Recent Graduate Seminars

Recent Graduate Seminars (French)

Fall 2024

French 820

College Teaching of French

Prof. Heather Allen

French 820 is designed to help elementary- and intermediate-level language instructors understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented teaching. Readings, reflections, class discussions and activities, and course assessments seek to integrate theoretical and practical elements of language teaching and to facilitate course participants becoming more confident in designing instructional materials.

French 947

“History and Nature in Premodernity, Modernity, and Nonmodernity”

Prof. Jan Miernowski

The seminar will explore the mutual relationship between the concept of Nature and the concept of History in premodern, modern, and nonmodern French literatures and cultures.

The leading research questions are:

To what extent are Nature and History irreconcilable and to what extent are they indistinguishable?
Does History follow a natural flow and is Nature shaped by the historical becoming?

From the premodern point of view, the above questions imply the confrontation between the perennity of nature and the vicissitudes of human fortune. From the modern point of view, they imply the contrast between beauty and evil. From the nonmodern point of view they imply the hybridization of ecology and politics. All these three points of view will be given equal attention and put into dialogue throughout the semester.

The readings will mainly focus on four authors representing the three moments of French literary and cultural history: premodernity (up to the peak of the Renaissance in the middle of the 16^th century); modernity (between the end of the 16^th century and the middle of the 20^th century); and nonmodernity (in the 21^st century). These three moments of French literary and cultural history will be represented by Pierre de Ronsard (premodernity), Michel de Montaigne and Albert Camus (modernity), and Bruno Latour (nonmodernity). By reading extensive fragments of these authors’ works, we ill grasp their original poetics and their specific philosophical approaches.

The seminar will meet once a week for two hours. We will work on texts that will be assigned in advance, along with indications regarding the issues to be considered while preparing for the seminar discussion. Each student will conduct a semester-long research project, hopefully resulting in a conference paper and/or a publishable article. Co-authored projects are possible. During the semester short written and oral exercises will help students advance toward their specific academic goals such an MA exam/thesis or prelims.

The seminar discussion will be conducted in English unless everybody comes from the French graduate program, in which case the seminar discussion will be conducted in French. The texts will be read in the original language, but I would like to accommodate students from outside of the French graduate program by allowing them to do their readings in translation (English, Italian, etc.). Graduate Students in French may satisfy their requirements in the Middle Ages-16^th-17th c. or in the Francophone-20^th-21^st c. areas.

French 948

“Les Visages du rire”

Prof. Florence Vatan

Qu’est-ce que le rire? Pourquoi rit-on? Comment rit-on? Peut-on rire de tout? À l’appui d’exemples empruntés pour l’essentiel au XIXe siècle (Balzac, Hugo, Daumier, Grandville, Gautier, Flaubert, Sand, Maupassant, Rimbaud, Jarry), nous examinerons diverses facettes du rire, du grotesque au mot d’esprit en passant par la satire, la parodie, la caricature, l’humour, l’ironie, le vaudeville, le burlesque ou le non-sens. Le séminaire sera également l’occasion d’explorer des textes théoriques, anciens ou plus récents, sur le comique et sur le rire, parmi lesquels des textes de Baudelaire, Bergson, Freud, Plessner et Bakhtine.

Fall 2023

French 820 / Italian 821

College Teaching of French / Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language

Prof. Heather Willis and Dr. Loren Eadie

French 820 / Italian 821 is designed to help elementary- and intermediate-level language instructors understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented teaching. Readings, reflections, class discussions and activities, and course assessments seek to integrate theoretical and practical elements of language teaching and to facilitate course participants becoming more confident in designing instructional materials.

French 947

“Littérature francophone ou Littérature-Monde?”

Prof. Nevine El Nossery

Ce séminaire étudie les conditions socio-culturelles ainsi que les enjeux politiques liés au monde francophone. Nous explorerons ensemble les différentes approches qui peuvent offrir des champs de recherche stimulante quant à l’étude des œuvres aussi bien littéraires que cinématographiques, provenant de l’Afrique du Nord, l’Afrique subsaharienne, les Antilles, ainsi que le Québec. Dans un contexte où l’on parle de « la mort de la littérature francophone » (Le Bris et Rouaud), où le postcoloniale reste un terme toujours opérant (après plus de soixante ans de décolonisation) et où les frontières tendent à s’effacer et s’ouvrir au transnational, il est plutôt question de littératures francophones postcoloniales au pluriel (ou de Littérature-Monde ?), profondément marquées par l’entre-deux, l’hybridité, la créolisation et le nomadisme. Des concepts théoriques et critiques seront examinés, tels ceux d’Appadurai, Ashcroft, Bhabha, Blanchard, Casanova, Césaire, Deleuze et Guattari, Fanon, Glissant, Mbembe, Moura, et Rushdie. A titre illustratif, voici quelques écrivain.e.s au programme : Azouz Begag, Maryse Condé, Ananda Devi, Ahmadou Kourouma, Dany Laferrière, Leïla Sebbar, et Michel Tremblay. Les films d’Abdellatif Kechiche, Abderrahmane Sissako et Assia Djebar seront aussi étudiés. Ce séminaire abordera ces concepts et pratiques artistiques, tout en essayant de répondre à ces questions, entre autres:
• Comment les œuvres francophones déconstruisent-elles les discours nationaux dominants pour en créer d’autres alternatives?
• Considérée comme facteur important d’intégration, la langue fonctionne toujours comme un site ambivalent où les subjectivités et les trajectoires sont remodelées. Quelles sont les politiques langagières liées à la Francophonie?
• Dans quelle mesure les questions de diffusion, de circulation et de réception sont-elles pertinentes pour les productions culturelles francophones?
• Quels sont les discours dominants les plus récents sur la race, le genre, la classe et l’ethnicité, et qui sont cruciaux pour comprendre la place, le rôle et l’impact de la littérature et de la culture francophones dans la production culturelle mondiale?
• A différents niveaux – esthétique, ontologique, social ou idéologique, qu’est-ce qu’on perd et ce qu’on gagne à travers tout ce processus?

French 948

“Identity and Collectivity in 16th- and 21st-century French Literature and Culture”

Prof. Jan Miernowski

“We the people…”: modern democracy – be it the United States or the French Republic – aspires to embody an imagined and hopefully all-encompassing collectivity. A similar ambition permeated premodern Christianity, which, according to the meaning of “catholic” in Greek, was for a long time considered to be universal. Yet, in the 16^th century, the Church, imagined as the body of Christ, was torn apart by schisms and religious wars. Similarly, in the 21^st century, the body politic of the Republic is fractured by racial, ethnic, class and gender conflicts. Within such a painfully fragmented collectivity, the question of identity gains a particularly dramatic urgency. Who is the “we,” when “we” are many and when they are violently fighting with each other? What is the metaphysical, anthropological, and political status of identity, as it is expressed in literary forms?

The seminar will study this question through the dialogue between authors who wrote fiction, drama, and essays during the “long” 16^th-century and in our current, “short” 21^st -century. Such dialogue will thus bridge two distant periods: one that immediately precedes and one that immediately follows Western modernity. The relationship between identity and collectivity will be discussed from four complementary perspectives. First, Jane Bennett’s vital materialism will dialogue with the work of the 16^th-century potter and engineer, Bernard Palissy. Second, Philippe Descola’s anthropology will be paired with the testimonies of the explorer of 16th-century Brazil, Jean de Léry and the essayist Michel de Montaigne. Third, Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative realism will be contrasted with the metaphysics underlying the fiction by Marguerite de Navarre and François Rabelais. Forth, Tristan Garcia’s political thought will shed light on 17^th-century tragedies by Pierre de Corneille and Jean Racine. The overarching argument will be provided by the work of the founder of Science and Technology Studies and the advocate of the New Climatic Regime, Bruno Latour.

The seminar will meet once a week for two hours. We will work on texts that will be assigned in advance, along with indications regarding the issues to be considered while preparing for the seminar discussion. Each student will conduct a semester-long research project hopefully resulting in a conference paper and/or a publishable article. Co-authored projects are possible. At the end of the semester, we will organize a mini-symposium, open to the public, and devoted to sharing the results of our work.

Plan:

Introduction :

September 12: « Nous » étendu : Bruno Latour, Cogitamus, 2010 (lettre 1) ; Nancy Huston, Je suis parce que nous sommes, 2020 [fragm.]

Écologie :

September 19 No class meeting [instead, students will be expected to attend Prof. Bennett’s lecture on October 5]

September 26 La vie de la matière : Jane Bennett, Vital Matter. A Political Ecology of Things, 2010 [fragm.]

October 3 La vie de la matière : Bernard Palissy, La Recepte Véritable, 1563 [fragm.] ///Conférence : Jane Bennett (Thursday, Oct. 5)

Anthropologie :

October 10 Par-delà de la nature et culture : Philippe Descola et Alessandro Pignocchi, Ethnographies des mondes à venir, 2022 (chap. 1, 2, 4, 10)

October 17 Par-delà de la nature et culture : Jean de Léry, Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, 1578 [fragm.]

October 24 Par-delà de la nature et culture : Michel de Montaigne, « Des cannibales », « Des coches »

Métaphysique :

October 31 « Nous » et son au-delà : Quentin Meillassoux, Métaphysique et fiction des mondes hors-science, 2013 [fragm.]

November 7 « Nous » et son au-delà : Marguerite de Navarre, Heptaméron, 1559 [fragm.]

November 14 « Nous » et son au-delà : François Rabelais, Quart Livre, 1552 [fragm.]

Politique :

November 21 Les découpages du « Nous » : Tristan Garcia, Nous, 2016 [fragm.] ou podcast

December 5 Les découpages du « Nous » : Corneille, Horace, 1640

December 12 Les découpages du « Nous » : Racine, Andromaque, 1667

Spring 2024

French 569

Critical Approaches to Literature and Culture: French and Francophone Perspectives

Prof. Joshua Armstrong

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. Taught in French.

French 672

Topics in Literature and Culture

Dr. Gwenola Caradec

Ce cours a pour objectif de vous faire découvrir la richesse et la complexité de la production littéraire des îles caraïbes francophones (Haïti, la Guadeloupe et la Martinique) en tenant compte de leur passé et de leurs rapports à la métropole. Nous commencerons par la période esclavagiste pour terminer sur les défis de notre époque globale actuelle. Au cours de notre parcours, une question centrale portera sur le rôle de la littérature – quel rôle peut-elle jouer pour se réapproprier un passé perdu ou renié (par exemple par l’expérience de la traite de l’esclavage) et faire face aux défis du futur (exil, globalisation) ?

French 948: Literature Questions

Theme: “Le corps, l’esprit, et le moi de Descartes à Laclos” / “Body, Mind, and Self from Descartes to Laclos”

Prof. Anne Vila

Counts toward either Area 1 (17^th) or Area 2 (18^th) breadth.

This seminar is designed to examine a basic question: what did the human body mean and do in French literature and intellectual culture in the 17^th and 18^th centuries? That is, how did this period’s literature reflect or respond to evolving philosophical models of the body, the mind-body relation, and the self? How were various literary genres deployed to stage or narrate the body as a feeling, suffering, or desiring/ desired entity? Finally, how did this period’s literature reflect or respond to contemporary debates regarding the physical determinism (or indeterminism) of gender, class, race, and alterity?

Our readings and discussions will revolve around three interrelated topics:

1–Representations of the body in 17^th- and 18^th-century French plays, novels, autobiography, and philosophical essays

2–The evolution of philosophical models of the body and the mind/body relation, from Cartesian dualism to more holistic concepts of “le physique et le moral”

3–The implications of those models for evolving notions of gender, social class, race, morality, health, normativity, and alterity

The seminar will be organized into seven thematic units of varying lengths, each featuring one or two main literary texts, sometimes accompanied by shorter texts (those will be provided in Canvas):

The body on stage, I (17th century) : Molière, Les Femmes savantes & Le Malade imaginaire
The monstrous body: Mme d’Aulnoy, “Babiole”; Diderot, La Lettre sur les aveugles (excerpts)
The body in life-writing (fiction & autobiography): Graffigny, Les Lettres d’une Péruvienne; Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (selected promenades)
The body in colonial fiction: Saint-Lambert’s Ziméo
Philosophical reflections on le physique et le moral: Voltaire, “les Oreilles du comte de Chesterfield” & “Fanatisme”; Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert
The body on stage, II (18th century): Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro; Diderot, Entretiens sur le fils naturel (excerpts) & Beaumarchais, “Essai sur le genre dramatique sérieux”
Body and mind in the libertine novel: Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (and excerpts from Sade)

To frame our literary readings, I will refer occasionally to relevant contemporary philosophical texts by Descartes, Poullain de la Barre, Pascal, La Mettrie, Condillac, Helvétius, and the Encyclopédie (short excerpts from those texts will be provided in Canvas as supplementary readings). We will also examine selected critical approaches to the main literary works in our corpus. I will provide a critical bibliography for each unit, featuring secondary articles/book chapters that focus on themes of the body, mind, selfhood, consciousness, and their interconnections.

Each student in the seminar will be expected to:

Participate actively in all seminar discussions and occasional Canvas discussion forums.
Do an oral presentation that combines close reading of a selected passage from a literary text in our corpus with a commentary on a critical article or book chapter that interprets that text. This presentation will count as one of the student’s three response papers.
Write two other response papers (2-3 pp. each).
Research and write a final paper (approximately 12 pp., plus bibliography) on a literary work from the 17th or 18th century, chosen in consultation with the professor.[1] Preparation for the final project will include an exercise that simulates the preparation of a field exam document for the French Ph.D. prelims. Students will present an abstract and short example from their final projects at a round table to be held during the final seminar meeting.

Graduate students from outside of the French MA/Ph.D. program are welcome to take this seminar if they have advanced reading knowledge and aural comprehension of French.

Required books:

Les Femmes savantes 203583418X Molière LAROUSSE 2007

Le Malade imaginaire 2035834201 Molière LAROUSSE 2007

Lettres d’une Péruvienne 9780873527774 Graffigny MLA TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS 1993

Rêveries du promeneur solitaire 2081275260 Rousseau FLAMMARION 2011

Le Rêve de d’Alembert 2080711342 Diderot POCHE 2003

Le Mariage de Figaro 2081487152 Beaumarchais FLAMMARION 2020

Les Liaisons dangereuses 2070338967 Laclos FOLIO 2006

Recommended books :

Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient 2070314545 Diderot FOLIO 200

Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel 2080711784 Diderot FLAMMARION 2005

Additional short texts will be provided as pdfs in Canvas.

[1] The selected work can either a work we’ve read for the seminar, explored in greater depth, or a work from outside our main corpus. I will provide a list of recommended supplementary texts for the final project.

Fall 2022

French 431/672

“La littérature face à la catastrophe, du XVIIIe siècle à aujourd’hui”

Prof. Anne Vila

The modern notion of catastrophe was invented in the eighteenth century, as causal interpretations of plagues and other cataclysms shifted away from the religious notion of divine punishment, toward natural and social explanations. This was also the period when the term catastrophe underwent a major semantic expansion: the term’s older, theatrical meaning as a synonym of dénouement persisted, but authors increasingly adapted it to refer to personal dramas–or to cataclysms affecting an entire society or country. The massive earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755 was a key historical catalyst for some of those shifts: Walter Benjamin would later argue that this disaster “singular and strange” deeply affected modern thought and literature from Voltaire to Kant and beyond. So, too, was the idea, popularized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that the very foundation of human society was a calamitous event. Catastrophism in this foundational era entailed both literary and philosophical responses to events perceived as unprecedented and unimaginable; and among other things, it inspired new forms of artistic representation.

Using a conceptual framework inspired by contemporary theorists (L. Boltanski, J. Baudrillard, J.-P. Dupuy, F. Walter, M. O’Dea, M-H. Huet, etc.) as well as historical thinkers, this course will explore representations of catastrophes across various genres of 18th-century French literature. In our main module, we will focus on the ways in which Enlightenment-era authors thought both within and beyond calamity and catastrophe, and the forms of writing in which they did so. Here, we will read authors such as Montesquieu, Prévost, Voltaire, Diderot, Graffigny, Mercier, Sade, and Sylvain Maréchal–author of Le Jugement dernier des rois (1793; this is a “volcano” play of the Revolutionary era). We will also examine the shadow of catastrophism that looms over the Encyclopédie, the French Enlightenment’s grand collective attempt to preserve worthwhile knowledge for future generations. Students will work in teams for this mini-module on the Encyclopédie, and follow the threads of renvois that link a particular set of Encyclopédie articles or plates. In the short final module, we will examine a couple of contemporary French and Francophone works that dwell on ruins or dramatize the unfolding of environmental and/or social disasters.

Students in FR672 will have the option of doing either a traditional final research paper or a hybrid final project that combines a pedagogical element (a course syllabus, for example) with close literary analysis on a selected work; either sort of final project can focus on the 18th century, or it can be transecular. More details on assignments will be provided on the syllabus.

Probable corpus for FR672

Montesquieu, Les Lettres persanes

Prévost, Manon Lescaut

Voltaire, Zaïre & Candide

Graffigny, Les Lettres d’une Péruvienne

Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité; Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles; Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne

Diderot, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville; selected Encyclopédie articles; excerpts from Salons

Mercier, selected chapters of Tableau de Paris & Le Nouveau Paris

Sade, “Idée sur les romans,” preface to Les Crimes de l’Amour & excerpts from La Nouvelle Justine

Maréchal, Le jugement dernier des rois , prophétie en un acte

French 750/752

Research Laboratory

Prof. Joshua Armstrong

This course is a practicum providing students with the necessary skills for success in the French MA and PhD programs as in the profession after graduation. It includes an exploration of the structure and expectations of our graduate program, including the prelim exam, the dissertation proposal, and the dissertation. It covers the basics of advanced scholarly research and prepares students for academic conferences, dissertation writing, and publishing.

Learning Outcomes:

Identify the different kinds of research tasks and projects you will have to carry out as a graduate student in our program
Distinguish and effectively locate the different kinds of scholarly resources in your field
Describe the different research fields of department faculty and begin to develop your own
Execute strategies for successfully delivering a research paper before an academic audience
Implement strategies for creating a professional research/teaching portfolio and CV
Identify the different kinds of research tasks and projects you will have to carry out as a professional in your field
Implement strategies for developing relevant and meaningful research questions
Distinguish the current state of scholarship on a given topic in your field
Develop an original scholarly contribution to a topic in your field
Design an effective teaching activity using content from your research

Note: this course is mandatory for all grad students working under the new, most recent guidelines. Students grandfathered in under the old guidelines are certainly welcome to take it, but are not obliged to. It should be taken the first time it is offered after a student has already completed one year in the program (i.e. should not be taken by incoming first-year students).

French 820 / Italian 821

College Teaching of French / Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language

Prof. Heather Willis Allen & Dr. Loren Eadie

French 820 / Italian 821is designed to help elementary- and intermediate-level language instructors understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented teaching. Readings, reflections, class discussions and activities, and course assessments seek to integrate theoretical and practical elements of language teaching and to facilitate course participants becoming more confident in designing instructional materials.

French 947

La femme chez Racine et Molière

Prof. Richard Goodkin

In this seminar, the semester will be more or less evenly divided between tragedies by Racine and comedies by Molière in which female characters figure prominently and exemplify various aspects of the psychological and theoretical issues raised by the gender identity during the French Classical period. The tentative reading list is as follow:

Racine, La Thébaïde

Racine, Andromaque

Racine, Britannicus

Racine, Bajazet

Racine, Iphigénie

Racine, Phèdre

Racine, Athalie

Molière, Les précieuses ridicules

Molière, L’École des femmes

Molière, Le Misanthrope

Molière, Tartuffe

Molière, Les Femmes savantes

The work of the course will include two papers (total length: 20 pages max.) and an oral presentation. 1-2 critical readings will accompany each work, but the pace of reading, one play per week, should be quite doable. The entire seminar will be conducted in French. Students from other departments may do their writing in English.

Spring 2023

French 821

Instructional & Assessment Strategies for Advanced Second Language Teaching

Prof. Heather Willis Allen

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. Variable credit available (1 or 3 credits).

French 947

Cartes et territoires

Prof. Joshua Armstrong

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.

French 948

Des animaux et des hommes

Prof. Florence Vatan

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.

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 13^th and the 16^th 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 16^th-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

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 19^th-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 19^th-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.

Recent Graduate Seminars (Italian)

Fall 2024

Italian 631

“Ermetismo”

Prof. Ernesto Livorni

Is modern poetry so hermetic that cannot be understood, revealed in all its meanings? Is meaning doomed to escape, the more poetic the expression of that meaning is? The course addresses such and related questions, while focusing on Italian poetry written in the first half of the twentieth century and it invites students to a comparative reading with poetry from other European literatures (especially French) as well as world poetry influential on specific poets. The main poets in question are: Umberto Saba, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo.

Italian 731

“History, Narrative, and the Poetics of Precarity in Early Modern Italian Literature (Discussion in English and Italian)”

Prof. Kristin Phillips-Court

By end of the fifteenth century humanist appreciation for the libero arbitrio (free will) seemed to portend an inestimable potential of the human spirit, capable of reordering reality through ideal forms of expression (literature, art, architecture) and human action. But if the promise of self-determination could be fulfilled, it came often at great and grave personal risk. During the tumultuous years of plague, shifting alliances, holy war, social mobility as a zero-sum-game, and various internecine conflicts, strategies for “achieving supreme felicity and preventing submission to untoward and wicked Fortune” (L.B. Alberti) ranged from “just waiting it out” (N. Machiavelli) to acquiring “all possible accomplishments” (F. Guicciardini) to producing “virtuous works” (B. Castiglione). If one was neither cardinal nor soldier, but instead a poet, the chances economic survival were slim. The poet’s need to navigate political conflict while serving another made his or her livelihood all the more precarious. Taking precarity as our topic, we shall investigate the ways in which literary texts express political, social, and personal vulnerability, foreboding, vain hopes, ambition, resignation, resentment, and similar articulations of human fragility that inhabit otherwise “ideal” poetic worlds (Ariosto), revisionist worlds (Castiglione), and “official” historical narratives (Villani, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Varchi, Vasari).

Italian 951

“Identità e scrittura nel Settecento”

Prof. Stefania Buccini

The course delves into the examination of multifaceted aspects present in autobiographical texts, spanning from Vico to Alfieri, and employing modern theories and methodologies.

Fall 2022

Italian 671

13th Century

Prof. Jelena Todorovic

Systematic study of the earliest literary texts in Italy; the rise of the love lyric among the Sicilian poets; representative narrative works. The development of the lyric from Guittoe d’Arezzo to the poets of the Dolce Stil Nuovo.
Theme: Il Duecento
IT671, Il Duecento, will offer an in-depth study of the thirteenth-century Italian poetry. In doing so, it will contextualize the origins of the Italian literature within a wider milieu of medieval Latin and Romance traditions and emphasize the importance of material culture and the necessity of its full consideration in textual criticism and interpretation of texts in general.

Italian 731

Features in Italian Literature

Prof. Kristin Phillips-Court

In-depth exploration of periods and concepts of Italian literature, from the Middle Ages to Baroque period.
Theme: Prosatori del Cinquecento (late-15th- 16th- century prose writers)
Prosatori del ‘500 (16th – c. Italian prose writers): In this course we will read and discuss some of the major works of 16th-century Italian prose fiction, historical narrative, and dialogue. Most of our time will be devoted to Bembo, Castiglione, Aretino, and Vasari — especially Castiglione. Other authors include Alberti, Ficino (De Amore), the novelists Bandello, and, time permitting, a late-Renaissance purveyor of the philosophical dialogue form, Giordano Bruno. We will seek to understand and contextualize contemporaneous genre debates and confront the difficult question of Neoplatonism’s impact on imaginative literature. Note: This class will be conducted in English if not all students come from the Italian program. (Texts are in the original Italian, but I am happy to coordinate with students who opt to read in English/French translation.)

French 820 / Italian 821

College Teaching of French / Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language

Prof. Heather Willis Allen & Dr. Loren Eadie

French 820 / Italian 821is designed to help elementary- and intermediate-level language instructors understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented teaching. Readings, reflections, class discussions and activities, and course assessments seek to integrate theoretical and practical elements of language teaching and to facilitate course participants becoming more confident in designing instructional materials.

Italian 951

Seminar “Sperimentalismi e nuove tendenze da Manganelli a Ballestra”

Prof. Grazia Menechella

2022 marks the Centennial celebration of Giorgio Manganelli’s birth. What better way to celebrate than starting the seminar discussing Giorgio Manganelli’s work? We will focus on Giorgio Manganelli (essays, fiction, and travel literature), Gruppo 63, Elio Pagliarani, Nanni Balestrini, Giulia Niccolai, Italo Calvino, Dacia Maraini, Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Aldo Nove, Simona Vinci, Gabriella Ghermandi, Silvia Ballestra, etc. We will also look closely also at journals such as Grammatica, Quindici, Baldus, La bestia.

Spring 2023

Italian 440

Seminar “Poverty, Ecology and the Arts: St. Francis of Assisi.”

Prof. Ernesto Livorni

Examination of the relevance of Francis’s teachings to contemporary reflections regarding relationships with the environment, animals and the Other. Discussion of issues related to religion, politics, bio-politics and environmental studies.

The course will consider literary and artistic works from the Middle Ages that elaborate on the figure of Francis such as the cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Paradiso XI-XII: these are the cantos in which Dante encounters St. Bonaventure who in turn talks about St. Francis and the Franciscan Order) and the medieval frescoes on Francis’ life (those by Giotto in Assisi and in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, where there are frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi as well). The course will also discuss some nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary, musical and cinematographic works on Francis’ life

Italian 460 / Communication Arts 460

Italian Film

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 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.

Italian 952

La parola e l’immagine

Prof. Kristin Phillips-Court

We will read and discuss selections from prominent Italian lyric poets of the 16th-century, including

Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492)

Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494)

Pietro Bembo (1470-1547)

Francesco Berni (1498-1535)

Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547)

Pietro Aretino (1492-1556)

Giovanni Della Casa (1503-1556)

Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554)

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

Familiarity with Virgil, Ovid, Dante, and Petrarch will be helpful.

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 18^th– 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).