Courses

Pre-Requisite: None*

*Students with previous knowledge in French MUST take the French placement exam.

Credits: 4

Description: For students with no previous training in the language; oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of French and Francophone cultures.

Read about this course

Pre-Requisite: French 101 or placement via placement exam

Credits: 4

Description: Continuation of French 101.

Read about this course

Pre-Requisite: French 102 or placement via placement exam

Credits: 4

Description: Oral practice and conversation, grammar review, reading, vocabulary expansion, creative writing and study of French and Francophone cultures.

Read about this course

Pre-Requisite: French 203 or placement via placement exam

Credits: 4

Description: Continuation of FRENCH 203 with more advanced materials. Advanced oral practice and conversation, grammar review, reading, vocabulary expansion, creative writing and study of French and Francophone cultures.

Read about this course

Pre-Requisite: None

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3 and 4 credit options

• Section 011 – lecture only = 3 credits
• Section 301 & 001 – lecture and discussion = 4 credits (Meets Com B req)

Description: Experience visions of Paris in literature, art, cinema, and a few other unexpected sources.

Instructor: Joshua Armstrong

Pre-Requisite: None

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3 and 4 credit options

• Section 012 – lecture only = 3 credits
• Section 302 & 002 – lecture and discussion = 4 credits (Meets Com B req)

ABOUT THIS COURSE!

Description: Literature, film, television, and the quiet revolution next door.

Instructor: Ritt Deitz

Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 204 or 227

TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Credits: 3

Description: 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.

Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 228

TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Credits: 3

Description: An introduction to reading and analyzing literary works, comics, and film, with special emphasis on the development of writing skills in French. The program will concentrate on shorter works from the major genres of French literature, and prepare students for future study of literature.

Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 228

TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Credits: 3

Description: Develop writing and oral expression at an advanced level through writing and discussion of internet journalism, translation, or creative genres.

Instructor: Gilles Bousquet

Pre-Requisite: French 228, 311, or French/Intl Bus 313

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3

Description: Cultural study of contemporary Francophone Africa, focusing on issues in government, organizations and enterprise. Exploration of cultural and professional relations between Francophone Africa and France, the European Union, and the United States.

Instructor: Ritt Deitz

Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 271

TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Credits: 3

Description: Introduction to important literary works from the medieval era to the French Revolution.

Instructor: Anne Theobald

Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 271

TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Credits: 3

Description: Introduction to important literary works of modernity (from the French Revolution to the twenty-first century).

Instructor: TBD

Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 321 or 322

TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Credits: 3

Description: An introduction to the political, social, intellectual, artistic and literary development of French culture, from its origins to the French Revolution (1789).

Instructor: Anne Theobald

Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 321 or 322

TAUGHT IN FRENCH

Credits: 3

Description: A study of how culture has evolved over the course of French history, in relation to a chosen topic.

Instructor: Florence Vatan

Pre-Requisite: None*

*Students with previous knowledge in Italian MUST take the Informal Italian Placement Test (contact Mandi Schoville for information).

Credits: 4

Description: Oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of Italian cultures.

Pre-Requisite: Italian 101, Italian 181 or placement via informal Italian placement test*

*contact Mandi Schoville for information

Credits: 4

Description: Oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of Italian cultures. Continuation of Italian 101.

Pre-Requisite: Italian 102, 201 or placement via informal Italian placement test*

*contact Mandi Schoville for information

Credits: 4

Description: Conversational practice, review of grammar, viewing and discussion of Italian films, and class reading of short stories.

Pre-Requisite: Italian 203 or placement via informal Italian placement test*

*contact Mandi Schoville for information

Credits: 4

Description: Conversation and writing practice, review of grammar, and class reading of a modern Italian novel.

Pre-Requisite: Italian 202 or 204

TAUGHT IN ITALIAN

Credits: 3

Description: Development of composition skills related to expository and other forms of writing, with focus on grammatical skills, conventions, rhetorical techniques for organizing information, presenting coherent arguments, and appropriateness of language to topic. Substantial work on the development of writing strategies for composing and editing.

Instructor: Jelena Todorovic

Pre-Requisite: Italian 202 or 204

TAUGHT IN ITALIAN

Credits: 3

Description: Focuses on a variety of genres and media (poetry, drama, novel, short story, cinema, television) and authors, with emphasis on the cultural and historical contexts from 1600 to the present.

Instructor: Grazia Menechella

Pre-Requisite: Sophomore standing (at least 24 credits earned)

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3 and 4 credit options

• Section 012 – lecture only = 3 credits
• Section 302 & 002 – lecture and discussion = 4 credits

Description: Examines the development of Rome, “the Eternal City,” and its continuing presence as both a metaphoric and physical focal point of Italian artistic and cultural sensibilities. Outline the development of Rome’s authoritative or “mythical” status in literature, art, architecture and film, beginning in the Augustan era and arriving to today, focusing on significant moments in the creation and expansion of the actual city and its cultural influence in the late-Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the era of the Risorgimento (Unification of Italy), and the rise of Fascism. Develop ability to think critically about how the diverse material productions of writers (historians, playwrights, poets), painters, sculptors, architects, philosophical thinkers, and later filmmakers of the periods covered reflect one another and reflect the ideas and ideologies of their age.

Instructor: Loren Eadie

Pre-Requisite: Sophomore standing (at least 24 credits earned)

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3

Description: Focuses on literature about Francis of Assisi, from medieval accounts to contemporary literature, and related artistic portrayals of St. Francis as a religious symbol and model for economic, political and environmental justice.

 Instructor: Ernesto Livorni

Pre-Requisite: Com Arts 350, or graduate/professional standing

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3

Description: General survey of Italian cinema and of the relationship between film and the other arts. Consideration of the Italian and European socio-political context and developments in film theory.

Instructor: Patrick Rumble

Pre-Requisite: Sophomore Standing (at least 24 credits earned)

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3

Description: Have you ever wondered about human nature? What is our place in this world? Through readings, videos, and original images, explore and discuss Dante’s answers from one of the greatest world literary classics, his Divine Comedy. From Hell, through Purgatory to Paradise, we will travel together with Dante in a universal tale of the journey of the human soul. Along the way, learn about Dante, his life and his works, development of literary history, historical and socio-political context of medieval Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Make connections that cross today’s geographic and cultural lines in an exploration of literary topics, the history of ideas, and shared history, pondering universal concepts and patterns in the development of civilization that can still be observed today.

Instructor: Jelena Todorovic

Pre-Requisite: Sophomore Standing (at least 24 credits earned)

TAUGHT IN ENGLISH

Credits: 3

Description: This course (conducted in English) combines literary, historical, sociological, anthropological, political, and nutritional perspectives. Students will investigate the symbolic representation of food in Italian fiction from the end of the 19^th century to the present, how Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (1891) contributed to the Unification of Italy, why Italian Futurist artists were against pasta, the philosophy of the Slow Food movement, the importance of food to ethnic identity in America, and food and identity in multicultural Italy today.

Instructor: TBD

Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing*

*This course is NOT French-focused. Recent FRE 821 participants have included graduate students teaching Italian, Russian, Spanish, German, and Japanese as well as students from the School of Education.

Credits: Variable credit available (1 or 3 credits)

Schedule: Tuesdays 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Description: This seminar provides participants a forum for developing expertise in teaching advanced undergraduate L2 (second language) courses. The primary pedagogical approach emphasized is literacy-based teaching (Kern, 2000; Cope & Kalantzis, 2015). Readings, in-class discussions, and assignments address how advanced L2 courses can be designed to simultaneously develop learners’ cultural and textual knowledge and linguistic capabilities. Instructional planning, including assessment practices that align with literacy-based instruction, is a focus throughout the seminar.

Specific topics addressed in the seminar include current collegiate language enrollment trends and challenges in the profession, reconceptualization of the notion of literacy and multiliteracies, the metaphor of meaning design, implementing multiliteracies pedagogy in advanced L2 courses, scaffolding advanced L2 reading, integrating focus on form in literary-cultural courses, teaching L2 writing with a design perspective, rethinking the teaching of culture, incorporating digital communication and resources in advanced literary-cultural courses, setting student learning outcomes and organizing course content, and assessing student learning in advanced collegiate L2 courses.

This course is NOT French-focused. Recent FRE 821 participants have included graduate students teaching Italian, Russian, Spanish, German, and Japanese as well as students from the School of Education. All course readings and class discussions are in English; instructional and assessment examples relate to a variety of L2s. Course assignments: weekly reading reaction blog, one small group in-class presentation, and a final project that includes creating a syllabus for an advanced undergraduate literature, cultural studies, or language course and sample materials for that course.

Please contact hwallen@wisc.edu with questions about this course.

Instructor: Heather Willis Allen

Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing

Credits: 3 credits

Schedule: Mondays 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Description: Study of literature and culture organized thematically or by time period. Taught in French.

Instructor: Joshua Armstrong

Add’l Info: Cartes et territoires

L’objectif général de ce séminaire sera d’examiner, dans le contexte de la France contemporaine, le rapport entre les gens et les espaces (ou les espaces-temps) qu’ils habitent à “l’ère globale”. La rapidité des transformations de ces rapports en fait un sujet de prédilection pour les philosophes et critiques français (et autres) actuels, dont nous lirons des extraits. Surtout, nous chercherons les traces de ces rapports dans une sélection de romans contemporains, romans où il semble régner une certaine confusion entre “carte” et “territoire”, c’est-à-dire entre les représentations de la société/du monde que l’on consomme ou que l’on se construit et les réalités concrètes rencontrées dans la vie quotidienne. Cette confusion entraine des dilemmes de localisation (“où suis-je?”, “à quel espace appartiens-je?”) que les personnages doivent apprendre à naviguer à l’ère globale.

Nous aborderons ces romans, tous publiés au XXIe siècle, sous l’angle des thèmes suivants (entre autres):

• Panoramas, cartographies, surveillance, mégalomanie, paranoïa
• Le local et le global, l’imaginaire global, les représentations du global
• La France face à la logique néolibérale de la globalisation
• La psychogéographie et les littératures de terrain
• Urbanisme, habitation, territoire, déterritorialisation
• L’Anthropocène

Œuvres littéraires

• Philippe Vasset, Un livre blanc (Fayard, 2007)
• Schuiten et Peeters, La frontière invisible (Casterman, 2012)
• Duras, Un barrage contre le Pacifique (Gallimard, 1958)
• Robbe-Grillet, La jalousie (Minuit, 1957)
• Michel Houellebecq, La carte et le territoire (Flammarion, 2010)
• Marie Darrieussecq, La mer a l’envers (P.O.L, 2019)
• Sophie Calle, A Suivre… (Actes Sud, 1998)
• Jean Rolin, Les événements (P.O.L, 2015)

Nous lirons aussi des extraits d’œuvres philosophiques/théoriques portant sur l’espace par Guy Debord, Michel de Certeau, Martin Heidegger, Verena A. Conley, Ursula K. Heise, Bruno Latour, Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, Michel Foucault, Deleuze et Guattari.

Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing

Schedule: Thursdays 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Description: Study of literature and culture organized thematically or by time period. Taught in French.

Instructor: Florence Vatan

Add’l Info: Des animaux et des hommes

Le XIXème siècle, marqué par un développement sans précédent des sciences naturelles, porte un vif intérêt au monde animal. À l’aide d’une sélection d’œuvres issues de la liste de lecture du MA et d’autres textes couvrant une variété de genres (nouvelle, conte, roman, poésie), nous explorerons la manière dont le monde animal ainsi que les relations entre l’homme et l’animal ont été représentés. Nous examinerons l’animal comme thème et protagoniste de récit, mais aussi comme symbole, allégorie, projection fantasmatique ou instrument d’un regard critique sur l’homme, la société ou la création artistique. Notre réflexion se nourrira d’articles critiques sur les ouvrages étudiés ainsi que d’essais théoriques sur la question animale. Parmi les auteurs considérés figureront entre autres Balzac, Desbordes-Valmore, Hugo, Lamartine, Musset, Nodier, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Zola et Rachilde.

Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing

Credits: 3 credits

Schedule: Tuesdays 4:00-6:00 pm

Description: “La parola e l’immagine: Lirici del `500 (Word and Image: 16th-c. Lyric Poets)”

Instructor: Kristin Phillips-Court