UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
French UG – Fall 2021
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
French 101: First Semester French
Credits: 4
For students with no previous training in the language; oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of French and Francophone cultures.
French 102: Second Semester French
Credits: 4
Continuation of French 101
French 203: Third Semester French
Credits: 4
Oral practice and conversation, grammar review, reading, vocabulary expansion, creative writing and study of French and Francophone cultures.
French 204: Fourth Semester French
Credits: 4
Continuation of French 203 with more advanced materials.
French 211: French Literary And Interdisciplinary Studies
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Gilles Bousquet
The objective of this course is to provide an overview of MSF (and to some extent other NGOs) working in health crisis situations, including its history, mission, organization, internal management, cultural, political, and ethical challenges. In so doing, the course will examine issues of global health, social justice, and humanitarian action, of particular relevance to our present times, including a reading of The Plague (La Peste), by French writer Albert Camus, and several contemporary French essays and works of fiction in relation to global medical humanitarian work. This course, taught in English, will be featuring several guest lecturers from the Global Health Institute, MSF, and other organizations with a presence in health crisis areas. Students will have a chance to interact first-hand with distinguished global practitioners and scholars. Presentations will be followed by a professor-led discussion, as well as small-group discussions between students to deepen their understanding of concepts and themes addressed by the lecturer. This course will also include case studies of particular MSF interventions in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The MSF course will be of interest to French and World Languages and Cultures students, as well as students in Global Health, the sciences, and international affairs.
Taught in English.
French 227: Exploring French: Intermediate-Level Course for Entering Students
Credits: 3
Development of oral and written skills, based on reading and discussion of contemporary socio-cultural topics.
French 228: Intermediate Language and Culture
Credits: 3 – 4
Contact: Professor Nevine El Nossery
Enhance writing and speaking proficiency through cultural readings on France and the francophone world. Review of grammar and focus on more complex grammatical structures. A required prerequisite for the French major (and a requirement for the French certificate).
Taught in French.
French 271: Introduction to Literary Analysis
French 311: Advanced Composition and Conversation
French 313: Professional Communication and Culture in the Francophone World
French 321: Introduction to Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Literature
French 322: Introduction to Literature of Modernity
French 347: Introduction to Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Civilization
French 348: Modernity Studies
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Florence Vatan
The purpose of this course is to explore the political, social, intellectual, artistic and literary developments in French and Francophone culture, within the time period from the French Revolution to the current era. The course is taught entirely in French. Prerequisite: French 271.
Taught in French.
French 430: Readings in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Jan Miernowski
Theme: “Le Vrai amour est une fable (c’est pourquoi il est vrai)” [True Love is a Fable (That Is Why It Is True)]
Love in Western culture relies on the following syllogism:
To be true, love must be a story.
The most meaningful love story is a fictional narrative.
Thus, a true love is a fiction (and, conversely, only a well-crafted fictional love story can really be true).
We will study this paradoxical intertwining of love and narrative fiction in French literature between the 13th and the 16th century. During that pivotal period, French literature produced highly symbolic narratives that were not merely allegorical representations of love but indeed textual devices aimed at perfecting the erotic passions of their readers. The reading list includes canonical texts and authors of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance: Le Roman de la Rose, Guillaume Machaut, Christine de Pizan, Charles d’Orléans, Clément Marot, Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, and Pierre de Ronsard. The readings will be available in modern French translations.
Taught in French.
Meets-with French 672
French/ACS 440: Francophone Film
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Vlad Dima
This course is an overview of francophone African cinema, featuring representative films and directors from Senegal, Mali, Chad, Cameroon, Algeria, and Morocco, and spanning from 1966 to 2016. We will study directors from the pioneering African wave (Sembène, Mambéty) and also contemporary artistic voices (Bekolo, Sissako, Saleh etc.). Students will learn about both the history and the aesthetics of francophone African cinema. Thematically, the course is split in three major strands to be explored in depth through film and theoretical readings: the African city and space, aesthetics of image and sound, and the African body.
Taught in English.
Literature in Translation 249: Nineteenth-Century French Masterpieces
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Richard Goodkin
Topic: Love and Passion in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction
In this course, we will read and analyze a series of nineteenth-century French novels and short stories that deal with the representation of love, one of the most important themes in French literature of the time. Works will be chosen among the following authors: Benjamin Constant, René de Chateaubriand, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, and Guy de Maupassant.
No comm-B section
Taught in English.
French UG – Spring 2022
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
French 101: First Semester French
Credits: 4
For students with no previous training in the language; oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of French and Francophone cultures.
French 102: Second Semester French
Credits: 4
Continuation of French 101
French 203: Third Semester French
Credits: 4
Oral practice and conversation, grammar review, reading, vocabulary expansion, creative writing and study of French and Francophone cultures.
French 204: Fourth Semester French
Credits: 4
Continuation of French 203 with more advanced materials.
French 211: French Literary And Interdisciplinary Studies
French 228: Intermediate Language and Culture
Credits: 3 – 4
Contact: Professor Nevine El Nossery
Enhance writing and speaking proficiency through cultural readings on France and the francophone world. Review of grammar and focus on more complex grammatical structures. A required prerequisite for the French major (and a requirement for the French certificate).
Taught in French.
French 271: Introduction to Literary Analysis
French 312: Advanced Oral and Written Expression: Writing Across the Humanities
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Heather Willis Allen
French 314: Contemporary Issues in Government, Organizations, and Enterprise
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Gilles Bousquet
Theme: “Intercultural Communication Theory and Leadership Practice in French and Francophone Environments”
Meets-with French 617
French 321: Introduction to Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Literature
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Ewa Miernowska
French 322: Introduction to Literature of Modernity
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Florence Vatan
French 347: Introduction to Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Civilization
French 391: French for Reading Knowledge
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Anne Vila
French 464: Literature and Medicine in French-Speaking Cultures
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Florence Vatan
Topic: Lunatiques, hystériques et idiots: Littérature et folie au 19ème siècle
Taught in French.
Meets-with French 672
French 465: French/Francophone Film
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Richard Goodkin
French 590: Advanced Phonetics
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Anne Theobald
Literature in Translation 302: What is Life? Biological Life in Literature and Culture
Credits: 3
Contact: Jan Miernowski
Italian UG – Fall 2021
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Italian 101: First Semester Italian
Credits: 4
For students who have not studied Italian.
Italian 102: Second Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Continuation of Italian 101
Italian 203: Third Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Class reading of modern Italian plays, novels, and short stories; study of idioms, conversation practice; review of grammar.
Italian 204: Fourth Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Continuation of Italian 203, with more advanced materials.
Italian 230: Modern Italian Culture
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Grazia Menechella
Survey of Italian history, art, music, politics, and popular culture of the 20th-21st centuries.
Counts toward the Italian major and Italian certificate.
Italian 311: Advanced Italian Language
Credits: 3
Contact: Dr. Loren Eadie
Course conducted in Italian that focuses on the development of accurate and nuanced capacity for expression in Italian and for understanding the spoken and written language. The course will also address Italian phonetics to develop accurate pronunciation.
Prerequisites: Italian 204 or consent of instructor.
Counts toward the Italian major and Italian certificate.
Italian 321: Studies in Italian Literature and Culture I
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Stefania Buccini
Course deals with the literary and ideological movements of the Medieval and Renaissance periods (XIII-XVI centuries). It will focus on selected authors (Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Machiavelli) and specific genres (poetry, short story, epic poem, political treatise) with emphasis on the cultural context. Students will learn how to perform close textual analysis in order to identify the aesthetic and the cultural dimensions of literature.
Prerequisites- IT202 or 204.
Counts toward the Italian major and Italian certificate.
Italian 365: Machiavelli and His World
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Kristin Phillips-Court
Machiavelli: Imperialist or pacifist? Patriot or mercenary? Poet or
scientist? This course introduces students to the major works of Machiavelli through the close reading and discussion of his writings in their cultural and historical contexts. Students will deepen their understanding of the controversies surrounding Machiavelli’s Prince and other works by considering literary, historical, political, and artistic points of view with the aim of articulating the complexities of his political thought.
Counts toward the Italian major and Italian certificate.
Italian 452: History of Italian-American Cinema
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Patrick Rumble
Survey of Italian American Cinema and Television, from the Early Cinema to the present. Films and TV programs engaging with the Italian American Experience will be studied within the cultural, historical, literary and ethnic contexts of North America. Films studied include: The Godfather, Mean Streets, Rocky, Goodfellas, Household Saints, Big Night, Do the Right Thing, The Sopranos.
Counts toward the Italian major and Italian certificate.
Literature in Translation 254: Literature of Modern Italy: Existentialism, Fascism, Resistance
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Patrick Rumble
Conducted in English, this course is a survey of 20th-Century Italian fiction
and literary movements in cultural and political context. Major authors include Palazzeschi, Levi, Vittorini, Maraini and others.
Prerequisites- So st. Elective for the Italian certificate.
Literature in Translation 255: Boccaccio’s Decameron -"Black Death and Medieval Life"
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Jelena Todorović
This is a COMM-B course. Has the Coronavirus pandemic made you wonder how it was to live during the Black Death? What was society like in the Middle Ages? How did these people lay foundation of today’s society we live in? We will ask and answer these questions with Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a text that will make us both laugh and cry. We will investigate literature, art, pop culture, music, politics, religion, interpersonal and transcultural relations, warfare, fashion, gender roles, and everyday life of our medieval and early modern ancestors.
Elective for the Italian certificate.
Literature in Translation 260: Italy and the Invention of America
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Stefania Buccini
Course will explore the central role played by Italy in the Western European vision of the Americas from Columbus’ voyages to World War II. Students will have the opportunity to deepen their understanding of a broad variety of works from the late 1500s through the 1950s. Lit Trans 260 provides students with or without an Italian heritage with a unique opportunity to revisit the issue of cultural identity through literary,
historical and visual texts.
Elective for the Italian certificate.
Literature in Translation 410: Food Cultures of Italy
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Grazia Menechella
This is a FIG course open to first-year students only. It focuses on the history of Italian food cultures from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. Readings include fiction, cookbooks, and history.
Elective for the Italian certificate.
Section 001
Literature in Translation 410: National Identity in the Age of Globalization: the Italian Case
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Ernesto Livorni
What is a national identity in the context of the fluid globalized world in which we live? How are identities affected by big migratory waves within the same country and, more importantly, from one country or continent to another? The Italian case is one of the many in the so-called Western world that can help us to monitor the possible answers to these questions.
Elective for the Italian certificate.
Section 002
Italian UG – Spring 2022
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Italian 101: First Semester Italian
Credits: 4
For students who have not studied Italian.
Italian 102: Second Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Continuation of Italian 101
Italian 203: Third Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Class reading of modern Italian plays, novels, and short stories; study of idioms, conversation practice; review of grammar.
Italian 204: Fourth Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Continuation of Italian 203, with more advanced materials.
Italian 301: Italian for Reading Knowledge
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Grazia Menechella
Italian 312: Writing Workshop
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Jelena Todorović
Italian 322: Studies in Italian Literature and Culture II
Credits: 3
Italian 350: Rome: The Changing Shape of the Eternal City
Credits: 3 – 4
Contact: Doctor Loren Eadie
Literature in Translation 213: Love and Sex in Italian Comedy
Credits: 3
Professor Kristin Phillips-Court
Literature in Translation 253: Of Demons and Angels. Dante's Divine Comedy
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Jelena Todorović
UNDERGRADUATE ACADEMIC ADVISING
For all advising questions, please contact the FRIT Undergraduate Advisor and Program Coordinator, Mandi Schoville.
GRADUATE COURSES
French Grad – Fall 2021
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
French 616: Social Responsibility in Contemporary French-Language Professional Writing
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Ritt Deitz
Required for Professional French Masters Program students, this interdisciplinary course investigates discourses of social responsibility in the French-speaking professional world and across sectors, in the fields of international development, marketing, management, and administration. By studying how concepts of socially responsible practice are represented in business and professional writing in France, Quebec and Francophone Africa, students will consider how trends in their individual PFMP concentration areas relate to those of their classmates and future colleagues.
French 672: Le Vrai amour est une fable (c’est pourquoi il est vrai)
True Love is a Fable (That Is Why It Is True)
Love in Western culture relies on the following syllogism:
To be true, love must be a story.
The most meaningful love story is a fictional narrative.
Thus, a true love is a fiction (and, conversely, only a well-crafted fictional love story can really be true).
We will study this paradoxical intertwining of love and narrative fiction in French literature between the 13th and the 16th century. During that pivotal period, French literature produced highly symbolic narratives that were not merely allegorical representations of love but indeed textual devices aimed at perfecting the erotic passions of their readers.
The reading list includes canonical texts and authors of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance: Le Roman de la Rose, Guillaume Machaut, Christine de Pizan, Charles d’Orléans, Clément Marot, Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, and Pierre de Ronsard. The medieval readings will be available in modern French translations.
During class meetings, we will discuss the readings assigned for the meeting. I will provide the students with necessary historical information. The course will have two tracks: the Fr 430 track will be an in-depth survey of literature and culture (music and art) of that period; the Fr 672 track will include exercises specifically designed for graduate students: training in philological and intertextual reading of literary text; elements of bibliographical research and analysis of secondary literature. Graduate students will be able to fulfill their breadth requirement in medieval or in 16th-century literature.
True love; Fiction; Literary Allegory; Middle Ages; Renaissance
Learning outcomes:
- Knowledge of medieval and early modern love culture
- Literary interpretation of late medieval and Renaissance French literature
- Theoretical reflection on the relationship between truth and artistic myth
TR 1:00-2:15
French 804: Interdisciplinary Western European Area Studies Seminar
French 820: College Teaching of French
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Heather Willis Allen
Meets-with Italian 821
Intended for instructors of elementary- and intermediate-level collegiate French/Italian courses, the goal of FRE 820 / ITA 821 is to help you understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching and related techniques for classroom instruction of French/Italian. Course objectives include the following: understanding key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching; understanding classroom techniques for communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching; applying key concepts related to communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching to designing instructional materials, lessons, and assessment tools; and increasing engagement in pedagogical discourse on collegiate foreign language teaching and learning.
Fridays 10AM-12PM
French 901: Seminar: Materials and Methods of Research
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Florence Vatan
Intended for Dissertators
The purpose of this seminar is to facilitate writing of the dissertation through individual feedback and collective class discussions. In the first half of the semester, students will share previously completed work or ongoing research on their dissertation. In the second half of the semester, students will present the chapter they are currently working on. All seminar members will offer comments and suggestions. Students will also have the opportunity to explore effective writing techniques and to be introduced to research tools tailored to their dissertation projects. The seminar is open to advanced graduate students who are at the dissertation stage.
French 948: Écologies étranges
Credits: 3 Contact: Joshua Armstrong
Topic: Écologies étranges
When we humans imagine our existence as part of a finite species in a world that existed before us and will go on existing after we are gone, what does it look like? What does it feel like when we repress this thought? Today it beckons as never before, as ecological upheaval confronts us with a menacing temporality which “asks us to accept the ethical proximity between the most fleeting act in our present and planet-shaping effects that will play out over millennia” (Farrier). Philosophy engages as never before with the search for new ways to meaningfully situate human subjectivity outside the traditional Western chronotopes suggested by metaphysics and humanism. Human subjectivity is confronted with its mycological other (Tsing), cast into “slow” and “deep time” (Gee, Wood), re-envisioned in terms of animal and vegetal being (Marder, Coccia, Irigaray), asked to abandon its strong subjecthood and to sediment: that is “to consciously enter into a lithic temporality, and to engage the future of our fossilization” (Duperrex) and to “act against the antimaterialism of power” (LeMenager). In this course, we will read several contemporary French novels and watch some films in which non-human members of ecologies, from vegetation to fungi to the soils and sediments in which they grow, are paramount. The reader or viewer is asked to imagine the temporality of a lichen (Keiller), to abandon any clear distinction between life and death and identify with characters who live for centuries in vegetative states (Volodine), to enter a strange, dreamlike world inhabited by “obscure flowers,” where microaggressions attach themselves like an environmental pollution to characters and where the border between human, plant, and animal is blurred (NDiaye), to operate the absurd reversal of an epidemic in a form of writing that is a permanent, perverse “excavation” and an “exhumation” (Daoud), to obsessively contemplate the “absolute irreversibility of all processes of decay” (Houellebecq). We will complement these readings with more canonical works by Beckett, Camus, and Kafka, as well as a variety of excerpts from the philosophical/critical texts mentioned above. Seminar conducted in French.
Selected Bibliography:
Primary Works
Beckett, Samuel. 1951. Molloy. Paris: Minuit.
Daoud, Kamel. 2017. Zabor. Arles: Actes Sud.
Del Curto, Mario. 2019. Humanité végétale. Arles: Actes Sud.
Draeger, Manuela. 2012. Herbes et golems. Paris: L’Olivier.
Houellebecq, Michel. 2019. Sérotonine. Paris: Flammarion.
Kafka, Franz. 1995. “Children on a Country Road.” Trans. Willa and edwin Muir. Franz
Kafka: The Complete Stories. Ed. Nahum N. Glatzer. New York: Schocken. 379-382.
Keiller, Patrick. 2010. Robinson in Ruins. British Film Institute.
NDiaye, Marie. 2013. Ladivine. Paris: Gallimard.
Volodine, Antoine. 2014. Terminus radieux. Paris: Seuil.
Von Trier, Lars. 2011. Melancholia. Zentropa.
Philosophy/Critical Works
Coccia, Emanuele. 2019. The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture. Cambridge: Polity.
Duperrex, Matthieu. 2019. Voyages en sol incertain: enquête dans les deltas du Rhône et du
Mississippi. Marseille: Wildproject.
Farrier, David. 2019. Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction. Minneapolis: Minnesota
UP.
Gee, Henry. 1999. In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life. Ithaca. Cornell
UP.
Irigaray, Luce and Michael Marder. 2017. Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives. New York:
Columbia UP.
LeMenager, Stephanie. 2017. “Sediment.” Veer Ecology. Ed. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Minneapolis: U Minnesota
- 168-182.
Marder, Michael. 2020. Dump Philosophy: A Phenomenology of Devastation. New York: Bloomsbury.
–. 2013. Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life. New York: Columbia UP.
Mbembe, Achille. 2019. Necropolitics. Durham: Duke UP.
Morton, Timothy. 2016. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. New York: Columbia UP.
Tsing, Anna. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.
Princeton: Princeton UP.
French Grad – Spring 2022
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
French 569: Critical Approaches
French 617: Contemporary Skill Set Literature in French
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Gilles Bousquet
Theme: Intercultural Communication Theory and Leadership Practice in French and Francophone Environments
Meets-with French 314
French 618: Career Strategies for the French-Speaking World
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Ritt Deitz
French 623: Communication Orale en Situations Professionnelles
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Ritt Deitz
French 642: Culture et Sociétés dans le Monde Francophone
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Ritt Deitz
French 672: Topics in Literature and Culture
French 948: Seminar
Italian Grad – Fall 2021
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Italian 452: History of Italian American Cinema
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Patrick Rumble
This course is a Survey of Italian American Cinema and Television, from the Early Cinema to the present. Films and TV programs engaging
with the Italian American Experience will be studied within the cultural, historical, literary and ethnic contexts of North America. Films studied include: The Godfather, Mean Streets, Rocky, Goodfellas, Household Saints, Big Night, Do the Right Thing, The Sopranos.
T-Th 2:30-3:45 pm
Italian 623: Teatro
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Kristin Phillips-Court
This course surveys the major works of 15th- and 16th-century dramatic
literature in its various forms: pastoral, comedy, tragedy, and sacred drama. Examination of the Classical (Greco-Roman) and medieval (liturgical) roots of Italian Renaissance drama and its later permutations. Close reading of plays with consideration of the courtly, academic/intellectual, and popular environments that produced them.
T 4:00-6:30 pm
Italian 631: Italian Romanticism
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Ernesto Livorni
The course will focus on the three major figures of Italian Romantic literature: Ugo Foscolo, Alessandro Manzoni, and Giacomo Leopardi. Although the three authors are not Tuscan, let alone Florentine, they all forged their main works referring to Tuscan and Florentine landscape and history (especially Foscolo) and language (especially Manzoni, to a lesser extent Leopardi).
M 4:00-6:30 pm
Italian 821: College Teaching of Italian
Credits: 1
Contact: Doctor Loren Eadie
Taught in conjunction with French 820, Italian 821 familiarizes new language instructors with key concepts of communicative,
literacy-oriented language teaching and related techniques for classroom instruction of French/Italian.
F 10:00-12:00 pm
Italian 951: Seminar in Italian Literature: Circulation and Reception of Dante’s Texts
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Jelena Todorović
This course is for graduate students only. It will focus on various editions of
Dante’s texts in manuscript, print, and digital forms.
R 4:00-6:00 pm
Italian Grad – Spring 2022
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Italian 460: Italian Cinema
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Patrick Rumble
T-R 11:00-11:50 am (lectures) + 1 discussion section (R 1:20-2:10, R 2:25-3:15, F 9:55-10:45, F 11:00-11:50)