue to write, pouring their creative energies into innovative texts that are transforming the publishing world and adding layers of depth to what it means to be a Francophone author today. In this course, we will read a variety of publications by such women writers as Nathacha Appanah, Bessora, Hélène Cixous, Maryse Condé, Julia Kristeva, Anna Moï, Pia Petersen, Zahia Rahmani, Leïla Sebbar, Shumona Sinha, and Brina Svit. Our readings of primary texts will be complemented by a series of interviews with these authors (http://francophonemetronomes.com and an accompanying critical volume (Oxford University Press, December 2021). We will also address the process of literary and academic publishing in our discussions. Taught in French.

ROFR 63224 – Essays of Michel de Montaigne

Fr. Gregory Haake

What does it mean to paint oneself in prose? This was the great project of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–1592), a selection of whose famous essays will constitute the object of study in this course. The first essayist and arguably the first real Modern, his texts on subjects as wide- ranging as friendship and fear, as cannibals and coaches, have made him a subject of praise and controversy in equal measure. In this course, we will explore the essays themselves, but also the phenomenon that is Montaigne in French culture and beyond. Taught in English, with texts available both in French and English.

 

Fall 2021 Courses

ROFR 63950 – Existentialism to Ethics

Alain Toumayan

This course will examine the elaboration of the humanist doctrines of Camus, Malraux and Sartre. It will the focus on the systematic changes to this humanism, by Beckett, Blanchot, Genet and particularly Levinas.

ROFR 63713 – Writing Europe in French

Sonja Stojanovic

In this seminar we will investigate how contemporary texts, broadly understood, written in French think (about) and problematize Europe and the EU. The initial feelings of hope have been met, over the course of the past three decades, with skepticism and disillusionment. We will turnto fiction, film, critical theory, and art to help us articulate and engage with  questions of national identity, politics, migration and immigration, and climate change. Taught in French

 

Fall 2020 Courses

ROFR 60213 – Women in Print

Fr. Gregory Haake

With the advent of the print medium, the barriers to women writers and poets and Renaissance France were seemingly lower. What distinguishes the woman writer in this new era of the printed word? What characterizes their rhetoric, style, and subject matter? In our own time, how have contemporary literary critics both questioned and affirmed their legacy? Through close reading and study of writers like Marguerite de Navarre, Pernette du Guillet, Louise Labe, and others, including Sceve and Ronsard, students will examine the role of women in print in sixteenth- century France. Taught in French.

ROFR 63853 – Worldwide Activism in Literature & Film

Alison Rice

This course closely examines Francophone works of literature and film that grapple with the difficulties of promoting peace in various locations around the world today. Not only are
activism and peacebuilding crucial questions in the creative texts we study, but they are also the focus of discussions that extend “beyond” the text, as we explore the efforts of writers and filmmakers to serve as advocates for positive change in very real ways. Various concepts of “engagement,” as well as relationships between language and politics, are at the center of our reflections. There is a substantial theoretical component to this course, including works by French thinkers Pierre Bourdieu, Hélène Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Serge Margel, alongside the writings of postcolonial critics and recent publications in the area of peace studies.

Spring 2020 Course

ROFR 63532 – Performing the Text

Olivier Morel

This advanced seminar consists of seeking to elaborate a "general grammatology of cinema." Revolving around a notion of performance and how textual writing is (always?) an audiovisual performance, our research will explore three directions: 1. an interpretation of textual writing in terms of sound and image as it has been theorized in literary studies from the Russian formalists to Derrida's grammatology through writings by Roland Barthes, among others; 2. a history of proto-cinematic inventions in their relation to theatrical performances and how this long history still informs our understanding of cinema today; 3. today's postmodern writing as a genuinely hybrid endeavor. The ultimate goal of the course would be to define the proper of cinema, or what I call "cinematograph-mes" in terms that align with Agnès Varda, Robert Bresson and Jean- Luc Godard's oeuvres, notably. The course will be nourished by my own experience in making a a feature-length so-called "documentary" film with the author (poet, writer, playwright, thinker) Hélène Cixous between 2012 and 2018 (evercixousmovie.com). We will read novels, poetry, and watch films. We will welcome Hélène Cixous on Skype. One written assignment (scholarly paper), oral presentations as well as active participation in our class will constitute the basic requirements.

 

Here are some of the graduate courses that are regularly offered by the faculty in French and Francophone Studies

Early Periods (medieval - 17th-century)

Princes, Poets, and Prophets

Fr. Gregory Haake

This graduate seminar explores the fascinating and complex relationship between politics, religion, and literature during the French Renaissance. With the advent of Renaissance Humanism and philology, with developments in political theory and the role of the author, and with the Protestant Reformation, this creative and dynamic period was also a tumultuous one. We will explore what this meant for France in the sixteenth century and beyond, primarily through literary texts including, but not limited to, the poetry of Clément Marot, Rabelais's Gargantua, Etienne de la Boétie's Discours de la servitude volontaire, the poetry of Pierre de Ronsard, Jean de la Taille's Saül le Furieux, and Agrippa D'Aubigné’s Les Tragiques.

Classical French Theatre and Psychoanalysis

Louis MacKenzie

We will be looking at works by the “holy trinity” of French classical theatre (Corneille, Racine, and Moliere) through the lens of psychoanalysis theory and thought. Our truck will be with the texts as expressions of issues dear to psychoanalysis, not with the psychograph of the authors. Plays will include, but may not be limited to “Le Cid,” “Horace,” “Andromaque,” “Britannicus,” “Phèdre,” “L’Ecole des femmes,” “Tartuffe,” “Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.” In French or English depending on student preference.

Modern periods (18th-century - 21st-century; Francophonie)

Humanism and Responsibility

Alain Toumayan

An interdisciplinary investigation of the idea of the responsibility of both individuals and sovereign states to respond to social injustice, political persecution or conflict, natural disasters, and humanitarian crises. The course will focus on points of convergence between Emmanuel Levinas' concept of responsibility and The Responsibility to Protect by Gareth Evans and Mohammed Sahnoun. Course to be taught in French. Readings include works by Voltaire, Hugo, Zola, Camus, Sartre, Wiesel, Levinas, and Evans and Sahnoun. Paintings by Delacroix and Millet.

Performing the Text: Literature, Philosophy, Cinema Grammatology of Cinema

Olivier Morel

This advanced seminar consists of seeking to elaborate a "general grammatology of cinema." Revolving around a notion of performance and how textual writing is (always?) an audiovisual performance, our research will explore three directions: 1. an interpretation of textual writing in terms of sound and image as it has been theorized in literary studies from the Russian formalists to Derrida's grammatology through writings by Roland Barthes, among others; 2. a history of proto-cinematic inventions in their relation to theatrical performances and how this long history still informs our understanding of cinema today; 3. today's postmodern writing as a genuinely hybrid endeavor. The ultimate goal of the course would be to define the proper of cinema, or what I call "cinematographèmes" in terms that align with Agnès Varda, Robert Bresson, and Jean-Luc Godard's oeuvres, notably. The course will be nourished by my own experience in making a feature-length so-called "documentary" film with the author (poet, writer, playwright, thinker) Hélène Cixous between 2012 and 2018 (evercixousmovie.com). We will read novels, poetry, and watch films. We will welcome Hélène Cixous on Skype. One written assignment (scholarly paper), oral presentations as well as active participation in our class will constitute the basic requirements

Francophones Extremes: French Writing on the Cutting Edge

Alison Rice

Francophone contemporary written work represents a wide variety of locations and experiences. In order to effectively depict places and events that are new and diverse, writers from around the world who have chosen French as their idiom of composition are currently engaging in innovative stylistic methods resulting in the creation of idiosyncratic French-language texts that don’t shy away from tough topics ranging from immigration to climate change to violence to love. Authors include Mauritian-born Nathacha Appanah, Algerian Maïssa Bey, Guadeloupean Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau from Martinique, Julia Kristeva of Bulgaria, Congolese-native Alain Mabanckou, and Slovenian-born Brina Svit.

Writing Disappearance in 20th- and 21st-Century Fiction

Sonja Stojanovic

As we look at the works of 20th- and 21st-century writers and filmmakers, we will investigate the many forms that the writing of disappearance takes. From missing persons and absent protagonists to ghosts and clones, from unspeakable names to obsessive inventories, from silenced memories and wars to phantom pains, disappearance is, as D. Rabaté writes in Désirs de disparaître (2015) both “made literal” and “inscribed elsewhere” in the text. In this course, we will pay particular attention to how writers have made certain absences not only apparent but felt and consider the mechanisms that allow for such displacements. We will specifically focus on questions of absence, erasure, gender, grief, memory, race, spectrality, and trauma.