The course listing represents a sampling of courses taught by the faculty in this department in the 2009-10 academic year. To select courses for Fall 2009, see the catalog listing; similarly, for Spring 2010 refer to the relevant catalog.
ARBC-101 - Beginning Arabic I
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 5 Hours
Acquisition of the fundamentals of Modern Standard Arabic vocabulary and grammar. This course begins with learning of script and phonology and expands to a wide range of situation-based texts and topics that build general communicative competence. Enrollment limit: 22.
Designed for beginners with no previous experience or study of Arabic expected.
ARBC-102 - Beginning Arabic II
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 Hours
Continuation of Beginning Arabic I. Acquisition of more complex grammatical structures, expanding vocabulary and communicative competence in Modern Standard Arabic. Enrollment Limit: 22.
Prerequisite: ARBC 101 or equivalent.
ARBC-201 - Intermediate Arabic I
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 Hours
This course is a continuation of 102, Beginning Arabic II. Focuses on classical Arabic grammar, speaking, reading, composition and translation, using material from medieval and modern classical literary Arabic. Language laboratory materials, computer programs, SCOLA and Skype will be utilized. Enrollment Limit: 22.
ARBC 102 or equivalent
ARBC-202 - Intermediate Arabic II
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 Hours
Continuation of 201, Intermediate Arabic I. Students will continue to develop listening, reading, speaking and writing skills with more emphasis on writing. Covers more complex topics relating to literature and culture, using literary Arabic texts and media articles. Scola and Skype will be utilized.
Arabic 201
ARBC-995 - Private Reading
Offered: First and Second SemesterCredit Hours: .5 - 3 Hours
Private readings with a faculty member.
Signed consent of the instructor is required. To register for a private reading: obtain a private reading card from the Office of the Registrar; complete the card; obtain the required signatures of the faculty member and department chair; and return the card to the Office of the Registrar.
FREN-101 - Français élémentaire
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 5 hours
This first semester of a year-long sequence is to build proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing, with special emphasis on meaning and the functional use of language and on understanding French-speaking cultures. The interactive multi-media approach requires extensive work in the language lab and one hour of small group work beyond the five hours of regular class time.
Prerequisites: No previous French is expected for FREN 101. FREN 101 or the equivalent is prerequisite for FREN 102. Students with previous study of French must present an SAT II score or take the departmental placement test.
FREN-102 - Français élémentaire II
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 5 hours
This is the second semester of a year-long sequence is to build proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with special emphasis on meaning and the functional use of language and on understanding French-speaking cultures. The interactive multi-media approach requires extensive work in the language lab and two hours of small group work beyond the five hours of regular class time.
Prerequisites: FREN 101 or the equivalent is prerequisite for FREN 102. Students with previous study of French must present an SAT II score or take the departmental placement test.
FREN-103 - Français élémentaire accéléré
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 4 hours
Designed for students with previous work in French not yet qualified for FREN 203 or FREN 205, this intensive course covers all basic grammatical concepts and vocabulary while building skills in listening comprehension, speaking, writing, and reading. To reinforce both class and individual work, students will participate in two hours per week of small group oral practice.
Prerequisite: Some previous French with an SAT II score under 550 or appropriate score on placement test. Successful completion of FREN 103 qualifies students for FREN 203 and FREN 205.
FREN-203 - Français intermédiaire accéléré
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 4 hours
This is a one-semester intensive course equivalent to FREN 205, 206. Review of the essentials of French grammar. Continued development of reading using a variety of texts, practice in composition, and speaking. In addition to the three hours per week of class, students are required to attend two hours in small group practice.
Prerequisites: Appropriate SAT II score (550-625), appropriate score on placement test, FREN 102 or 103 or the equivalent.
FREN-205 - Français intermédiaire I
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 4 hours
This first semester of a year-long sequence includes review of the essentials of grammar, continued development of reading skills using both literary and cultural texts, and practice in composition and speaking. In addition to the three hours per week of class, students are required to attend one hour of small group practice.
Prerequisites: Appropriate SAT II score (550-625), appropriate score on placement test, FREN 102 or 103 or the equivalent. FREN 205 is prerequisite for FREN 206.
FREN-206 - Français intermédiaire II
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 4 hours
This second semester of a year-long sequence includes review of the essentials of grammar, continued development of reading skills using both literary and cultural texts, and practice in composition and speaking. In addition to the three hours per week of class, students are required to attend one hour in small group practice.
Prerequisites: FREN 205 is prerequisite for FREN 206.
FREN-250 - French Cinema: National Traditions, Global Horizons
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 Hours
This historical survey will expose students to the directors, movements, and periods that have represented French filmmaking since its beginning (ie. Lumière, Méliès, Surrealism, 1930s Poetic Realism, Occupation, New Wave, contemporary film). A study of the history of industrialization, cultural policy, and state regulation will also help show the conceptualization of French cinema as a “national cinema,” despite its international artistic heritage and audiences, and as a particular kind of interface representing Frenchness within and beyond France. Taught in English.
No prerequisite, but CINE 101 or another course in French is strongly recommended.
FREN-301 - Expression orale et écrite
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 4 hours
Through compositions, readings, film viewings, and discussions, students expand their vocabulary, strengthen their critical reading and writing skills, increase their knowledge of the Francophone world, and develop their speaking ability. Grammar review integrates practice of spoken and written French. One hour of weekly oral expression practice also required.
Prerequisites: Appropriate SAT II score (625-675), appropriate score on placement test, FREN 203 or FREN 206 or the equivalent.
FREN-309 - Plaisir de lire
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
This course is designed to help students enjoy reading comfortably in French. We will read from a wide variety of literary and non-literary texts: newspaper articles, travel guides, web pages, bandes dessinees, and detective novels. Presentations and exams will solidify reading comprehension and vocabulary enrichment. Frequent and varied writing assignments--pastiches, creative writing, and personal responses--will be submitted as journal entries.
Prerequisite: FREN 301 or the equivalent.
FREN-321 - Pratiques de l'écrit
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3-4 hours
This course focuses on the relationship between writing and reading, and on ways to improve one through the other. Topics include: analysis of stylistic models; comparison of French and American text building; techniques of contraction and expansion; recognition and correction of mistakes; differences between English and French modes of expression. Taught in French.
Prerequisite: Appropriate SAT II score (675-800), appropriate score on placement test, FREN 301 or the equivalent. FREN 321 is prerequisite for FREN 441. Note: Fourth credit available only for remedial work.
FREN-360 - Colloquium: La culture de Versailles
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
During the reign of Louis XIV, Versailles was transformed from a modest hunting lodge to a dazzling, colossal monument to absolutism. In this course, we will examine the various influences that converged to shape the palace and gardens of Versailles and the court society that lived there. We will draw on sources from the fields of art history, political theory, and material culture as well as focusing on literary works by key authors such as La Fontaine, Molière, Racine, Perrault, and Scudéry.
FREN-361 - Colloquium
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
Topic to be announced.
Prerequisite: FREN 301 or the equivalent.
FREN-371 - Littérature française I: Du moyen âge à la Révolution
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
This course studies the development of French literature, from its origins in the chanson de geste , a male dominated genre celebrating war, through the 'invention' of romantic love in courtly love literature, to the lyric voice of Renaissance poetry and the analysis of the passions in baroque and classical literature.
Prerequisite: FREN 301 or the equivalent.
FREN-372 - Littérature française II: De la Révolution à nos jours
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
Perspectives on a selection of authors, literary works, and movements shaping the character of French literature from the French Revolution to the present. Emphasis will be placed on generic specificity, historical contextualization, and critical approaches to texts studied within a particular thematic framework developed each year. All readings, lectures, and discussion in French.
Prerequisite: FREN 301 or the equivalent.
FREN-373 - Intro à la littérature francophone
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
Entirely devoted to literary works by Francophone writers from North Africa, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Vietnam, this course will also study the socio-historical context that gave rise to such literature. Readings will include poetry, fiction and drama from writers that express varied cultural backgrounds as well as the impact of French culture on them. Approaches to these literatures will be linguistic, thematic, and cultural.
Prerequisite: FREN 301 or the equivalent.
FREN-411 - L’animal et l’homme, 1200-1800
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 3 Hours
This course examines the representation of animals in literary, scientific, and philosophical texts and cultural practices such as zoos, hunting, and entertainment. Using the work of Michel Foucault, the course follows the evolution of animals from the Middle Ages, when beasts were represented anthropomorphically and used to convey religious symbolism, to the Renaissance and Classical Age, when animals were freed from religious allegory and roamed wild as figures of freedom and madness in literature and art, but later defined as machines by Descartes and confined in the first modern zoo at Versailles.
Prerequisite: Two 300-level courses beyond 301.
FREN-413 - Le merveilleux littéraire du moyen age aux Lumières
Offered: Second Semester, 2010-2011Credit Hours: 3 hours
Derived from the Latin mirabilia, the marvelous designates that range of phenomena between the natural and the supernatural that cannot be explained by human reason: talking animals, werewolves, and phantom ships in the lais of Marie de France; strange races of men in the travel narratives of Marco Polo; Mélusine, the fairy-wife who becomes a serpent one day a week; deformed infants who show God’s wrath or the excessive imagination of the mother in early modern medical texts.
Prerequisite: FREN 301 or the equivalent.
FREN-419 - China and Japan in the French Imaginary
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
In this course students will examine French representations of East Asia from the late 19th century to the present. Through close readings of films, paintings, comic books, and literary texts, students will expand their sense of the visual/verbal literacy with which one reads culture through these different literary and artistic media. Topics addressed will include 'chinoiseries' and 'japonisme,' literary exoticism, French Maoism, travel literature, war documentaries, and the challenges of cross-cultural exchange.
FREN-424 - Théâtres révolutionnaires
Offered: First Semester, 2011-2012Credit Hours: 3 Hours
We will study the major moments, movements, and masterminds behind modern and contemporary French theater, considering at every step the formal evolution of French theater in the 20th century, the political implications of theater as a public medium and the changing relationships between theater and other media and institutions. Readings will include works by Jarry, Rachilde, Artaud, Camus, Genet, Ionesco, Beckett, Mnouchkine and Koltès, among others.
Prerequisite: Two 300-level courses beyond 301.
FREN-425 - La Litterature des Caraibes francophones: Un discours post-Negritude
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 3 hours
After a concise overview of the poetics of the Négritude movement, this course will examine in particular the post-colonial theoretical and literary trends that detached themselves from the Négritude movement and proposed Antillanité and Créolisation as the main constituents of the Caribbean identity. We will explore the connections between these forms of expression, as well as the intellectual, esthetic and linguistic legacies that enabled the production of these narratives.
FREN-478 - The Algerian Camus
Offered: First Semester, 2011-2012Credit Hours: 3 hours
Albert Camus' socio-cultural belonging in Algeria was different from his relation to Metropolitan France. The Algerian space and society to which he related was constituted of a mosaic of European races and a huge indigenous majority. Algeria, according to him, remained his source of inspiration, while the "Metropole" was a place of exile. This course will examine selected essays and fiction of Camus to show that in order to come to grips with his personality and work, a full understanding of his "Algerianity" is essential.
Two courses at the 300-level beyond 301
FREN-350 - The French New Wave
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 4 hours
An in-depth study of one of the most inventive and pioneering movements in French and international cinema. We will consider its founding film theories and practices, its representative directors, its post-WWII historical context, and its lasting legacies in cinema today. Conducted in English.
Prerequisites: FREN/CINE 250 or CINE 101, 298 or 299.
FREN-505 - Honors
Offered: First Semester, Second SemesterCredit Hours: 2-6 hours
Consent of instructor required.
FREN-995 - Private Reading
Offered: First Semester, Second SemesterCredit Hours: 0.5-3 hours
Signed permission of the instructor required.
To register for a private reading, the student must obtain the signatures of the instructor and department chair on a private reading card and turn the card in to the Office of the Registrar.
ITAL-101 - Beginning Italian I
Offered: First SemesterCredit Hours: 5 Hours
Taught in Italian. Acquisition of the fundamentals of grammar and pronunciation with an emphasis on elements of grammar. The course is designed for beginners and no previous experience or study of Italian is anticipated. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 22 (11 places for Conservatory students).
ITAL-102 - Beginning Italian II
Offered: Second SemesterCredit Hours: 5 Hours
Taught in Italian. Continuation of ITAL 101 completing coverage of grammar with an emphasis on reading, writing, conversation, and general oral skills. Enrollment Limit: 22 (11 places for Conservatory students).
Prerequisite: ITAL 101 or consent of instructor or appropriate score on placement test.
ITAL-995 - Private Reading
Offered: First and Second SemesterCredit Hours: .5 to 3 Hours
Signed permission of the instructor is required.
To register for a private reading, the student must obtain the signatures of the instructor and department chair on a private reading card and turn the card in to the Office of the Registrar.
