Spring 2022 UNDERGRADUATE COURSES
French
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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.
Pre-Requisite: None
French 102: Second Semester French
Credits: 4
Continuation of French 101
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 101 or placement into FRENCH 102
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.
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 102 or placement into FRENCH 203
French 204: Fourth Semester French
Credits: 4
Continuation of French 203 with more advanced materials.
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 203 or placement into FRENCH 204
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.
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 204 or 227
French 271: Introduction to Literary Analysis
French 312: Advanced Oral and Written Expression: Writing Across the Humanities
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
Pre-Requisite: French 228, FRENCH 311 or INT’L BUSS/FRENCH 313
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
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Anne Theobald
Taught in French.
Pre-Requisite: One of the following – FRENCH 311, FRENCH 312, FRENCH 321, FRENCH 322 or FRENCH 325
French 391: French for Reading Knowledge
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Anne Vila
Pre-Requisite: Sophomore or graduate/professional standing
*ONLINE COURSE
French 464: Literature and Medicine in French-Speaking Cultures
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Florence Vatan
Topic: Lunatics, Hysterics and Idiots: Madness in Nineteenth-Century French literature
Explores the representations of madness in 19th-century French literature. We will read texts depicting fictional “mad” characters as well as texts written by authors who suffered from mental illnesses. Our main focus will be on the relationship between genius and insanity, the literary representations of the “mad” woman, and literary depictions of idiocy. We will also examine other artistic representations of insanity as well as 19th-century medical discourses on hysteria and hallucinations. Readings will include texts by Balzac, Nodier, Flaubert, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Maupassant, and Mirbeau. The course will be conducted in French. It is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Graduate students will complete additional assignments.
TR 2:30-3:45 pm
Taught in French.
Meets-with French 672
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 321 or FRENCH 322
French 465: French/Francophone Film
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Richard Goodkin
In this class we will study a series of films, one per week, that are all classics of a sort within the French tradition. I am planning on organizing the course according to four thematics: “youth,” “crime,” “visions of society,” and “l’amour fou.” Film directors will include François Truffaut, Louis Malle, Mathieu Kassovitz, Erick Zonca, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Claude Chabrol, Agnès Varda, Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer. I plan to make films available through streaming so that students can watch them at home; we will study and comment upon selected clips in class.
The class will be conducted in French. The films viewed will be shown with the original French sound track with English subtitles.
Questions: rgoodkin@wisc.edu.
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 321 or FRENCH 322
French 569: Critical Approaches to Literature and Culture: French and Francophone Perspectives
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Jan Miernowski
The main goal of this course is to help students become professional readers of literature, culture, and cinema. More specifically, the course will help each student build his or her own methodological practice and toolkit as a literary, cultural, and cinematographic critic.
The means to rich this goal will be by:
- Critically reflecting on interpretative practices of literary and cultural scholars in the past and in our contemporary times. This will be accomplished by highlighting the philosophical premises and the intellectual limits of existing critical approaches.
- Intensively practicing and discussing close readings of literary texts and, to a lesser extent, films belonging to different genres and historical epochs. This will be done through in-class and online discussions, written exercises, oral presentations, peer reviews and a range of formats of exams adapted to the individual needs of the students.
- Building a professional self-awareness as a literary and cultural critic. This will be accomplished by “tinkering with” (in the sense of bricoler) critical concepts and approaches in order to engage the students in an open-ended perfectioning of their critical “know-how.”
This course:
- Will NOT be a chronological history of literary criticism, although we will freely move through the history of human approaches to artistic discourses, starting with ancient rhetoric and ending with our contemporaneity.
- Will NOT teach the students to “apply an interpretative key” to a text in order to spit out a “reading”; quite on the contrary, we will question the existing “methods” and deconstruct their mechanisms.
- Will NOT encourage the students to “position themselves” in the existing academic system of specializations and subspecializations; quite on the contrary, we will insist on the necessity of crossing the disciplinary boundaries.
Among questions to be studied in this course are: Is literature a form or a function? To what extent literature is language? Who or what makes literary sense: the author(s), the reader(s), the text, the intertext…? What is the difference between literature and ideology? Is literature moral? Is literature gendered? Is literature a medium? What is a genre? What is the historical and intercultural becoming of literature? Etc….
TR 4:00-5:15 pm
Pre-Requisite: Senior standing and declared in French undergraduate or masters program
French 590: Advanced Phonetics
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Anne Theobald
This course is a detailed study of French sounds, phonetic transcription, and practice in pronunciation. It will help you fine tune your pronunciation and auditory skills.
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 228 or graduate/professional standing
Literature in Translation 302: What is Life? Biological Life in Literature and Culture
Italian
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Italian 101: First Semester Italian
Credits: 4
For students who have not studied Italian.
Pre-Requisite: None
Italian 102: Second Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Continuation of Italian 101
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 101 or ITALIAN 181
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.
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 102 or ITALIAN 201
Italian 204: Fourth Semester Italian
Credits: 4
Continuation of Italian 203, with more advanced materials.
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 203
Italian 312: Writing Workshop
Italian 322: Studies in Italian Literature and Culture II
Credits: 3
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 202 or 204
Italian 350: Rome: The Changing Shape of the Eternal City
Credits: 3 – 4
Contact: Doctor Loren Eadie
Pre-Requisite: Sophomore standing*
*Discussion section of IT 350 is open to students who have completed (or are currently enrolled) in Italian 204.
Italian 460: Italian Cinema
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Patrick Rumble
Survey of the history of Italian cinema from the Second World War up to today, examining the work of key filmmakers in the Italian art cinema tradition, including Rossellini, De Sica, Antonioni, Pasolini, Cavani, Bertolucci, Fellini, Moretti, and Gioli. Students will be introduced to important film movements and trends including Futurism, Neorealism, the Commedia all’italiana, Auteurist cinema, Feminist filmmaking, Avant-Garde film and Environmental cinema.
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)
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 204, COM ARTS 350, or graduate/professional standing
Italian 636: Il romanzo italiano da Pirandello a Gadda (1900-1960)
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Grazia Menechella
Graduate course conducted in Italian that focuses on the history and trends of Italian literature from the beginning of the 20th century to the early 1960s. We will investigate the history of the Italian novel between tradition and innovation starting with Luigi Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal. Authors included: Pirandello, Aleramo, Moravia, Calvino, Ortese, Pagliarani, Gadda.
T 4:00-6:30 pm
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 321, 322, or graduate/professional standing
Literature in Translation 213: Love and Sex in Italian Comedy
Literature in Translation 253: Of Demons and Angels. Dante's Divine Comedy
UNDERGRADUATE ACADEMIC ADVISING
For all advising questions, please contact the FRIT Undergraduate Advisor and Program Coordinator, Mandi Schoville.
Spring 2022 GRADUATE COURSES
French
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French 391: French for Reading Knowledge
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Anne Vila
Pre-Requisite: Sophomore or graduate/professional standing
*ONLINE COURSE
French 569: Critical Approaches to Literature and Culture: French and Francophone Perspectives
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Jan Miernowski
The main goal of this course is to help students become professional readers of literature, culture, and cinema. More specifically, the course will help each student build his or her own methodological practice and toolkit as a literary, cultural, and cinematographic critic.
The means to rich this goal will be by:
- Critically reflecting on interpretative practices of literary and cultural scholars in the past and in our contemporary times. This will be accomplished by highlighting the philosophical premises and the intellectual limits of existing critical approaches.
- Intensively practicing and discussing close readings of literary texts and, to a lesser extent, films belonging to different genres and historical epochs. This will be done through in-class and online discussions, written exercises, oral presentations, peer reviews and a range of formats of exams adapted to the individual needs of the students.
- Building a professional self-awareness as a literary and cultural critic. This will be accomplished by “tinkering with” (in the sense of bricoler) critical concepts and approaches in order to engage the students in an open-ended perfectioning of their critical “know-how.”
This course:
- Will NOT be a chronological history of literary criticism, although we will freely move through the history of human approaches to artistic discourses, starting with ancient rhetoric and ending with our contemporaneity.
- Will NOT teach the students to “apply an interpretative key” to a text in order to spit out a “reading”; quite on the contrary, we will question the existing “methods” and deconstruct their mechanisms.
- Will NOT encourage the students to “position themselves” in the existing academic system of specializations and subspecializations; quite on the contrary, we will insist on the necessity of crossing the disciplinary boundaries.
Among questions to be studied in this course are: Is literature a form or a function? To what extent literature is language? Who or what makes literary sense: the author(s), the reader(s), the text, the intertext…? What is the difference between literature and ideology? Is literature moral? Is literature gendered? Is literature a medium? What is a genre? What is the historical and intercultural becoming of literature? Etc….
TR 4:00-5:15 pm
Pre-Requisite: Senior standing and declared in French undergraduate or masters program
French 590: Advanced Phonetics
Credits: 3
Contact: Doctor Anne Theobald
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 228 or graduate/professional standing
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
Pre-Requisite: Declared in the French Studies, MFS program
French 618: Career Strategies for the French-Speaking World
French 623: Communication Orale en Situations Professionnelles
French 642: Culture et Sociétés dans le Monde Francophone
French 672: Topics in Literature and Culture
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Florence Vatan
Topic: Lunatics, Hysterics and Idiots: Madness in Nineteenth-Century French literature
Explores the representations of madness in 19th-century French literature. We will read texts depicting fictional “mad” characters as well as texts written by authors who suffered from mental illnesses. Our main focus will be on the relationship between genius and insanity, the literary representations of the “mad” woman, and literary depictions of idiocy. We will also examine other artistic representations of insanity as well as 19th-century medical discourses on hysteria and hallucinations. Readings will include texts by Balzac, Nodier, Flaubert, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Maupassant, and Mirbeau. The course will be conducted in French. It is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Graduate students will complete additional assignments.
TR 2:30-3:45 pm
Taught in French.
Meets-with French 464
Pre-Requisite: Graduate/professional standing
French 948: Seminar - Crossing Borders in French and Francophone Literature and Cinema
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Nevine El Nossery
The seminar explores the many boundaries French and Francophones writers and filmmakers cross as they negotiate cultural identities. It will cover three main themes:
- literal migration (crossing geographical borders)
- material intersections (crossing formal and linguistic conventions)
- symbolic passage (gender, class, race, culture, etc.)
Our discussions will engage with theoretical concepts that overlap with the theme of crossing borders, such as: mobility, contact zone, creolization, transculturation, nationhood, othering, race, identity, and difference, and the questions that these works reveal about the cultures in contact.
We will read and watch
On literal migration: Fatou Diome, Le ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic) ; Ousmane Sembène, La Noire.. (Black Girl, film) ; Merzak Allouache, Harragas (film). On material intersections: Marie Darrieussecq, Truismes (Pig Tales); Nicole Brossard, Le désert mauve (Mauve Desert) ; Faïza Guene, Kiffe kiffe demain (Kiffe kiffe Tomorrow). On symbolic passage: Assia Djebar, L’amour, la fantasia (Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade) ; Jean Genet, Les nègres (The Blacks) ; Alain Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima, my love, film); Houda Benyamina, Divines (film).
Please note that lectures will be in English, readings will be in French for graduate students of French and in English for the rest of the class.
M 3:30-5:30 pm
Pre-Requisite: Graduate/professional standing
Italian
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Italian 460: Italian Cinema
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Patrick Rumble
Survey of the history of Italian cinema from the Second World War up to today, examining the work of key filmmakers in the Italian art cinema tradition, including Rossellini, De Sica, Antonioni, Pasolini, Cavani, Bertolucci, Fellini, Moretti, and Gioli. Students will be introduced to important film movements and trends including Futurism, Neorealism, the Commedia all’italiana, Auteurist cinema, Feminist filmmaking, Avant-Garde film and Environmental cinema.
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)
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 204, COM ARTS 350, or graduate/professional standing
Italian 636: Il romanzo italiano da Pirandello a Gadda (1900-1960)
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Grazia Menechella
Graduate course conducted in Italian that focuses on the history and trends of Italian literature from the beginning of the 20th century to the early 1960s. We will investigate the history of the Italian novel between tradition and innovation starting with Luigi Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal. Authors included: Pirandello, Aleramo, Moravia, Calvino, Ortese, Pagliarani, Gadda.
T 4:00-6:30 pm
Pre-Requisite: ITALIAN 321, 322, or graduate/professional standing
Italian 741: Il Seicento: Ribelli, libertini e ortodossi
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Stefania Buccini
Survey of seventeenth-century Italian literature and examines the development of specific literary genres in the contexts of cultural and intellectual history.
Provides methodologies and philological instruments necessary to the critical reading of a variety of narrative and poetic texts in the perspective of literary and cultural crosscurrents of this period. Special attention will be devoted to the nature and function of narrative and poetry, Counter-Reformation ideology and libertine opposition. Textual analysis will be conducted also on seventeenth-century printed editions with the purpose of allowing the students to familiarize themselves with the typographic characteristics and oddities of antique books. A visit to Memorial Library Special Collection might be scheduled later in the semester.
Language of instruction: Italian.
R 4:00-6:30 pm
Pre-Requisite: Graduate/professional standing
Italian 952: Seminar - Il doppio
Credits: 3
Contact: Professor Ernesto Livorni
(course not open to undergraduate students)
- The course focuses on the concept of the doppelgänger, or the double, a concept that intersects several disciplines, from psychology to anthropology, from religion to myth. In modernity, the double becomes an image of terror thanks to the collapse of firm convictions and beliefs. Modernity is the historical and cultural phase in Western culture in which the double becomes a prominent representation of the divided self no longer able to find its wholeness in contact with the divine.
- The course focuses on literary examples as expressions of the double, from Scapigliatura to modernist writers such as Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Luigi Capuana, Emilio De Marchi, Luigi Gualdo, Remigio Zena, Luigi Pirandello, Italo Calvino. The investigation explores not only the aesthetic, but also the ethical implications of the double.
M 4:00-6:00 pm
Pre-Requisite: Graduate/professional standing