1,2. Introductory French. Mr. Conceatu, Ms Rolland. Development of speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. Intensive conversation and oral and written exercises. Pictures, videos, films, stories, and realia from francophone culture. Increased emphasis on reading and writing skills in second semester. Every year.

11. Conversation: Contemporary French Language and Culture.  Language Resident. Open to all students except native speakers. Credit for satisfactory participation in Oldenborg Center activities and two conversation classes weekly. Prerequisite: one year of college-level language study or equivalent. Cumulative, one-fourth course credit; graded P/NC. Does not satisfy the foreign-language requirement. Limited to one enrollment per semester and a cumulative total of one course credit. Each semester.

13. Advanced Conversation. Language Resident. Open to all students except native speakers. Credit for satisfactory participation in Oldenborg Center activities and two conversation classes weekly. Prerequisite: two years of college-level language study or equivalent. Cumulative, one-quarter course credit; graded P/NC. Does not satisfy the foreign-language requirement. Limited to one enrollment per semester and a cumulative total of one course credit. Each semester.

22. Intensive Introductory French: French in Everyday Life. Mr. Conceatu. Covers first-year material in a single semester. Intensive work on oral expression and comprehension, writing, and reading. Pictures, videos, films, stories, and realia from francophone culture. Prerequisite: placement examination. Fall 2008

33. Intermediate French: Introduction to French Culture. Mr. Conceatu, Ms. Rolland.  Review of basic grammar; development of speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills through films, discussion, articles and literary texts, language tables, and compositions. Prerequisite: French 2, 22. Each semester.

44. Advanced French: Contemporary French and Francophone Culture. Mr. Abecassis, Ms. Pouzet-Duzer, Ms. Waller. Discussions of films, photographs and novels from France and Francophone culture. Real-life recorded interviews, songs, poetry, and Web surfing. Development of skills for living and studying abroad. Emphasis on speaking but course content varies. Prerequisite: French 33. Each semester.

Upper-Division Courses

Prerequisites. French 44 or the equivalent is required for admission to courses numbered 101 and above. For majors, 101 is normally a prerequisite for literature classes.

Transitional Courses

101. Introduction to Literary Analysis. Mr. Abecassis, Ms. Saigal. Analysis of various literary genres and styles and analysis of paintings. Close textual readings. Introduction to some critical methods and practice in the interpretation of texts. Written and oral work. Required of majors. Prerequisite: French 44. Each semester.

102. Paris: Reality or Myth? Ms. Saigal. A study of the intellectual, artistic, and social life of Paris in the 19th and 20th centuries as portrayed in films, paintings, songs, poetry, and short literary and cultural texts. Collective computer Web project on music, painting or photography, and poetry. Authors and filmmakers include Baudelaire, Zola, Barthes, de Beauvoir, Truffaut, and Kassovitz. Prerequisite 44. Fall 2008.

103. Frenchness: May '68 - 2008. Ms. Pouzet-Duzer. Social, cultural, political and literary determinants of the notion of "Frenchness". From the famous "Events of May "68 through May 2008, the evolution and transformation of ideas about what it means to be French. Stereotypes of French identity analyzed and discussed through newspaper articles, excerpts from novels, interviews, songs and films. Prerequisite: 44. Spring  2009. Offered alternate years.

105. Cultural and Stylistic Approaches to the French Language. Ms. Rolland. A hands-on course to improve written and oral fluency using a variety of sources, including contemporary French films and popular culture. Learn slang, develop vocabulary, and improve pronunciation through role playing, translation and creative writing, as well as practical lessons for studying abroad. . Prerequisite: 44. Every semester..

110. Contemporary French Film. Ms. Saigal. A study of the political, psychological and cultural aspects as well as the role of men and women in films. Emphasis on oral and written expression through discussion and essays. Filmmakers include Truffaut, Godard, Poirier, Diane Kurys, Pagnol. Creation of a webpage as a final project. Fall 2010.

Theme and Genre Courses

128. The Fantastic. Mr. Abecassis. The fantastic as a literary and cultural phenomenon. Study of myth, fairy tales, and fantastic tales of the Romantic period. Emphasis on psychoanalytic and archetypal criticism. Prerequisite 44. Fall 2010; offered alternate years. 

Middle Ages Through the 17th and 18th Centuries

150a. Les Moralistes: Public and Private Selves. Mr. Abecassis. Study of late 16th- and 17th-century French moral thought in the essays, plays, satire, and dialogues of Montaigne, Molière, La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, and Pascal. Prerequisite: French 44. Spring 2010; offered alternate years.

150b. Les Philosophes: Paradoxes of Nature. Mr. Abecassis. Enlightenment thought through the reading of tales, dialogues, and essays of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Sade. Prerequisite: French 44. Spring 2009. Offered alternate years.

150c. Philosophical Fiction. Mr. Abecassis. Examine the fictional writings of Denis, Diderot, one of France’s most imaginative tinkers and artists, editor of the Encyopédic, but also of some of the most bizarre eroticism and the most adventuresome narrative experiments in 18th-century France. Readings include: Les Bijoux, indiscreets, La Religieuse, Le Neveude Rameau, Jacques le Fataliste. TBA.

151. Men, Women, and Power. Ms. Waller. The representation of power, gender, and sexuality by female and male writers in 17th- and 18th-century France. How sexuality is used to maintain or subvert relationships between men and women. How text implicates the reader in those struggles for power. Sensibility, pre-Romanticism, and libertinism. Mme. de La Fayette, Racine, Molière, Prévost, Mme. de Graffigny, Rousseau, and Laclos. Prerequisite: 44. Fall 2008. Offered alternate years.

Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries  

173. Reading Bodies. Ms. Waller. Personal appearance as a manifestation of gender, nationality, race, class, status, sexuality and personality in 19th-centry French literatures, art and popular culture. Marie-Antoinette and Republican masculinity, fashion plates and cross-dressers, manual laborers, prostitutes and sexual hermaphrodites. Prerequisite: 44. Next offered 2008-09; offered alternate years.

174. The Romantic Other. Ms. Waller. A study of construction of self and other in French Romantic novels by Mme. de Staël, Hugo, Balzac, and Sand in their post-Revolutionary social and political context. Forms of otherness include gender, race, class, region, and historical period. Prerequisite 44. Spring 2009. Offered alternate years.

175. Writing the Exotic. Ms. Waller. The fascination with" exotic" lands and peoples in nineteenth-century France. What do literary representations and other cultural texts, tell us about fantasies and anxieties on the domestic front? A study of noble savages, savage slaves, racial ostracism, sex tourism and Orientalism in works by Chateaubriand, Duras, Hugo, Flaubert, Nerval and others. Prerequisite: 44. Spring 2010. Offered alternate years.

181. Humor and Cruelty in French Theater. Mr. Conceatu. Openly or subtly political, outrageously funny or downright absurd. the rebellious plays of Jarry, Cocteau, Ionesco, Genet, Arrabal undermine conventions and change our perspective on the human condition and language. A grotesque king Ubu, green rhinoceros, incestuous families, murderous maids, among others, populate a shattering yet amusing universe. Prerequisite: 44. Fall 2008.

182. Cannibalizing Surrealism. Ms. Pouzet-Duzer. The evolution of the French surrealist movement from the dawn of WWI through the 1960's. How surrealism continues to be embedded, cannibalized and commercialized today. Readings include manifestos, poems and novels. Aesthetic focus includes paintings, photographs and movies.  Prerequisite: 44. Fall 2008. Offered alternate years.

183. Secrets of the Short Story.  Mr. Conceatu. 20th century French "nouvelles" may not be long, but they may tell more complex stories than some novels. How do they do it? What make them enigmatic and powerful? Is it the story itself or how it is told? Close readings include Proust, Camus, Sartre, and Ionesco. Prerequisite: 44. Spring 2009.

185. In Quest of the Self.  Ms. Saigal. What is the importance of our relationships to others in the formation of the self? How do family, illness, works of art and nature contribute to the discovery of inner peace? Readings from 20th-century authors such as Proust, Gide, Duras de Beauvoir. Prerequisite: 44. Fall 2009.  Offered alternate years.

191. Senior Thesis. Ms. Waller. An independent research project culminating in a thesis at least 30 pages in length written in the foreign language under the guidance of a department faculty member and read by one additional reader. Year-long course, half-credit per semester; grade and credit awarded upon completion at the end of the second semester. Each semester.

192. Senior Oral Presentation. Ms. Waller. A 15-30 minute public oral presentation in the foreign language on the topic of the senior thesis or paper usually at the end of April. No credit. P/NC grading. Spring 2009.

99/199. Reading and Research in French. Staff. Prerequisite: permission of instructor 99, lower-level; 199 , advanced work. Course or half-course. May be repeated. Each semester, (Summer Reading and Research taken as 98/199.)

French Literature Courses offered at the Other Claremont Colleges

CM 117. Novel and Cinema in Africa and the Caribbean.
CM 120. Order and Revolt in French Literature. (Fall 2008)
CM 133. Beur: Immigration/Citizenship/Maghreb.
CM 137.
SC 100. French Cultures and Civilization. (Fall 2008, Spring 2009)
SC 104. History, Memory, and Loss: Vichy (1940-1945) in Contemporary France (Spring 2009)
SC 107. Headline News: Advanced Oral Expression and Composition of Current Events and Culture.
SC 114. Documenting the French: An Introduction to the French documentary Tradition (Fall 2008).
SC 121. The Politics of Love.
SC 130. French Theater from Text to Stage I: Theatricality and "Mise-en-scene" Apring 2009).
SC 133. Beur: Immigration/Citizenship/Maghreb.
SC 135. The Art of the Short Story. (Fall 2008).
SC 154. The Eighteenth-Century Novel: Experimentations in Form. (Fall 2008)