Department of French & Italian
College of Letters & Science

Previous Graduate Seminars

Previous Graduate Seminars (French)

Fall 2021

French 430/672

Readings in Medieval and Renaissance Literature / Topics in Literature and Culture

Prof. Jan Miernowski

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

French 820 / Italian 821

College Teaching of French

Prof. Heather Willis Allen

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.

French 901

Materials and Methods of Research

Prof. Florence Vatan

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

Strange Ecologies/Écologies étranges

Prof. Joshua Armstrong

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.

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

  1. 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.

 

Spring 2022

French 569

Critical Approaches to Literature and Culture: French and Francophone Perspectives

Prof. Jan Miernowski

Description of the course:

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….

French 590

Advanced Phonetics

Dr. Anne Theobald

This course is a detailed study of French sounds, phonetic transcription, and practice in pronunciation. Not only will you fine tune your pronunciation and auditory skills, but you will also learn practical strategies for teaching pronunciation in your language classes.

French 464/672

Lunatics, Hysterics and Idiots: Madness in Nineteenth-Century French literature

Prof. Florence Vatan

This course 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.

French 948 (Questions de littérature)

Crossing Borders in French and Francophone: Literature and Cinema

 Prof. Nevine El Nossery

This 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 structural, literary and linguistic conventions)
  • symbolic trespasses (gender, class, race, culture, etc.)

Our discussions and readings of novels and movies will engage with critical and 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.

During the last two weeks of the seminar, we will expand our field of investigation by examining the most recent dominant discourses on the global “border crossing” predicament related to refugee’s crisis, crucial to our understanding of the place, role and impact of French and Francophone literature and cinema in the reshaping of World Culture.

We will read and watch:

  • On borders crossing: Fatou Diome, Le ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic) ; Ahmadou Kourouma, Allah n’est pas obligé (Allah is not Obliged) ; Ousmane Sembène, La Noire.. (Black Girl, film) ; Merzak Allouache, Harragas (film).
  • On genres and linguistic crossing: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Le voyeur ; Nicole Brossard, Le désert mauve (Mauve Desert) ; Agnès Varda, Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7, film)
  • On symbolic and cultural crossing: Assia Djebar, L’amour, la fantasia (Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade) ; Albert Camus, L’étranger ; Jean Genet, Les nègres (The Blacks) ; Alain Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima, my love, film); Houda Benyamina, Divines (film).

Fall 2020

French 631

Littérature française du XVIIIe siècle : Raconter la maladie, 16e-20e siècles

Prof. Anne Vila

Using the tools of both cultural history and close literary analysis, this course will examine selected interactions between literature and medicine in the 18th century—while also reaching back occasionally to the 16th and 17th centuries, and forward to the 19th and 20th centuries. Our class discussions will explore such topics as the depiction of real or “invented” diseases; the figures of the health-care provider and of the patient; the personae of the hypochondriac, the melancholic, and the suffering genius; the theme of literature as a source or remedy for illness; political metaphors of contagion and degeneration; and Enlightenment-era methods for disseminating biomedical knowledge. Our first unit/module will focus on literary representations of epidemics/ contagious outbreaks from the 16th to 20th centuries. This unit will feature a guest lecture by Professor Rick Keller (Biomedical History and Ethics, UW).

In addition to studying how French literary authors and doctors wrote about health and illness over a long historical span, FR 631 students will have the opportunity to work closely on key literary authors of the 18th and 19th centuries.

FR 631 will be offered on a “meets-with” basis with FR464, an advanced-undergraduate topics course entitled “Literature and Medicine in French-Speaking Cultures.” Graduate students enrolled in FR631 will have supplementary reading assignments, write a mid-term exam that simulates a portion of the French MA exam, and write a substantial research paper on a primary text or text of their choosing. Like their counterparts in FR464, FR631 students will give a joint oral presentation on patient documents from the 18th century; this research exercise is designed to reconstruct how particular individuals experienced and wrote about illness and its treatment. They will also serve as the official reader of a selected literary excerpt during one class meeting (a short oral exposé).

Representative primary works (literary, medical)
Marguerite de Navarre, excerpts from L’Heptaméron
Molière, Le Malade imaginaire
Voltaire, excerpts from Candide, Les Lettres philosophiques and Questions sur l’Encyclopédie
Diderot, La Religieuse; writings on fanatics and genius figures
Rousseau, excerpts from La Nouvelle Héloïse and autobiographical works
Mercier, excerpts from Tableau de Paris
Duras, Ourika
Balzac, La Peau de chagrin OR Louis Lambert
Camus, La Peste (perhaps in excerpts)
[Tentatively; Flaubert, excerpts from Madame Bovary; selected short stories by Maupassant, and poems from Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris]
Chicoyneau, Relation du 10. decembre 1720 touchant la nature, les évenemens & le traitement de la peste de Marseille
Selected articles on health and illness from the Encyclopédie
Tissot, excerpts from L’inoculation justifiée, De la santé des gens de lettres and personal correspondence (on curing melancholy)
Consultation letters sent to Dr. Samuel-Auguste Tissot, available in a searchable database at
http://tissot.unil.ch/fmi/webd#Tissot

French 639

LA LITTÉRATURE DU XVIIe SIÈCLE (I): L’ÂGE BAROQUE

Prof. Martine Debaisieux

ROMAN  Honoré d’Urfé. L’Astrée (extraits)
Charles Sorel. Histoire comique de Francion
Théophile de Viau. Première journée
Madeleine de Scudéry. Clélie (extraits)
THÉÂTRE Théophile de Viau. Pyrame et Thisbé
Corneille. L’Illusion comique; Le Cid; Polyeucte
Rotrou. Le véritable Saint Genest
POÉSIE Sélection de poèmes de Malherbe, Régnier, Viau, Saint-Amant, Tristan, La Ceppède, Voiture, etc.
Descartes. Discours de la Méthode

Ce cours porte sur la littérature de la première moitié du XVIIe siècle — la période dite « baroque ». Nous aborderons le domaine romanesque par l’étude de L’Astrée, qui témoigne de la prédilection pour l’expression de l’illusion et de la métamorphose propre à l’idéologie de l’époque. La lecture de Francion et de Première journée – oeuvres qui accordent une place privilégiée au rêve et à la folie – nous amènera à examiner les particularités du « libertinage » qui marque la pensée des premières décennies du siècle.

La variété du domaine poétique baroque sera ensuite analysée à partir de l’étude d’oeuvres lyriques, satiriques, burlesques, religieuses, et du genre précieux. Nous considérerons les réactions adverses à la doctrine de Malherbe. Les figures de rhétorique et les images privilégiées dans les poèmes seront rapprochées de certaines techniques picturales de l’époque.

L’« irrégularité » du théâtre au début du siècle ressortira de l’étude de Pyrame et Thisbé. Les tendances esthétiques de cette pièce permettront de mieux saisir l’évolution – réticente – de la dramaturgie cornélienne vers l’ordre, la mesure, et les bienséances classiques.

Les contradictions de l’époque et les traits distinctifs de la représentation baroque seront envisagés dans leur rapport avec la crise épistémologique qui suit la Renaissance. Une lecture parallèle de textes critiques (Bakhtine, Deleuze, Foucault, Genette, Kristeva, Rousset, Sarduy) éclairera les questions d’ordre idéologique et esthétique soulevés par les oeuvres au programme et nous amènera à réfléchir sur leur caractère transhistorique.

French 820 / Italian 821

College Teaching of French / Italian

Dr. Loren Eadie

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. This course will provide the foundation for success in teaching lower-level language courses, but to deepen your understanding of teaching language, literature, and cultural studies at more advanced levels, I encourage you to consider enrolling in another course such as FRE 821 in Spring 2020 or a seminar offered by the Second Language Acquisition doctoral program later in your graduate studies.

French 947

What Does It Mean to be Human in 16th and 21st century? French Perspectives

Prof. Jan Miernowski

The seminar will analyze the concept of humanness through a dialogue between early modern and contemporary authors.

It is particularly urgent to reflect on what does it mean to be human on the wake of the 20th century. The legacy of this recent past includes the memory of genocides perpetrated by the totalitarian and colonial regimes, as well as the heritage of (mostly French) anti-humanism of the 1960’-1970’ that proclaimed the conceptual obsoleteness of the human being. Nowadays, at the dawn of the new millennium, we not only strive at building artificial intelligence, but we also try to generate Artificial Life with its own, artificial consciousness. We dwell among cyborgs and engage in CRISPR-induced selection. It is therefore fair to say that “Being Human” (which was the theme of the 2020 MLA Convention) has become particularly problematic.

In our seminar, we will unpack the fundamental problems of humanness by confronting contemporary literary and philosophical texts with the canonical, and sometimes less canonical sources of early modern humanism. The point will not be to turn to European Renaissance in search for any ideological model, but to look for partners who are extremely different from us, and with whom we can engage in a dialogue. While responding to Heidegger, Peter Sloterdijk said that humanism consists in making friends through the exchange of letters, i.e. through the practice of reading and writing. By reading in parallel early modern humanists and our contemporary posthumanists, as well as by writing about them, we will may hope to forge a new humanism for our times and for the future.

 

Spring 2021

French 568

Materiality and Immateriality in sub-Saharan Africa

Prof. Vlad Dima

This course explores representations of cultural artifacts (such as football jerseys), of immaterial beings (such as ghosts), and of philosophical ideas (such as Mbembe’s Afrique-qui-vient or “black reason”) across a variety of genres and mediums. The aim is to better understand the current state of African Subjectivity within the Global South, as well as within the North-South context. We will watch a number of contemporary films, read 21st century novels, engage with philosophy, theory, music, paintings, photography, and various diegetic objects.

All reading materials required for the course will be available in the Canvas website for the course. The films will be available via streaming.

Selective films:

Jean-Pierre Bekolo, The President (2013), Miraculous Weapons (2019).

Moussa Touré, La Pirogue (2013).

Abderrahmane Sissako, Timbuktu (2014).

Mahamat Haroun Saleh, Une Saison en France (2019).

Mati Diop, Mille soleils (2013), Atlantique (2019).

Ladj Ly, Les Misérables (2019).

Selective readings (excerpts):

Amine, Laila. 2018. Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Barker, Jennifer. 2009. The Tactile Eye. Touch and the Cinematic Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Barthes, Roland. 2010. Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang.

Baudrillard, Jean. 2005. The Conspiracy of Art. Trans. Ames Hodges. New York: Semiotext(e).

Chion, Michel. 1985. Le Son au cinéma. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma.

Derrida, Jacques. 2005. On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy. Trans. Christine Irizarry. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Diome, Fatou. 2003. Le Ventre de l’Atlantique.

Geschiere, Peter. 2013. Witchcraft, Intimacy & Trust. Africa in Comparison. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Mbembe, Achille. 2013. Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée. Paris: Editions de la découverte/Poche.

—–. 2017. Critique of Black Reason. Trans. Laurent Dubois. Durham: Duke University Press.

—–. 2019. Necro-Politics. Trans. Steve Corcoran. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mudimbe, V.Y. 1998. The Invention Of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order Of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2008. Corpus. Trans. Richard A. Rand. New York: Fordham University Press.

Niang, Mame-Fatou. 2019. Identités françaises : Banlieue, féminités et universalisme. Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi.

Sarr, Felwine. 2016. Afrotopia. Paris: Editions Philippe Rey.

Soyinka, Wole. 1976. Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

French 821

Instructional & Assessment Strategies for Advanced Foreign Language Teaching

Prof. Heather Willis Allen

This seminar provides participants a forum for developing expertise in teaching advanced-level foreign language (FL) courses. The primary instructional approach emphasized is literacy-based teaching (Kern, 2000; Cope & Kalantzis, 2015). Readings, in-class discussions, and assignments address how advanced-level FL courses can be designed to simultaneously develop language 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 (MLA, 2018), reconceptualization of the notion of literacy and multiliteracies by New Literacy Studies scholars (Gee, 2012), the metaphor of meaning design (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015), implementing multiliteracies pedagogy in advanced FL courses (Byrnes, 2004), scaffolding advanced reading (Swaffar & Arens, 2005), integrating focus on form in literary-cultural courses (Polio & Zyzik, 2009) teaching writing through genre and textual borrowing (Maxim, 2009), rethinking the teaching of culture (Kearney, 2012; Kramsch,
2011), incorporating digital communication and resources in advanced literary-cultural courses (Blattner & Fiori, 2011), setting student learning outcomes and organizing course content (Graves, 2000), and assessing student learning in advanced collegiate FL courses (Kern, 2000; Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2016).

All course readings and class discussions are in English; instructional and assessment examples relate to a variety of languages. 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. Variable credit available.

French 825

Cours de Grammaire et Style, I

Prof. Martine Debaisieux

L’objectif de ce séminaire est d’enrichir votre expression écrite, tout en acquérant une compréhension plus nuancée du fonctionnement de la langue française. Vous aurez l’occasion d’approfondir votre connaissance des complexités grammaticales, d’élargir votre lexique, et de raffiner votre style au moyen d’exercices d’analyse littéraire ou d’écriture créative. Nous examinerons également des notions fondamentales de stylistique comparée (anglais-français) pour aborder la pratique de la traduction.

Ce séminaire est fondé sur un travail régulier d’écriture individuelle et collaborative. Il permettra une amélioration de votre expression écrite en termes de clarté, de nuance et d’efficacité, en particulier dans son application à l’analyse et à l’argumentation. Il vous donnera aussi l’occasion d’apprendre à mieux évaluer et réviser votre travail.

Le module « Ecriture de l’analyse littéraire » vise à vous préparer à différents objectifs de votre programme d’études ; sa composante variera selon votre niveau (analyses textuelles ; rédactions de réponses pour l’examen de M.A. ; propositions pour des « appels à contribution » ; etc.). Nos discussions nous permettront d’aborder à la fois des questions de style, de terminologie critique, et de stratégies d’organisation. Vous pourrez éventuellement (re)travailler — du point de vue de la forme – un sujet de mémoire rédigé précédemment ou un projet en préparation pour un autre cours dans le département. Pour les étudiant·e·s qui écrivent leur thèse (en anglais) une option serait d’en traduire une partie.

La pratique de l’Ecriture créative se fera de manière progressive au cours du semestre, pour mener à la composition d’un texte en prose (conte ; nouvelle ; autoportrait ; récit épistolaire ; essai ; etc.). Ce travail sera discuté régulièrement en classe, ou pendant des rencontres individuelles, et présenté oralement à la fin du semestre. Vous serez encouragé·e à discerner l’influence de la tradition littéraire (française/francophone) sur votre propre « création » et à réfléchir de manière critique à vos choix esthétiques. Dans cet objectif, au début du semestre, vous choisirez un (ou plusieurs) texte(s) modèle(s). Vous tiendrez un journal de réflexion critique sur votre expérience créative. Plusieurs séances seront consacrées à des ateliers d’écriture présentant des contraintes spécifiques (pastiches, continuation d’un récit, etc.)

French 948, Questions de littérature

Balzac and Theatricality: Intermodal Readings.

Prof. Richard Goodkin

In this seminar, we will explore the importance of theater for the narrative works of Honoré de Balzac. We will approach the question of theatricality in several complementary ways: as an organizing principle of selected works from the Comédie humaine, such as the implicit or explicit “five-act” structures of French Classical theater (Père Goriot, Le Médecin de campagne); as a deep-seated impulse of Balzac’s own literary production; as the basis for intertexts ranging from Balzac and Racine to Balzac and Shakespeare; as a means of exploring questions of theatrical genres, particularly comedy vs. tragedy; and as a pathway into questions of perspective and person, such as theatrical and dialogic exchange vs. narrative.

I am working on establishing a reading list, which will be forthcoming as soon as possible. Among the titles I am considering including are:

Eugénie Grandet

Le Père Goriot

La Duchesse de Langeais

Le Médecin de campagne

We may also read a few works of other dramatists, including Shakespeare, in particular King Lear, a crucial intertext for Père Goriot.

Fall 2019

French 467 / 567
Lucidity and Madness in Modern and Contemporary French Literature

Prof. Joshua Armstrong

This course, taught in French, is open to both graduate and undergraduate students. In it, we will examine the fine line between lucidity and madness that is often drawn when authors (and also artists and filmmakers) push the limits of expression in their search for artistic truth. Readings will include classics of the 20th century, such as the Surrealist novel Nadja by André Breton in which strange coincidences seem to reveal a hidden logic to reality, and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Le voyeur, in which we plumb the psychological depths of a paranoid protagonist. We well also read more recent highly-acclaimed works such as Marie Darrieussecq’s dystopian novel Truismes, in which a woman finds herself inexplicably transforming into a pig, Leïla Slimani’s Chanson douce, in which the perfect nanny turns out to be anything but, and Yannick Haenel’s Tiens ferme ta couronne, the humorous tale of down-on-his-luck author who contemplates the madness of our modern-day society. I am inviting Yannick Haenel to campus in the fall, so students in this course should have a chance to meet the author and discuss the novel with him. We will also draw upon Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and other thinkers as we interrogate dichotomies such as true/false, coherent/incoherent, sane/insane.

French 640
Litterature-XVIIe Siecle

Prof. Richard Goodkin

The goal of this course is to familiarize the students with a series of texts indispensable for a good knowledge of the classical period in France, which more or less corresponds to the second half of the seventeenth century. I will generally make a short presentation of each text before we begin to study it together, but the main component of the course will be comprised of group discussion of the texts. I plan to do a lot of close reading—obviously, we will not have the time to examine every line of each text, but we will certainly do detailed analysis of key passages. Our discussion will also touch upon other passages referred to in support of my own and the students’ interpretations of the works.

The written and oral work of the class will be a 90-minute exam that will provide practice for the French MA exam ; a six-page paper ; a choice between a final exam and a final paper ; and one or two oral presentations (depending on the size of the class). We will spend more than half of the semester studying plays by Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, and Molière (three plays each); we will read Lafayette’s Princesse de Clèves, considered by many to be the first modern European novel ; other writers covered will be chosen among La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Pascal, and La Fontaine. The reading list for the course will largely overlap the French M.A. exam reading list for the seventeenth-century.

The class will be conducted in French. Students from outside the Department are most welcome to attend as long as they are able to follow lectures and discussions in French and do the reading in French ; in most cases they may do their written work and oral presentations in English.

French 820
College Teaching of French and Italian

Prof. Heather Willis Allen

Intended for instructors of elementary- and intermediate-level collegiate foreign language courses, the goal of FRE 820 is to help participants understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching and related techniques for classroom instruction. Course objectives include:

1. Understanding of key theoretical concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching

2. Understanding of classroom techniques for communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching

3. Ability to apply key concepts related to communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching to designing instructional materials, lesson plans, and assessment tools

4. Increasing engagement in pedagogical discourse on collegiate foreign language teaching and learning

French 951 (Seminar) :
Poetry and Revolutions, Poetic Revolutions in Nineteenth-Century France

Prof. Jennifer Gipson

Et sur l’Académie, aïeule et douairière,

Cachant sous ses jupons les tropes effarés,

Et sur les bataillons d’alexandrins carrés,

Je fis souffler un vent révolutionnaire.

Je mis un bonnet rouge au vieux dictionnaire. (Hugo, “Réponse à un acte d’accusation”)

 Sans prendre garde à l’ouragan

Qui fouettait mes vitres fermées,

Moi, j’ai fait Émaux et Camées. (Gautier, Emaux et Camées)

Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses jours d’ambition, rêvé le miracle d’une prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s’adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience ? C’est surtout de la fréquentation des villes énormes, c’est du croisement de leurs innombrables rapports que naît cet idéal obsédant. (Baudelaire, “A Arsène Houssaye”)

 Nineteenth-Century France is born of the French Revolution and plays hosts to a series of revolutions, both political, social, technological, industrial—and political. In this class, we will study shifts in poetic production in nineteenth-century France and shifts in the notion of poetry itself, in the face of formal challenges of legal proceedings or critical censure as well as social and cultural forces of new readers and writers from an increasingly literate working class. We will explore movements to preserve poésies populaires or traditional folkloric materials, and technological forces like the mass production of daily newspapers that would shape urban space, for example Baudelaire’s prose poems, which first appeared in the daily press. From Victor Hugo, who claimed the Revolution for poetry and embodied the notion of the socially engaged poetic, to Théophile Gautier, who famously claimed to ignore the Revolution of 1848 outside of his windows, and the Parnassian notion of art for art’s sake, how do we evaluate writers’ claims to or rejections of their own (revolutionary) historical contexts as means of communicating their own poetic revolutions? Throughout we will be attentive to both la forme (form and structure) and le fond (content), how the interaction of these creates meaning, and how deviation from neo-classical models, including strict rules of versification, can be read as somewhat of a revolutionary act itself.

 While we will strive to situate texts in their cultural and historical contexts and attain an overview of this time period, this seminar, above all, focuses on close reading and the articulation of careful detailed analysis. A condensed form like poetry lends itself to close reading, which will help students to hone a practical transferable skills, essential to future course work, teaching, professional preparation, exam preparation, and scholarly writing. In view of this and in response to graduate student feedback, this course will cover many of the texts on the M.A. reading list and allow students to develop and practice the skills needed for the M.A. exam with an option for post-M.A. students to complete alternative assignments. This iteration of the seminar will also integrate some features of “blended” learning to help practice close reading in self-paced exercises.

 No materials to purchase.

 

Spring 2020

French 467 / 567

Les voix (voies) alternatives des écrivaines et cinéastes francophones

Prof. Nevine El Nossery

Ce cours vous permettra de voyager au-delà des frontières géopolitiques afin d’explorer les voies (voix) de quelques femmes écrivaines et cinéastes, provenant de divers espaces francophones, y compris l’Afrique du Nord, le Québec, les Caraïbes, et l’Afrique subsaharienne. Nous étudierons quelques concepts tirés des théories postcoloniales et féministes afin de mieux comprendre les rapports de pouvoir qui sous-tendent les questions liées à l’intersectionnalité en matière d’agentivité et de représentation genrée.

L’étude des textes littéraires vous permettront d’acquérir des outils analytiques qui développeront vos compétences de lecture et d’interprétation. Quant aux films, nous verrons comment l’image, le son, le rythme, l’espace, etc. contribuent à la création d’œuvres cinématographies innovatrices qui se démarquent du cinéma mainstream (occidental).

En bref, nous explorerons comment ces récits offrent de nouvelles manières d’ «être-au-monde», émergeant d’un locus d’énonciation spécifique, c’est-à-dire d’une perspective subalterne, et qui tente de transcender la condition postcoloniale, tout en offrant un environnement plus inclusif, «pluriversel» plutôt qu’universel.

Voici quelques exemples de romans et films à l’étude (liste provisoire):

Textes :

  • Nicole Brossard, Le désert mauve. Montréal : L’hexagone, 1994, ISBN : 2890062805.
  • Ken Bugul. La folie et la mort. Paris : Présence africaine, 2001, ISBN: 2708707175
  • Maryse Condé, Moi, Tituba sorcière…noire de Salem. Paris :Mercure de France, 1986, ISBN 2715214405.
  • Assia Djebar, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartemen Paris :Livre de Poche, 2002, ISBN: 2253068217

Films :

  • Houda Benyamina, Divines (France/Maroc, 2016)
  • Léa Pool, Emporte-moi (Québec, 1999)
  • Mounia Meddour, Papicha (Algérie, 2019)
  • Moufida Tlatli, Les Silences du palais (Tunisie, 1994)

French 569

Critical Approaches to Literature and Culture: French and Francophone Perspectives

Prof. Martine Debaisieux

An introduction to theoretical and critical thinking about literary and visual texts, meant to accompany and supplement interpretative skills. Fundamental notions of rhetoric (principles of versification) and principles of narratology designed to improve the practice of close reading in poetry, drama, prose, and cinema across time periods. Course will serve as a capstone for advanced undergraduate students, and a review of methodology and theory for incoming graduate students. 

La première partie de ce cours sera consacrée à la présentation de concepts fondamentaux pour l’étude de la poésie (figures ; versification), de la prose (narratologie), et du théâtre.  Parallèlement, nous pratiquerons les différentes techniques de l’analyse textuelle (à l’oral et à l’écrit).  Pour permettre un premier aperçu de l’apport de différents courants critiques, notre interprétation des textes au programme (du XVIe au XXe siècles) passera également par l’évaluation et la discussion de plusieurs articles qui leur sont consacrés.  Des ateliers portant sur les ressources spécifiques aux travaux de recherches sur études littéraires et culturelles dans le domaine français et francophone auront lieu à Memorial Library.

La seconde partie du semestre sera davantage axée sur le champ critique et théorique (déconstruction ; post-colonialisme ; psychanalyse ; études féministes et de genre ; sociocritique ; écocritique ; etc.).  Les étudiant·e·s auront l’occasion de bénéficier de l’expertise de plusieurs collègues du département qui viendront présenter les approches qu’ils adoptent dans leurs recherches.  L’introduction du domaine des études filmiques permettra un parallèle entre la représentation littéraire et cinématographique, en particulier par rapport au phénomène de l’adaptation.

Ce cours a pour objectif de raffiner les techniques d’analyse et d’enrichir la capacité d’interprétation des étudiant·e·s, tout en les orientant dans le choix de méthodologies adaptées à leur future spécialisation.

French 704

Littérature des XIVe et XVe siècles

Prof. Ullrich Langer

La France des XIVe et XVe siècles vit une série de crises : tout d’abord, la crise démographique et culturelle provoquée par la Peste noire qui ravage l’Europe à partir de 1347, ensuite les conflits interminables entre la maison de France et la maison de Plantagenet que nous appelons la Guerre de Cent Ans. La société en sort profondément ébranlée mais renouvelée : la littérature exprime à la fois la crise de l’état dans une vision nationale, et retrouve un nouveau champ, un empirisme psychologique et une vision sociale urbaine souvent acerbe. Nous lirons des textes représentant les enjeux rhétoriques, sociaux et psychologiques de cette époque. Les textes sont en édition bilingue, en traduction moderne, ou accompagnés d’un glossaire exhaustif. Aucune connaissance de l’ancien français ni du moyen français n’est requise. Le travail écrit comprendra plusieurs analyses relativement courtes, plutôt qu’un mémoire de recherche de fin de semestre.

Alain Chartier, Le quadrilogue invectif, éd. Florence Bouchet (Champion, 2011)

Christine de Pizan, Le livre de la cité des dames (extraits)

Charles d’Orléans, Ballades et rondeaux, éd. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler (Lettres gothiques, 1992)

François Villon, Poésies complètes, éd. Claude Thiry (Lettres gothiques, 1991)

Antoine de la Sale, Jehan de Saintré, éd. Joël Blanchard (Lettres gothiques, 1995)

Cent nouvelles nouvelles (extraits)

French 821

College Teaching of French and Italian

Prof. Heather Willis Allen

This seminar facilitates the development of expertise in teaching content courses (e.g., of culture and literature) in a foreign language (FL) and assessing student learning in such courses. This seminar takes as its fundamental concepts the notions of multiliteracies and design as defined by New Literacy Studies scholars. Course topics include:

  • identifying challenges and opportunities in U.S. collegiate FL programs today
  • developing an understanding of multiliteracies pedagogy
  • rethinking the teaching of reading and literature
  • facilitating writing development through genre
  • developing an understanding of intercultural competence
  • facilitating the development of visual and new media literacies
  • rethinking assessment of student learning in advanced collegiate FL courses
  • learning how to design an advanced collegiate FL course

The final month of FRE 821 is dedicated to each course participant designing his or her own advanced collegiate FL course syllabus and sample materials for that course with class time dedicated to workshopping and presenting work-in-progress. FRE 821 is taught in English and course participation is open to graduate students in any language department, SLA majors, and SLA minors. Variable credit is available (1 credit or 3 credits).

French 932 (Seminar – 18th Century):

Solitudes/multitudes, de Montesquieu à la Révolution

Prof. Anne Vila

Although sometimes set in opposition, the modern conditions of solitude and multitude have common origins in Enlightenment-era theorizing about human nature and the self in relation to society. The eighteenth century was marked by a deep tension between solitude and sociability, inwardness versus outward engagement. That tension found expression in multiple areas, from the novel and life-writing (genres that expanded significantly in this period) to the nascent fields of psychology, educational science, socio-political theory, and “mental” medicine. Solitude, in particular, was first medicalized in the eighteenth century: while some moralists and theologians championed its spiritual value, doctors tended to warn against solitude’s potential for inducing misanthropy, melancholy, religious enthusiasm, and other pathologies. The notion of multitudes—that is, the powers of groups or collective bodies—was also double-sided: while central to emerging aesthetic paradigms (especially in the realm of theater, and the literary movement known as sentimentalism), it was also invested with negative connotations, like the ominous meanings sometimes given to the term le peuple.

In this seminar, we will examine those questions through the study of works by Montesquieu, Diderot,Voltaire, Rousseau, Graffigny, Charrière, Mercier, and Staël (plus a few Encyclopédie articles and short excerpts from contemporary medical works).  The reading list will feature a few works from the French M.A. exam reading list for the eighteenth century. The readings and discussions will be entirely in French–but students from other departments are encouraged to enroll (and can do their written work in English). The syllabus will be organized around four main units: 1)  intellectual retreat (including its gendered aspects); 2) rival conceptions of the writer/thinker as public intellectual vs. solitary genius; 3) the perceived benefits and dangers of solitude; 4) the place of “multitudes” in the Enlightenment movement, and in notions of literary posterity.

This offering of French 932 is timed to coincide with an international symposium that I am organizing on”Solitudes/Multitudes, 18th – 21st centuries” (April 24-25, 2020) and with the campus visit of Prof. Elena Russo (Johns Hopkins University) as a Halls Visiting Scholar. Professor Russo will attend the seminar on April 20.  Students will have the opportunity to interact extensively with Prof. Russo and to engage in the seminar as active audience members.

Previous Graduate Seminars (Italian)

Fall 2021

Italian 623

Teatro

Prof. 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.

Italian 631

Italian Romanticism

Prof. 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).

Italian 821

College Teaching of Italian

Dr. 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.

Italian 951

Seminar in Italian Literature: Circulation and Reception of Dante’s Texts.

Prof. Jelena Todorovic

This course will focus on various editions of Dante’s texts in manuscript, print, and digital forms.

Spring 2022

Italian 636

Il romanzo italiano da Pirandello a Gadda (1900-1960)

Prof. Grazia Menechella

Italian 636 is a 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.

Italian 741

Il Seicento: Ribelli, libertini e ortodossi

Prof. Stefania Buccini

This course offers a survey of seventeenth-century Italian literature and examines the development of specific literary genres in the contexts of cultural and intellectual history.
The course 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.

Italian 952

Verismo

Prof. Ernesto Livorni

The course will focus on the discussion of major literary texts of Verismo, the Italian literary trend loosely corresponding to what in French is called Naturalism in a period (the second half of the nineteenth century) that may be epistemologically called the era of Positivism. Topics that will be discussed are: the poetics and ideology of Verismo; relationships with other literary trends (Romanticism, Naturalism, Scapigliatura) and arts (painting, photography, music); intersections of literary genres. Readings will include Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana, Matilde Serao, Federico De Roberto.

Fall 2020

Italian 621

Il primo Settecento

Prof. Stefania Buccini

The course will offer a survey of pre-Enlightenment Italian literature (1690-1750) and will examine the development of specific genres in the contexts of cultural and intellectual history. Special attention will be devoted to poetry, theory of poetry, philosophy of history, literary and historical methodology, history of medicine (i.e. Vico’s  Scienza Nuova, Gravina’s Della Ragion Poetica, Muratori’s Della Perfetta poesia italiana, Ramazzini’s Delle malattie degli artefici, etc.). Textual analysis will be occasionally conducted on 18th– century printed editions with the purpose of allowing the students to familiarize themselves with the typographic characteristics and oddities of antique books. Visits to the Rare Books divisions of Ebling and Memorial libraries will be scheduled in the course of the semester.

Italian 659

Dante’s Divina Commedia

Prof. Jelena Todorovic

French 820 / Italian 821

College Teaching of French / Italian

Dr. Loren Eadie

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. This course will provide the foundation for success in teaching lower-level language courses, but to deepen your understanding of teaching language, literature, and cultural studies at more advanced levels, I encourage you to consider enrolling in another course such as FRE 821 in Spring 2020 or a seminar offered by the Second Language Acquisition doctoral program later in your graduate studies.

Italian 951

Machiavelli

Prof. Kristin Phillips-Court

This course examines the major works of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) through close reading and discussion of his diverse writings in the contexts of humanism, literature, historiography and political theory. We will seek to grasp the thread of Machiavelli’s thinking across diverse texts and genres, while also evaluating the meaning, impacts, and scholarly criticism of each work.  Placing him in relation to the Classical tradition and to other writers (and some artists) in his own circle, we will remain particularly attuned to aspects of continuity and innovation within Machiavelli’s writing and political thought. Texts include Il Principe (selected chapters), Mandragola, Clizia, Belfagor, Vita di Castruccio Castracani, and selections from the Istorie fiorentine, L’arte della guerra, letters, poems, and diplomatic writings (Legazioni).

 

Spring 2021

Italian 731

AUTOBIOGRAFI E LETTORI DEL SETTECENTO

Prof. Stefania Buccini

This graduate course is designed to analyze eighteenth-century reading methods and techniques through a close examination of selected forms of life writing (autobiographies and memoirs) composed between 1728 and 1803, two important chronological markers that respectively reflect the publication of Giambattista Vico’s Vita and Vittorio Alfieri’s Vita. Reading practices will be revisited in a historical and cultural context and special focus will be placed on how specific authors followed, challenged and, occasionally, subverted contemporary canons. The contribution of graduate students will consist of an oral presentation and a research paper.

Italian 952

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI

Prof. Patrick Rumble

This graduate seminar will focus on the cinematic, literary, and theoretical contributions of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975).

Fall 2019

Italian 631

Giovanni Boccaccio: Author, Editor, Commentator, Scribe

Prof. Jelena Todorovic

This course will examine the complex intellectual activity of Giovanni Boccaccio, normally thought of merely as the author of the Decamerone. But Boccaccio’s role in the history of the Italian—and European—literature and culture was much broader and more extensive. We will study not only his texts (Decamerone, Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, Trattatello in laude di Dante, Esposizioni), but also his scribal and editorial activities, which reveal a strong and engaged figure of an intellectual creating a new literary and cultural tradition.

French 820

College Teaching of French and Italian

Prof. Heather Willis Allen

Dr. Loren Eadie

Intended for instructors of elementary- and intermediate-level collegiate foreign language courses, the goal of FRE 820 is to help participants understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching and related techniques for classroom instruction. Course objectives include:

  1. Understanding of key theoretical concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching
  2. Understanding of classroom techniques for communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching
  3. Ability to apply key concepts related to communicative, literacy-oriented language teaching to designing instructional materials, lesson plans, and assessment tools
  4. Increasing engagement in pedagogical discourse on collegiate foreign language teaching and learning

Italian 951

The Concept of “Madre Patria” from Risorgimento to the Aftermath of World War II.

Prof. Ernesto Livorni

The course will explore the birth and development of the notion of “madre patria” in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature. Besides relying on political and historical documents of the period, the course will discuss the notion according to theoretical venues that span from psychology and psychoanalysis to philosophy and hermeneutics. The course will focus on the intersection of the private figure of the mother and her surrogates with the public and political notion of “motherland.” Authors may include, among others: Foscolo, Tommaseo, De Amicis, Pascoli, D’Annunzio, Marinetti, Ungaretti, Saba, Montale, Moravia, Morante, Viganò, Pasolini, Bevilacqua.

 

Spring 2020

Italian 450

Theater Workshop: From Text to Stage

Prof. Stefania Buccini

Structured as a workshop, this course will focus on the most beautiful plays of Carlo Goldoni, the father of Italian comedy. It will provide the students with a unique opportunity to put their language skills in motion by conversing, translating and writing in a fun and relaxing atmosphere, which will foster active discussion and informal acting. Course requirements will include take-home exams, oral and written assignments in or outside class time, and a final creative project. The course will be conducted in Italian.

 

Italian 460

“History of Italian Cinema”.

Prof. Patrick Rumble

This course offers a 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 Sice, 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.

French 821

College Teaching of French and Italian

Prof. Heather Willis Allen

This seminar facilitates the development of expertise in teaching content courses (e.g., of culture and literature) in a foreign language (FL) and assessing student learning in such courses. This seminar takes as its fundamental concepts the notions of multiliteracies and design as defined by New Literacy Studies scholars. Course topics include:

  • identifying challenges and opportunities in U.S. collegiate FL programs today
  • developing an understanding of multiliteracies pedagogy
  • rethinking the teaching of reading and literature
  • facilitating writing development through genre
  • developing an understanding of intercultural competence
  • facilitating the development of visual and new media literacies
  • rethinking assessment of student learning in advanced collegiate FL courses
  • learning how to design an advanced collegiate FL course

The final month of FRE 821 is dedicated to each course participant designing his or her own advanced collegiate FL course syllabus and sample materials for that course with class time dedicated to workshopping and presenting work-in-progress. FRE 821 is taught in English and course participation is open to graduate students in any language department, SLA majors, and SLA minors. Variable credit is available (1 credit or 3 credits).

 

Italian 952

Topic: “L’estetica dell’abbandono: mafia, corruzione e degrado ambientale nella letteratura contemporanea.”

Prof. Grazia Menechella

In this seminar we will investigate mafia, political corruption and environmental degradation as represented in contemporary Italian literature. Among the authors included: Sciascia, Pasolini, Calvino, Balestrini, Vinci, Ballestra.