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COURSE OFFERINGS

Please check the course catalog for up-to-date information.

All classes and exams are conducted in French with the exception of cross-listed courses, unless otherwise indicated.

 

Language Courses

FRN 101
Accelerated Elementary French
An accelerated introduction to French for real beginners based on the video method French in Action. Development of the ability to communicate confidently with an emphasis on the acquisition of listening, speaking, and writing skills, as well as cultural awareness. Four class meetings per week plus required daily video and audio work. Students completing the course normally enter FRN 102 or 103. Students must complete both FRN 101 and 102 or 103 to fulfill the Latin honors distribution requirement for a foreign language. Enrollment limited to 18 per section. No spring pre-registration allowed. Credits: 5
Eglal Doss-Quinby, Jonathan Gosnell, Ann Leone
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 102
Accelerated Intermediate French
Emphasis on the development of oral proficiency, with special
attention to reading and writing skills, using authentic materials such as poems and short stories. Students completing the course normally enter FRN 220. Prerequisite: FRN 101. Enrollment limited to 18 per section. Priority will be given to first-year students. {F} Credits: 5
Jonathan Gosnell, Christiane Métral
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 103
Intensive Intermediate French
This course uses the same textbooks as FRN 102, at a faster pace and with additional work on reading, writing, and oral skills; special attention to composition and building vocabulary. Additional materials include websites, podcasts, works by Colette, Maupassant, Sartre, and others. Prerequisite: FRN 101. Students completing this course may be eligible to enter FRN 230. Students who take FRN 102 may not take FRN 103. Admission only by permission of the instructor. {F} Credits: 5
Ann Leone
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 120
Intermediate French
An intermediate language course designed for students with two or three years of high school French. Its main objective is to develop cultural awareness and the ability to speak and write in French through exposure to a variety of media (literary texts, newspaper articles, ads, clips, films, videos, etc.). Students completing the course normally enter FRN 220. Enrollment limited to 18 per section. {F} Credits: 4
Martine Gantrel, Christiane Métral
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 220
High Intermediate French
Review of communicative skills through writing and class discussion. Materials include a movie, a comic book, a play, and a novel. Prerequisite: three or four years of high school French, FRN 102, 103 or 120, or permission of the instructor. Students completing the course normally enter FRN 230. Enrollment limited to 18 per section. {F} Credits: 4
Dawn Fulton, Mehammed Mack, TBA Fall 2013
TBA, TBA Spring 2014
Offered Fall 2013, Spring 2014

FRN 235j
Speaking (Like the) French: Conversing, Discussing, Debating, Arguing
A total immersion course in French oral expression using authentic cultural materials—French films and televised versions of round table discussions, formal interviews, intellectual exchanges and documentary reporting. Students will learn how the French converse, argue, persuade, disagree and agree with one another. Intensive practice of interactive multimedia exercises, role-playing, debating, presenting formal exposés, and correcting and improving pronunciation. Prerequisite: FRN 230 or permission of the instructor. Admission by interview with the instructor during advising week. Enrollment limited to 14. {F} Credits: 4
Christiane Métral
Offered Interterm 2014

FRN 300
Advanced Composition
Emphasis on some of the more difficult points of French grammar and usage. Discussions and exercises based on various genres of writing and basic concepts in linguistics. Some work on phonetics. Prerequisite: normally, one course in French at the 250 level or permission of the instructor. {F} Credits: 4
Hélène Visentin
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 385
Advanced Studies in Language
Topic: Global French - The Language of Business and International Trade
An overview of commercial and financial terminology against the backdrop of contemporary French business culture, using case studies, French television and newspapers, and the internet. Emphasis on essential technical vocabulary, reading and writing business documents, and oral communication in a business setting. Prepares students for the Diplôme de français professionnel (Affaires B2) granted by the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry and administered at Smith College. Prerequisite: a 300-level French course, a solid foundation in grammar, and excellent command of everyday vocabulary or permission of the instructor. {F} Credits: 4
Eglal Doss-Quinby
Offered Spring 2014

Intermediate Courses in French Studies

FRN 230
Colloquia in French Studies
A gateway to more advanced courses. These colloquia develop skills in expository writing and critical thinking in French. Materials include novels, films, essays, and cultural documents. Students may receive credit for only one section of FRN 230. Enrollment limited to 16. Basis for the major. Prerequisite: FRN 220, or permission of the instructor.

Sections of FRN 230 for 2013-2014 are as follows:

French Islam
"Islam de France" is a survey of contemporary flashpoints in the debate surrounding the place of Islam in French society. Students analyze a wide variety of new media documents including internet resources, journalistic articles and blogs, advertising, music videos, documentaries, the "khutbas" of prominent imams, legal texts, political pamphlets and posters, slam poetry, talk shows, as well as photo and video art. The italicization of "de" in "Islam de France" reflects the extent to which the question of Islam's possible roots in France has been contested: can a homegrown, European, even Republican Islamic tradition emerge in France? {F}{S} Credits: 4
Mehammed Mack
Offered Fall 2013

Women Writers of Africa and the Caribbean
An introduction to works by contemporary women writers from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean. Topics to be studied include colonialism, exile, motherhood, and intersections between class and gender. Our study of these works and of the French language will be informed by attention to the historical, political, and cultural circumstances of writing as a woman in a former French colony. Texts will include works by Mariama Bâ, Maryse Condé, Yamina Benguigui, and Marie-Célie Agnant. {F}{L} Credits: 4
Dawn Fulton
Offered Fall 2013

Consumers, Culture and the French Department Store
How have French stores and shopping practices evolved since the grand opening of Le Bon Marché in 1869? In what ways have megastores influenced French "culture"? We will examine representations of mass consumption in literature, the press, history, and analyses of French popular and bourgeois culture. We will pay particular attention to the role of women in the transactions and development of culture. {F} {H} {L} Credits: 4
Jonathan Gosnell
Offered Fall 2013

Paris, a Multi-Layered City
An exploration of the cultural and urban development of Paris across time and in space with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. We will use an interactive digital platform to reconstruct the spaces, both real and imaginary, featured in novels, poetry, short stories, popular songs, visual documents, and maps that have portrayed the city throughout its history. Works by Corneille, Hugo, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Desnos, Modiano, Vargas, Gavalda. {F}{H}{L} Credits: 4
Hélène Visentin
Offered Spring 2014

Fantasy and Madness
A study of madness and its role in the literary tradition. The imagination, its powers and limits in the individual and society. Such authors as Maupassant, Flaubert, Myriam Warner-Vieyra, J.-P. Sartre, Marguerite Duras. {F}{L} Credits: 4
TBA
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 250
Skyping with the French - Cross-Cultural Connections
Using webcam and videoconferencing technology, students will have conversations in real time with French students in Paris. We will examine youth culture in France and explore fundamental cultural differences between Americans and the French. Topics include cultural attitudes and beliefs, social values and institutions as well as relevant socio-economic issues. Material: textbooks, cultural essays, surveys, articles, films, and songs. Prerequisite: FRN 230 or higher, or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15.
{F}{S} Credits: 4
TBA
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 251
The French Press Online
A study of contemporary French social, economic, political and
cultural issues through daily readings of French magazines and
newspapers online such as Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, Le
Nouvel, Observateur, L'Express. Prerequisite: FRN 230 or permission of the instructor.
{F}{S} Credits: 4
TBA
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 262
After Algeria: Revolution, Republic and Race in Modern France
Pending CAP approval
For the last two centuries, one could argue that it is the Franco Algerian relationship that has been decisive in the construction of modern France. From the colonial conquest in the early nineteenth century through independence in 1962, Algeria has evoked passions on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea, passions frequently resulting in violence that has not entirely subsided. Memory of a conflictual present and past has required continual mediation among involved actors. In the fifty years that have passed since Algerian independence, France and the French have increasingly confronted echoes of the colonial past as a result of pervasive debates around immigration, multiculturalism and national identity. We will explore a post Algerian French society seemingly marked permanently by its Algerian experience through a variety of perspectives and readings. Can a late twentieth-century discourse of socio-economic, cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, all shaped by the Algerian episode, be reconciled with republican norms? To what extent has the experience in/of Algeria transformed contemporary French culture? In what ways can one speak of the Algerian experience in revolutionary terms? {F} {L} {S} Credits: 4
Jonathan Gosnell
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 265
Les Années Noires: Living Through the Occupation, 1939-45
What was it like to live in Paris under the German occupation? What were the moral dilemmas and the political risks that Parisians faced as they struggled to survive? And how are we, today, to judge this historical period and those who lived through it? Students will experience this difficult period through a global simulation in which each will create a character with a specific identity and past—a secret collaborator, a Jewish immigrant, a resistance fighter, a closeted homosexual, an avant-garde artist, a reporter, the widow of a soldier who fought under Maréchal Pétain in WWI—and representing the diversity of the Parisian population at the time. Each student will write her character's "memoirs" reacting to historical as well as personal events from her unique perspective. Readings range from historical documents, speeches, and testimonials to drama, fiction. Weekly films. Prerequisite: FRN 230. Enrollment limited to 16. WI (in French) {F} {H} {L} 4 credits.
Janie Vanpée
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 272
J'accuse!: French Intellectuals as Activists
Why can some writers be called intellectuals? What is an intellectual? Why are French intellectuals unique? This course will study the emergence of political activism and the figure of the French "intellectual engagé" through readings from key social and historical moments and from a variety of genres. We will trace how public debates on highly controversial topics such as intolerance, fanaticism, the death penalty, feminism, racism, and the role of media have influenced intellectuals to become committed to transforming French politics and society. Texts include writings by Montaigne, Molière, Voltaire, Hugo, Zola, Sartre, Beauvoir, Halimi, Bourdieu and others. Prerequisite: FRN 230 or permission of the instructor. {F} {H} {L} Credits: 4
Hélène Visentin
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 275
Design by Fiction
Fiction writers produce design and invite us to think about it in
various ways. In our mind's eye, we see a virtual world created in their pages. We may discover design physically before us, on the page, or looking at the book itself as an object designed to tell us something quite different from the fiction it contains. Finally, a text may explore the seductions and dangers of the desire to design and to create. Authors include Guillaume de Lorris, Montaigne, Louis XIV, Alfred Jarry, Balzac, Zola, Huysmans, Apollinaire, Colette. Course may include observation of class meetings in art, architecture, landscape studies, engineering, and dance. Prerequisites: one course beyond FRN 230 or permission of the instructor. (E)
{F}{L} Credits: 4
Ann Leone
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 282
Topics in 19th- and 20th-Century French Studies
Topic: "What's right? What's wrong?" Stories about Moral Dilemmas
Pending CAP approval
How do stories about moral dilemmas frame the question of what is right and what is wrong? What do these stories say about the values that are at stake? Do they provide answers and, if so, which ones? By investigating how stories revolving around moral conflicts reproduce social, cultural and political contradictions, as well as ethical ones, this course will allow students to reflect on some of the major issues that have shaped the moral debate in post-revolutionary France. Readings by Balzac, Hugo, Zola, Gide, Camus, Sartre and Benameur. Prerequisite: one course beyond FRN 230. {F}{L} Credits: 4
Martine Gantrel
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 295
French Translation in Practice
Practicum in French; must be taken concurrently with CLT 150. Students will read short texts in translation theory, study translation techniques and strategies, compare versions of translated texts, and produce their own translations of French texts. Readings and discussions conducted in French. Prerequisite: one course beyond FRN 230 or permission of the instructor. {F}{L} Credits: 2
Carolyn Shread
Offered Spring 2014

Advanced Courses in French Studies

Prerequisite: two courses in French Studies at the 200 level or permission of the instructor.

FRN 320
Women Writers of the Middle Ages
What genres did women practice in the Middle Ages and in what way did they transform those genres for their own purposes? What access did women have to education and to the works of other writers, male and female? To what extent did women writers question the traditional gender roles of their society? How did they represent female characters in their works and what do their statements about authorship reveal about their understanding of themselves as writing women? What do we make of anonymous works written in the feminine voice? Readings will include the love letters of Héloïse, the lais and fables of Marie de France, the songs of the trobairitz and women trouvères, and the writings of Christine de Pizan. {F} {L} Credits: 4
Eglal Doss-Quinby
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 340
Topics in 18th-Century French Studies
Topic: Marie Antoinette's Semiotic Body
Naïve pawn in European geopolitics or political intriguer? Fashion leader or obsessive consumer? Scandalous pleasure seeker or devoted mother? French Queen or Austrian spy? Instigator of the French Revolution or innocent victim? More than two hundred years after her execution, Marie Antoinette continues to fascinate, caught between history and myth and open to conflicting interpretations. How can we understand the persona behind or in the body that proliferated so many meanings? How can we trace the origins and the impacts of those meanings? Does Marie-Antoinette's semiotic body continue to signify for us? We'll examine Marie Antoinette from a variety of perspectives: archival sources, documents and letters, biographies, portraits, both official and unofficial, caricatures, pornographic pamphlets, and fictional works such as plays, novels and films in which she figures. The course will incorporate a role-playing unit reenacting her trial, during which every member of the class will play the role of one of the important participants. Some film screenings. {F} {H} {L} Credits: 4
Janie Vanpée
Offered Fall 2013

FRN 365
Francophone Literature and Culture
Topic: Literature of the French Caribbean
An exploration of the poetics, theory and politics of Caribbean writing from the Négritude movement through the elaboration of the notions of Antillanité and Créolité. Works by such authors as Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Joseph Zobel, Patrick Chamoiseau, Gisèle Pineau. {F} {L} Credits: 4
Dawn Fulton
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 380
Topics in French Cultural Studies
Topic: Immigration and Sexuality
This course examines the place of sexuality in discussions and representations of immigration to France. Through readings, lectures, and film screenings, students discover the role played by sexuality in immigration debates from the 1920s to the present day. As France's media and political parties have debated whether postwar immigration from the former colonies has entailed the erosion of French identity, long-standing claims about religious or ethnic diversity have increasingly been accompanied by a sexualized rhetoric that accuses immigrants of advocating rigid gender norms and intolerance of sexual diversity. Authors studied include Frantz Fanon, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Fadela Amara, and Abdellah Taïa. {F}{L} Credits: 4
Mehammed Mack
Offered Spring 2014

FRN 404
Special Studies
Admission by permission of the department; normally for junior and senior majors and for qualified juniors and seniors from other departments. Credits: 4
TBA
Offered Fall 2013, Spring 2014

Cross-Listed Courses and Recommended Courses from Other Departments and Programs

CLT 253 Literary Ecology
Ann Leone
Offered Fall 2013

CLT 271 Writing in Translation: Bilingualism in the Postcolonial Novel
Dawn Fulton
Offered Spring 2014