Language Program:
- 101 French I
- 102 French II
- 203 French III
- 204 Text, Film and Media
Advanced Courses:
- 305 Advanced Expression
- 306 Intro to Literary Analysis
- 407 Francophone Studies
- 408 French Cultural Studies
- 409 Cinema
- 410 Art and Ideas in French Culture
- 411 Challenges of Modernity and Literature
- 412 Text and Identity
- 413 Studies in Theory
- 414 Studies in Genre
- 415 Literary Periods and Movements
First-Year Courses
Topics Courses:
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Courses
ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Elementary and Intermediate Courses
101 FRENCH I
Emphasizing the active use of the language,
this course is conducted entirely in French and develops the fundamental
skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It includes
an introduction to the cultural background of France and the Francophone
world. Class sessions are supplemented by weekly small group meetings
with a French graduate assistant. For students with no previous
work in French. Every fall. (4 credits)
Conducted entirely in French, this course continues
the development of the skills of listening, speaking, reading,
and writing, with increasing emphasis on the practice of reading
and writing. It includes introduction to the cultural background
of France and the Francophone world. Class sessions are supplemented
by weekly small group meetings with a French graduate assistant.
Prerequisite: French 101 with a grade of C– or better, placement
test or permission of instructor. Every semester. (4 credits).
Conducted entirely in French, the aim of this
course is to bring students to a point where they can use French
for communication, both oral and written. At the end of this course
students should be able to read appropriate authentic materials,
write short papers in French and communicate with a native speaker.
It consolidates and builds competencies in listening, speaking,
reading and writing and includes study of the cultural background
of France and the Francophone world. Class sessions are supplemented
by weekly small group meetings with a French graduate assistant.
Prerequisite: French 102 or 111 with a grade of C– or better,
placement test or permission of instructor. Every semester. (4
credits)
This course presents a study of the contemporary
language and culture of France and the Francophone world through
authentic materials including the French press, the internet,
television, literature and film. It is conducted entirely in French.
At the end of this course students should have attained a more
sophisticated level of communication in French, the ability to
use their skills in French for a variety of purposes including
research in other disciplines, and a full appreciation of the
intellectual challenge of learning a foreign language and its
cultures. Prerequisite: French 203 with a grade of C– or
better, placement test or permission of instructor. Every semester.
(4 credits)
Third Year Courses
305
ADVANCED EXPRESSION: COMMUNICATION TOOLS
This course is an intensive training in oral
and written expression. Students will develop advanced communication
tools which will give them the opportunity to explore topics in
French and francophone media and cultures (press, news broadcast,
films, short literary texts).Class sessions are supplemented by
weekly small group meetings with French assistants and small conversation
groups with Francophone tutors. Prerequisite: French 204, placement
test or permission of instructor. Every semester. (4 credits)
306
INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY ANALYSIS
This course is designed to develop the necessary
skills for interpreting literature and for writing effectively
in French. Students learn to do a close reading and analysis of
a variety of literary works and to compose critical essays. The
course also includes a study of selected grammatical patterns
and stylistic techniques. Prerequisite: French 204 or placement
test or permission of instructor. Every semester. (4 credits)
Fourth Year Courses
This course category encompasses the study
of cultures and literatures from the French-speaking regions and
countries outside of France. It includes such courses as:
The French-speaking
Caribbean islands: Haïti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique.
This course examines the cultural particularities
of the region (music, religion, arts, society, economics, history)
and studies the historical differences between the three islands
as well as their specific relationship to France. Prerequisite:
French 306 or permission of the instructor. This course counts
towards a minor concentration in Latin American studies. Alternate
years. (4 credits)
Voix du Nord.
This course studies the contemporary literature
of Belgium and Quebec. It ties literary texts to their cultural
and historical context, especially to the problematics of language
and identity as they are expressed through various media. Alternate
years. (4 credits)
408
FRENCH CULTURAL STUDIES
A survey of cultural issues in France. The
themes studied in this course include definitions of nation, culture,
tradition and modernity and change in social, cultural, aesthetic
and intellectual structures as well as immigration and diversity
in France. Prerequisite: a 300 level course, placement test, or
permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits)
It includes such courses as:
Literature and
Cinema of Immigration
Literature and Cinema of Immigration explores
the diversity of France through its immigrant population. After
studying and discussing the history and composition of immigration
in France, we will look at cultural productions, especially literature,
films, music and art as well as documentation about contemporary
issues in French society associated with immigration. We will
look at various cities in France (Marseilles, Lyon, and Paris
as well as their suburbs), and contextualize the current situation
regarding French and European laws. We will take into account
gender, class, and race issues as well as language issues.
This category introduces students to French
or Francophone cinema, dealing with history, theory, and condition
of production of this media. Prerequisite: a 300 level course
or permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits)
It includes such courses as:
West and Equatorial
African Cinema.
Introduction to the history and socio-economic
contexts of African cinema (colonial and post-colonial). The focus
is on the rich corpus of films by African directors from Senegal,
Mali, Mauritania, Cameroon and Congo, and on theoretical and critical
writings about films and authors. Prerequisite: a 300 level course
or permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits)
French cinema.
A survey of French cinema from the thirties
to the present. The course examines the style and themes in French
cinema from Realism to Nouvelle Vague to Post-Modernism. The course
is conducted in English with the possibility of receiving credit
for a concentration in French if the reading and writing is done
in French. Prerequisite for French credit: a 300 level course
or permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits)
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French and
African Cinema in Dialogue.
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This course has for objective to introduce
students to French and African Cinema. Through the prism of
colonial cinema and the intimate relationship between colonization
and cinema as medium we will establish connections between various
well-known French and African filmmakers such as Jean Rouch,
René Vautier, Jean-Luc Godard (Swiss), Chris Marker,
Alain Resnais, Ousmane Sembene, Djibril Diop Mambety, Safi Faye,
Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Med Hondo, and Trinh-Minh-Ha. How were African
cultures represented in French film before the new Wave and
the Independences of the francophone African countries? How
did French filmmakers of the New Wave respond to the emergence
of African Cinema? And how do African filmmakers pioneer in
film techniques and content while dialoguing and commenting
on French (as well as US and world) cinema? Students should
come out of this course with a good understanding of the French
and African cinema industries, main trends in cinema since the
1890s up to now, and a good understanding of colonial/postcolonial
cinema
410
ART AND IDEAS IN FRENCH CULTURE (Same as Humanities and Media
and Cultural Studies 410)
The course studies the arts of France (art,
architecture, music and literature) in their historical and intellectual
settings. Topics and historical periods studied vary by semester.
In Fall 2004 the emphasis is on the visual arts of contemporary
France. Prerequisite: a 300 level course or permission of instructor.
Alternate years. (4 credits)
It includes such courses as:
- Female Artistic Expression
and Feminism in France
- This course will trace both women’s writing and artistic
expression from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 21st
century. What does it mean to be a female writer, artist, or
filmmaker in different historical and cultural moments? What
is the reception of these writers at the time when they are
writing? How do the artists combat or affirm social expectations
of gender? We will analyze how female artists have denied or
affirmed a sexual specificity in their writing or art. Do they
incorporate in their work a reflection on what it means to be
both a woman and an artist or writer? The goal of this course
is not to name an essential core in this body of women’s
artistic expression, but to analyze how these female authors
reflect their lived experience as women in their writing and
through their art. How do these expressions of female subjectivity
change over time? Students will deepen their literary analysis,
gain a historical and cultural understanding surrounding major
literary, political, artistic, and cinematic developments, and
become familiar with major French authors and artists. We will
also study the development of feminism in France and consider
points of intersection between feminist theory and female artistic
expression.
411
CHALLENGES OF MODERNITY AND LITERATURE (Same as Humanities and
Media and Cultural Studies 411)
Introduction to the study and the context of
French literary and artistic masterpieces from the 12th to the
21st century, with special focus on their ties with contemporary
"mentalités" and events. The significance of specific works
for audiences of their time will be extended to the study of their
influence in subsequent centuries, including the 20th/21st. Particular
attention will be paid also to our own representation and use
of these past centuries in diverse contemporary media, such as
films and advertisements. The thematic emphasis of the class,
as well as the historical period, may vary by semester. Prerequisite:
French 306 or permission of the instructor. Alternate years. (4
credits)
It includes such courses as:
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Violence et
Littérature
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Based on literary texts from the Middle Ages
through the twenty-first century, the course studies how French
and Francophone literatures describe and reflect violence in
a world constantly in evolution through social, cultural, economical
and political upheavals. It also considers the many forms violence
can take, involving class, gender, language, race, religion,
colonization, immigration, etc. The readings include well known
classics from different centuries, but also contemporary writers
from different origins: Algeria, Belgium, France and Québec.
The course will develop the historical and cultural backgrounds
specific to each author. It will look also at violence through
the critical lens of different philosophers from a range of
periods including our own, i.e. Girard, Foucault, Arendt, Fanon,
and Scarry. Films from different regions and historical periods
will add to the diversity of perspectives and interpretations.
This category of courses introduces students
to texts (including films) that engage students to focus on questions
of identity(national, sexual, racial, and class identity) through
the study of literature and film. Prerequisite: a 300 level course
or permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits)
It includes such courses as:
Culture and Identity Through French, African,
Caribbean, and North American Cinema
Identity, Difference, and Pluralism in Contemporary
France
Women Writing in French
This category of courses includes courses that
prepare students to read textual and/or visual materials through
various theoretical lenses. Courses include Feminist French Theory
(offered in 2001 as a topics course), French Intellectuals in/and
the World (cross-listed with Humanities and Cultural Studies),
or courses dealing with particular literary, cultural, or critical
theories. Prerequisite: French 306 when courses are offered in
French or permission of the instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits)
Courses on the novel, theatre, poetry, and
short stories, are offered in this category. Courses may be surveys
of the development of a genre across the centuries or they may
focus on a particular period. A course on 17th-century French
Theatre was last offered in Spring 2003. Prerequisite: French
306 or permission of the instructor. Offered occasionally. (4
credits)
415
LITERARY PERIODS AND MOVEMENTS
This course category encompasses the study
of literature in various literary periods and/or movements. Such
courses alternate every year and include:
The 17th Century
Classicism: Forerunners, Devotees and Deviants
This course traces the literary and philosophical
works that move France from the age of Versailles to the Revolution
and the Terror at the end of the eighteenth century. Topics include
the relationship between the individual and society, the rise
of print culture and the novel, the philosophes and the salonnières,
tolerance, atheism, libertines, the epistolary novel, and the
Revolution. Readings include works by Prévost, Rousseau,
Laclos, Diderot, Riccoboni, Graffigny, Voltaire, and Marivaux.
Prerequisite: French 306 or permission of instructor. Alternate
years. (4 credits)
Literature and Culture of the Enlightenment
This course traces the literary and philosophical
works that move France from the age of Versailles to the Revolution
and the Terror at the end of the eighteenth century. Topics include
the relationship between the individual and society, the rise
of print culture and the novel, the philosophes and the salonnières,
tolerance, atheism, libertines, the epistolary novel, and the
Revolution. Readings include works by Prévost, Rousseau,
Laclos, Diderot, Riccoboni, Graffigny, Voltaire, and Marivaux.
Prerequisite: French 306 or permission of instructor. Alternate
years. (4 credits)
Nineteenth Century
Literature
This course examines the prominent literary
genres of the century, most importantly the novel, but also poetry
and drama. These are studied in conjunction with the cultural
and esthetic movements in which they were produced: romanticism,
realism, naturalism, symbolism, and decadence. Novelists studied
may include Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Sand, Maupassant,
Zola, and Huysmans. Poets may include Musset, Vigny, Lamartine,
Hugo, Desbordes-Valmore, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé,
and Rimbaud. Playwrights may include Hugo, Musset, Feydeau, and
Jarry. Prerequisite: French 306 or permission of instructor. Alternate
years. (4 credits)
Twentieth Century
Literature
Representative texts and cultural movements
from the twentieth century are presented with their cultural background.
Topics studied include Surrealism, Existentialism, the nouveau
roman, the poetry of Négritude, and the works of major
authors (Marcel Proust, André Gide, Jean Anouilh, Colette,
Jean-Paul Sartre, Léopold Sedar Senghor, Nathalie Sarraute,
Jean Genêt, Albert Camus, among others) and contemporary
male and female authors from France and French-speaking cultures
(Calixthe Beyala, Leïla Sebbar, Annie Ernaux, Michel Tournier,
Nancy Huston). Prerequisite: French 306 or permission of the instructor.
Alternate years. (4 credits)
It includes such courses as:
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Culture
and Identity: Children and Youth in Film
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The course focuses on comparative cinematographic
representations of national, colonial and post-colonial,
racial, religious, gender, and sexual identity through a
variety of films portraying internal and external conflicts
affecting children and youth. Most films are selected from
a corpus made of French and Francophone cinema with a few
exceptions.
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Literary Seductions
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In this course we will trace the evolution
and meanderings of literary Don Juans. We will begin with
the eighteenth–century libertines, whose seductions
were strategic, ritualistic, and decidedly aristocratic.
In particular, we will discuss the debates that emerged
with the publication of libertine novels: did they serve
as immoral instruction manuals for world–be seducers
or, on the other hand, were they cautionary tales, unveiling
the libertine’s strategies so women could be armed
against their advances?
It includes such courses as:
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394: La civilisation
française en évolution from Lascaux to 1789
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This course La civilisation française
en évolution from Lascaux to 1789 offers non-French students
the possibility to acquaint the fundamental notions that form
the basis of the bagage culturel that their French counterparts
would have. The goal makes explicit those everyday aspects of
life that are truly second nature to the individual and to which
he or she rarely gives much thought.
-
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The class will open with a Panorama de la
France. This preliminary section provides a brief and schematic
overview of France, including descriptions of basic geographical
features and socioplitical structures, a listing of significant
historical milestones and maps of France and the Francophone
world. The body of the class consists of six dossiers, each
treating a particular aspect of French culture: Dossier un:
la présence du passé describes examples of the
physical manifestations of French History that provide constant
reminders to the French of their rich and varied civilization.
Dossier deux: quelques personnages clés is composed of
a series of portraits of personalities that the French learn,
from the early age, to identify as key figures who played pivotal
roles in the creation of their culture. Dossier trois: de la
monarchie à la République traces the evolution
of political institutions in France from the beginnings of the
monarchy and the establishment of the Ancien Régime through
the death of that system and the progressive maturation of republican
ideals. Dossier quatre: La société describes the
development of social structures, including the changing role
of women in France, from the simplistic and hierarchical society
of the Middle Ages to the complex and shifting social situation
of the modern world. Dossier cinq: les mouvements et les idées
provides a scketch of key philosophical movements and intellectual
concepts as they evolved. Dossier six; les mouvements littéraires
et arttstiques offers an overview of French cultural life in
all its diversity, focusing on pivotal authors, artist and works.
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394: La Culture
française contemporaine
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This course addresses issues in modern and
contemporary France. It will include some review of important
historical events and their consequences for French society,
in particular WWII and the French-Algerian war. Contemporary
issues will include French multiculturalism, major current cultural
events and trends, the relationship between France and the European
community, and its current relationships with the United States.
Materials include the use of various media (newspapers, films,
video, TVnews, radio).
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394: French
Culture from the Revolution to WWII
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This course seeks to impart to the non-French
student the fundamental notions that form the basis of the "baggage
culturel" that his or her French counterpart would have.
What historical events and figures, what cultural movements
would young, educated French people most likely know something
about? What would their attitudes be toward these social and
cultural phenomena?
-
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This course will introduce students to various
social, economical and intellectual movements from the end of
the French Revolution to the end of World War II (1945). We
will divide these periods into logical categories; important
historic personalities, key political development, attitude-shaping
philosophical movements, and significant artistic trends. The
book we will use for this class contain six themes. Each these
will trace the cultural manifestation in question through readings,
writings of journals, discussions, and essays from major periods
of French history after 1789. Authentic readings will reinforce
factual presentations from a wide variety of sources, both historical
and modern. Themes culminate with a section of "activités
d'expansion, repères culturels," and discussions
of movies and web sites. Students will visit the Minneapolis
Institute of Art and the Walker Art Center to examine paintings
and sculptures relevant to the period.
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394: Creative
Writing and Translation
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We will examine pieces of literature in English
and French and analyze the different modes of expression, the
various styles and compare their styles. Theoretical material
will enable students to determine stylistic changes geared to
specific contexts. At the seam time, exercises will concentrate
on translation from English to French and French to English.
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The books we are using progress from specific
parts of speech to general and complex questions concerning
the order of the words (ordre des mots) and la mise en relief.
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With the use of books, journals, newspapers
etc...we will write in journals twice a week to achieve clarity
and elegance in written French examining literary (langue littéraire),
colloquial (langue familière), and formal French (langue
soignée des gen cultivés). In addition to regular
correction of journals, 4 papers will be written and rewritten
after advice and suggestions of the content (introduction, conclusion,
presentation of arguments), vocabulary, stylistic and grammatical
errors.
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Students will translate 4 short genres (literary,
journalistic, theater and conversation pieces).
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- 494: Représentations de
l’Afrique dans les littératures française
et francophones
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In this course, we will use a variety of
modes and genres (ethnological travel accounts, poetry, novels,
essays, films, etc.) to explore various representations of Africa
and Africans through the notion of race. We will first examine
how the notion of race in French literature, particularly in
hamitic myth, served to juxtapose and contrast African cultures
and Africans with the superior and civilized western world.
Then, we will analyze African francophone texts that rejected
the colonial discourse by anthropologists and travelers as a
way of reinterpreting (rewriting) African history. Finally,
we will discuss writings suggesting the “prise en charge”
or the appropriation of “racial theories” by Africans
through debates on citizenship, ethnic identity and democracy
and the role they played in the rise of mass violence.
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- 494: Littérature et Identité
dans les journaux de voyage et les cartes
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Maps tell us much more than merely how to
get from here to there. One of the oldest forms of human communications,
they ultimately express the many ways we attempt to understand
the world and be part of it. The explorers, their itineraries
and their diaries offer a complex view of this world too. The
class will expose the different interactions between the maps,
explorers and writers from Antiquity to present. During the
Renaissance and later on explorations, colonization also ushered
a significant challenge to Christian and Muslim accounts of
their travels. The indigenous peoples of Africas and the Americas
offered for the explorers and cartographers ways to express
their consternation or their enthusiasm.
Our class will explore the ways Egyptians and the Greeks influenced
the thought of travelers of the Middle Ages (Marco Polo, . We
will discuss the French Renaissance exploration and travel writing
(Verrazano, Cartier, Thevet, Léry, Lescarbot) read about
the influences of 17th and 18th century mapmakers through diaries
of Lapérouse, Nicollet, Bougainville, Rousseau.
-
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The 19th century will bring a lot of diaries
and maps from utopian discourse to romantic travels (Flaubert,
Mérimée, Dumont D'urville ). The study of contemporary
diaries (Ruffin, Le Clezio) and their maps of the world will
be studied through discussion and show the changing dynamics
of identity and the other in the Modern world.
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As the topic relates to France and the Francophone
world, it addresses the diverse disciplinary areas well established
in the French Department and the long term affiliation with
the humanities, media and cultural studies, and women’s
and gender studies programs.This course is an introduction to
colonial and postcolonial representations of the French territories
in the South Pacific, including French Polynesia and New Caledonia,
as well as the former French colonies of 'Indochine.' We will
examin
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- 494: De l'extrême-orient
aux antipodes: représentations francophone de l'Asie et
du Pacifique
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This course is an introduction to colonial
and postcolonial representations of the French territories in
the South Pacific, including French Polynesia and New Caledonia,
as well as the former French colonies of 'Indochine.' We will
examine the process by which the colonized territories of the
Pacific islands and South-east Asia are constructed as objects
of desire and difference for a metropolitan French public, and
link the formation of these colonialist ideologies to their
political and economic underpinnings. We will also explore the
interrogation, subversion and displacement of colonial ideology
in contemporary postcolonial francophone literature and film
by intellectuals in the Pacific and in the Indochinese diaspora.
The course will begin with a introduction to the theory of ideology
and an overview of the French colonial presence in the Asia-Pacific
region. We will then move to examine the conceptualization of
the Pacific as an 'antipodes' of Europe beginning in French
thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, i.e. as
an uncanny opposite or other characterized by its inversion
of often corrupt metropolitan social, political and religious
values and norms. This section of the course will conclude with
a survey of recent work by Kanak and Polynesian writers that
confront the realities of the troubled legacy of French colonialism
in the Pacific. The last part of the course will begin with
an examination of exoticized representations of French Indochina
that draw on a long history of European stereotypes concerning
the 'Orient.' The course will end with the study of recent work
that thematizes the conflicts experienced by the descendants
of those former Indochinese colonial subjects who immigrated
to metropolitan France. The course bibliography will include
texts and images by Rétif de la Bretonne, Pierre Loti,
Paul Gauguin, Victor Segalen, Déwé Gorodé,
Marguerite Duras, André Malraux, Linda Lê, and
Régis Wargnierdiverse array of contemporary thinkers
from Jacques Derrida to Peter Singer has sought to reevaluate
the animal/human distinction and related
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- 494: The Animal and the Human
in the French Enlightenment
- A diverse array of contemporary thinkers from Jacques Derrida
to Peter Singer has sought to reevaluate the animal/human distinction
and related topics including animal rights, but the relation between
the animal and the human also gave rise to crucial and controversial
debates during the French Enlightenment. This course will consider
the ethical, political, and aesthetic significance attributed
to the relation in literary and philosophical texts by authors
including Descartes, Rousseau, Diderot, and Sade. Themes to be
discussed include nature and "sauvagerie," language,
reason and the passions, sex and bestiality, cruelty and vivisection,
and vegetarianism.
- 494: Voies cartographiques et
littéraires/Cartographic and Literary Paths
- Through the study of maps, charts and the cross examination
of diaries, journals and novels we will explore, discuss and
examine the influence of cartographers on French and English
writings from the 12th century to the present time.
We will examine maps and illustrations, literature (Rabelais,
Ronsard, Montaigne, Moliere, Madame de Scudéry, Rousseau,Victor
Hugo, Andrée Chedid, Dominique Edde, Sophie Calle and
some contemporary movies: Amélie), discuss the necessity
of viewing maps in the context of their typographic layout,
graphic reproduction and literary import, study diaries of explorers
and how they influenced the writings of their contemporaries.
The shock of cultures, amplified by the way religious controversialists
compared one another to inhabitants of the New World, shook
Europeans’ faith in themselves – both as devout
Christians and as civilized exemplars of humanity. Perhaps more
fundamentally, the idea of considering one’s native culture
as foreign provided a fulcrum for the foundational modern conviction
that human beings can detach themselves from their contexts.
These concepts and ideas will be debated through the study of
journals, maps and literary texts of the time. We will visit
the Ford library at the University of MN and the Walker Art
Center to explore and discuss maps
- 494:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Contradiction and Modernity
- From the moment he published his First Discourse, Rousseau
has inspired both hostility and adulation, as his writings attempt
nothing less than a comprehensive project to theorize a new
modern vision of self and society. His questions and problematics
still matter (though we tend to come up with different answers):
How does society corrupt the individual? Are citizens tyrannized
by a “general will”? Is inequality a component of
the human condition? How is the self constructed and inscribed
in language? Is there such a thing as a unified self to freely
participate in the public sphere? How do we educate children
to become citizens? How are we products of sentiment and memory?
In this course we will read political, autobiographical, educational,
and sentimental works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, along with critiques
by his admirers and detractors. Guiding all our readings will
be the question of Rousseau and modernity: Was he instrumental
in the evolution of modernity? Is he more appropriately claimed
today by the cultural left or the cultural right?
- 494: Drama Workshop
- Through a selection of classical and contemporary plays, this
course will analyze the themes of language, social classes,
the absurd, agency, and an individual’s relationship to
the world and others. Students will participate in a variety
of activities in this drama workshop, including acting warm-up
exercises, close reading of texts, in-class scene performances,
and set, costume, and prop design. No previous theatre experience
necessary—just a willingness to participate! Readings
will include: Le bourgeois gentilhomme (Molière, 1670),
Le jeu de l’amour et du hasard (Marivaux, 1730), Knock,
ou, le triomphe de la médecine (Jules Romains, 1923),
Les bonnes (Jean Genet, 1947), Fin de partie (Samuel Beckett,
1957), and Le dîner de cons (Francis Veber, 1994).
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- 494:
Seduction and Betrayal: Theorizing Don Juan and Libertinage
in the ancien régime
- This course focuses on plots of seduction in the theater and
novels of seventeenth and eighteenth–century France. We
will trace the evolution and meanderings of literary Don Juans,
looking in particular at how these texts respond to or ask some
of the following questions: which shifting societal assumptions
about sexual difference and gender roles fueled seduction myths?
Did scandalous literary works serve as instruction manuals for
would–be seducers? Or were they cautionary tales enacting
the ultimate punishment and demise of libertines? Is seduction
inevitably accompanied by betrayal? Do seduction narratives
depend on the ideal of female chastity? How do knowledge and
instruction serve as seduction strategies? Primary texts will
include works by Molière, Racine, Prévost, Crébillon
fils, Diderot, and Sade. Readings of ancien régime literature
will be considered alongside twentieth–century theories
of seduction including Freud’s seduction theory, Michel
Foucault’s History of Sexuality, and Jean Baudrillard’s
notion of “cold seduction.”
- 494: Child Soldiers through Text
and Film
- The phenomenon of child soldiers has taken hold of fiction in
the recent years, as we can see in Edward Zwick’s Blood
Diamond. Various film directors and writers have chosen to give
a voice to the millions of children thrown into war against their
will in order to understand the conditions and mechanisms that
lead to their recruitment and in order to encourage the protection
of these children. In this course, we will try to consider war
stories through the eyes of child soldiers. Among other questions,
we will be guided by the following: How does the narrative voice
of a child soldier change when the mode and genre of writing changes,
for example, in novels, poetry, plays, comic books, and testimonial
narratives? What differences are there between the representations
of Violence and child soldiers in texts and films? How do texts
and films address and respond to the moral dilemma of the child
who is both victim and killer? What transforms unacceptable violence/murder
into a routine, banal, and enjoyable game/activity?
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- Texts and films will include: Erika Mann, Dix millions d’enfants
nazis, Amadou Kourouma, Allah n’est pas obligé; Emmanuel
Dongala, Johnny Chien Méchant ; Iweala Uzodinma et Alain
Mabanckou, Bêtes sans patrie; Sauvaire Jean Stéphane,
Johnny Mad Dog (film); Aduaka Newton, Ezra (film), De Maistre
Gilles, J’ai douze ans et je fais la guerre (film). We plan
to engage in discussions with some writers and ex child soldiers
through Skype
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