French Courses - Winter 2021 - Remote Instruction

All Winter 2021 courses in French will be held REMOTELY (online).

Language Courses

FRE 1-3 - Elementary French
FRE 21-23 - Intermediate French
See Placement Guide or Catalog Descriptions


Undergraduate Courses

 

FRE 108 - Modern French Culture
Prof. Jeff Fort

See catalog for description.

 

FRE 115 - Medieval French Literature/Culture
Prof. Noah Guynn

This course will offer an introduction to medieval French literature in modern French translation. Our focus will be on themes of love and marriage, faith and desire, freedom and constraint in a variety of genres: conte, lai, vie de saint, miracle, and roman. Class discussions will center on practices of storytelling and performance and the ways in which those practices were used to elicit ethical, political, and spiritual reflection. The course has two principal goals: (1) to provide a broad understanding of medieval literature in its social and cultural contexts; and (2) to improve analytical skills and expository writing. Students will submit three expository essays on assigned topics. There will also be a final exam featuring essay questions.

 

FRE 128 - French Hip-Hop and Rap Culture
Prof. Julia Simon
MWF 1210-0100P REMOTE
CRN 45279

This course traces the emergence of the French hip-hop movement and especially rap. We will read cultural and historical analyses and will study songs from the early 1980s through to today. We will study the banlieue and sexual, racial and ethnic identities as they are reflected in hip-hop culture (rap, DJing, dance, style). Because we will be analyzing sound performance, we will also work on French pronunciation and especially prosody.

 

FRE 161 : Introduction à la linguistique française
Prof. Eric Russell
MWF 10-10:50am VIA ZOOM

This course is conceived of as the complement to FRE 109, which looks at phonetics and phonology (having taken this course is not required, though it is certainly beneficial). In FRE 161, we turn our attention to the ways meaning is made, manipulated, and interpreted within the forms (words and parts of words, expressions, etc.) and structures (sentences, utterances, etc.) of modern French. We will unpack the ways Francophones create their worlds and make sense of these worlds using language, also comparing this in many cases to the ways Anglophones and speakers of other languages (e.g. Spanish, Mandarin) do similar things.

During our time together, you will get an introduction to several linguistic concepts:

- Lexicon: the form of words

- Morphology: the structure of words

- Semantics: the system of meaning

- Syntax: the shape of clauses and sentences

For each area, which is constructed as a unit within the quarter, you will learn helpful terminology, engage with language data in different ways (comparison, fact finding, problem sets), and explore language questions (des problèmes langagiers). This is not a prescriptive course – the goal is not that you emerge with a perfect or flawless French (whatever that might mean). While you will continue to progress in written/oral fluency, you will come to better understand how French works as a coherent system.

By the end of the quarter, you will have understood:

- Basic principles of linguistic description and interpretation: in other words, what counts as a linguistic approach to language.

- Core linguistic terminology applicable to the four core areas of the course: how to talk about language with more precision and rigor.

- Key concepts pertaining to lexicography, morphology, semantics, and syntax: how to understand the “inner workings” of language

By the end of the quarter, you will be able to:

- Describe the vocabulary of French, including different forms and their relations

- Describe and illustrate how words take different shape for different uses and in different contexts

- Describe semantic regularities, drawing comparisons to similar data in English [and perhaps another language you speak]

- Provide a basic analysis of French clauses and sentences, using appropriate terminology and models.


Graduate Courses

 

FRE 212 + COM 210 (cross-listed)
Prof. Noah Guynn

According to philosopher Simon Critchley, “Jokes tear holes in our usual predictions about the empirical world. We might say that humor is produced by a disjunction between the way things are and the way they are represented in the joke, between expectation and actuality. Humor defeats our expectations by producing a novel actuality, by changing the situation in which we find ourselves.” This course will explore the relevance of Critchley’s insight for the study of medieval and early modern comedy, including a range of narrative and theatrical genres. We will focus our attention on how these texts use humor to tear holes in the world, begging questions about what is real, how reality has been constructed for us, and how it might change in response to our laughter. We will do our best not to forget that laughter is a pleasurable, bodily experience, one that is fundamentally at odds with philosophical explanation. That said, we will regularly supplement our literary readings with theoretical expositions on laughter and the body, including key works of critical theory, political anthropology, and feminist and queer studies. Of particular interest will be: (a) the problem of subalterns as the butt of jokes, and (b) the ways in which subaltern characters respond to being targeted. As we will find, the response often involves turning a joke on its head, tearing holes in reality, and imagining “a novel actuality” in which subordination is neither natural nor necessary nor justified.

German 291/SPA 291/FRE 291
Prof. Carlee Arnett

This course will provide an overview of the field of second language acquisition (SLA) as well as the approaches to university-level foreign language instruction in the United States with an eye to highlighting the theoretical notions underlying current trends in classroom practices across commonly taught foreign languages. Course objectives are the following: (1) to acquaint students with issues and research in foreign language teaching; (2) to show ways of using that research to achieve more effective classroom instruction; (3) to develop students’ skills in evaluating teaching performance and instructional materials; and (4) to prepare students for continued professional development.

Texts: Brandl, Klaus. 2008. Communicative Language Teaching. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Kramsch, Claire and Lihau Zhang. 2018. The Multilingual Instructor. Oxford: Oxford UP.