French and Francophone Studies

Intermediate French I
This course is for students who have successfully completed the elementary sequence or equivalent. Students practice oral/aural skills as well as review fundamentals of French grammar. This course uses French as the principal language of instruction in the classroom. Prerequisite: FRN 102 or equivalent, placement, or permission of the instructor.

Transnational France
Diversity from 1789 to Present Day This course is an introduction to the problematic of the Other in contemporary France. The principles on which this civil society is organized are analyzed, particularly those based on the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Men. The course seeks to analyze what becomes of these principles today in the face of growing resentment against immigration and a crisis of national identity. The course begins with a short introduction to the 1789 revolution, which established the basic principles of the modern French State. Reflections on the French colonial experience in Algeria and its legacy in contemporary France serve as an introduction to the immigration question today.

Francophone Caribbean Identities
This course deals with ways in which Francophone Caribbean writers represent their society in a context of deep alienations, and how they try to reinvent themselves and their community through the diversity of their unique culture and humanity. Students improve their cultural and language skills by discussing these major topics: deconstructing colonization; the relation of self to other; memory, migrancy and the quest for identity; women in literature; French language and local language relations; writers and their imaginary homeland; Caribbean societies and the racial problem; images of society in literature (France or the French West Indies). Prerequisite: FRN 253 and one of FRN 251 or FRN 252, or permission of the instructor, or concurrently with another 250 level.