French and Francophone Studies and Italian Studies

Faculty | Master's | Doctoral | Courses

French and Francophone Studies

In addition to the courses listed below, Special Topics courses (597, 697, 797, 897; credit 1-3) may focus on major authors, literary movements, critical theory, film studies, Provencal studies, etc., depending on student and faculty interests. Independent Study courses are offered under 596, 696, 796, 896; credit, 1-6.

Courses at the 500 level are open to both advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Note: A minimum of 12 credit hours must be taken in courses at the 600 level and above for the M.A. degree.

All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise specified.

511 Introduction to Medieval French Studies

An opportunity to master the fundamentals of Old French in such a way as to enhance the pleasure of discovering a new language and learning to read and enjoy the many literary masterpieces that illustrate it. D. Maddox

564 Literature of Africa and the Caribbean

Cultural colonization and decolonization, the Negritude movement, contemporary writing in francophone West Africa, Haiti, and the French West Indies.

584 French Canadian Literature

Canadian poets, novelists, and dramatists writing in French.

594 Identity and Heterogeneity in the Modern French and Francophone Text

Analysis of literary and critical texts that address contemporary issues of cultural identity in francophone societies; the presence of the formerly colonized world in the developed world; the interrogation of a unified "national" subject in these countries; the claims of different subject-positions based on gender, sexuality, minority linguistic status; the challenge to stable notions of culture based on models of acculturation, integration, and assimilation. Non-French majors or graduates may complete work in English.

597 The Colonial Other

Critical analysis of novels, plays, essays, and travel narratives written during the various phases of France's colonial engagement. How colonized and colonizer figure through the literary deployment of universalist, exoticist, Orientalist, and erotic discourses, and their rearticulation in paradigms of anti- and neo-colonialism. Prerequisite: 300-level French course or consent of instructor. Students pursuing a degree other than in French may complete work in English.

615 Literary Aspects of Medieval Courtly Culture  (2nd sem)

Organized around a specific problem or theme; study of selected lyric texts, brief narratives, and courtly romances. Covers the Tristan legend, Chrétien de Troyes, and the Vulgate Cycle. Texts available in medieval French and modern French translations. D. Maddox

617 Medieval Representations of Selfhood and Society  (1st sem)

Cross-generic studies of medieval institutions and attitudes in the epic chansons de geste, the Roman de la Rose, fabliaux, chronicles, and dramatic works. Emphasis on cultural perspectives and contemporary critical issues. D. Maddox

619 Medieval Drama (1st sem)

D. Maddox

624 Renaissance Prose

Selected texts by François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne.

627 Renaissance Poetry

Representative poets of the 16th century. Attention to the Petrarchan tradition; the Pléiade; women poets.

629 French Theater from the Renaissance to the Classical Age

Major trends and representative plays of the period.

631 17th-Century Comic Vision

A cross-generic study of the representation of the writer at work and the interrelationship between literature and society in Molière's time. Emphasis on works by Molière, La Fontaine, Bussy-Rabutin, Mme de Sévigné.

632 17th-Century Tragic Vision

634 17th-Century Philosophers and Moralists

The writers most important in classical thought, especially Descartes, Pascal, and LaRochefoucauld. Carre

644/645 18th-Century Literature I, II

Variable topics, including chief writers and thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment; the satirical novel and the sentimental novel, and readings in the French theater from LeSage to Beaumarchais.

656 19th-Century Realist and Naturalist Novel

Focus on the works on Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, etc.

657/658 19th-Century Poetry I, II

Variable topics. Focus on major figures from the romantic movement through symbolism.

665/666 The Contemporary Novel

Readings in the novel of social concern, the novel of personal and aesthetic concern, and the novel concerned with the human condition, tradition, and innovation. Credit, 3 each semester. 

667/668 Contemporary French Poetry I, II

Variable topics; major French poets from the turn of the century to surrealism and from surrealism to the present. Sears

669 20th-Century Theater

Major currents of modern French theater from symbolism to theater of the absurd as seen in representative plays. Sears

670 Expository Prose (1st sem)

Practice in the skills of expository writing in French through the composition of frequent short essays on a range of literary and intellectual topics. Carre

681 Issues in Contemporary French Civilization  (2nd sem)

D. Maddox

683 Textual and Literary Analysis

Combines theory and practice. Explores the potential for textual analysis based on literary texts from several different periods and genres, and in relation to a number of contemporary theoretical perspectives: feminism; Marxism, postcolonial studies; psychoanalysis; reader-response and reception theory; structuralist poetics and semiotics. Of particular interest to graduate students in the humanities and social sciences. D. Maddox

695 Culture and Marginality in Early Modern Europe

Study of the myths, mentalities, and popular traditions that thrived on the margins of Renaissance culture, using concepts in economics, ethnography, linguistics, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. Topics include witchcraft, popular cosmology, heresy, obscure private lives, and the "carnivalesque." Taught in English. D. Maddox

699 Master's Thesis

Credit, 6.

771 History of the French Language

The French language from the Middle Ages to the present. Fundamentals of ear-ly French; dialects; popular idioms; the emergence of Modern French; French in the Francophone world; theories of language change; currents in French linguistics; today's French in politics, commerce, and the media. D. Maddox

780 Bibliography and Methodsof Literary Research

Required of candidates for the Ph.D.

791, 792, 793, 794, 795 Seminar

Credit, 1-3.

801 Contemporary French Literary Theory

891, 892, 893, 894, 895 Seminar

Credit, 1-3.

897 Seminar in Rousseau and the Enlightenment

Mensah

899 Doctoral Dissertation

Credit, 18.

Courses in Preparation for Teaching

571 Applied Linguistics (French)

French linguistics applied to teaching of French in secondary schools.

572 Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages  (1st sem)

Practice-oriented introduction; includes English. Various aspects of teaching the first level of all languages from elementary school through university. Prerequisites: senior status, fluency in teaching language and consent of instructor.

573 Advanced Methods of Teaching ForeignLanguages (2nd sem)

Practice-oriented; includes English as a Foreign Language. For advanced undergraduates, graduate students and practicing foreign language teachers. Methods of teaching foreign languages at intermediate and advanced levels. Focus on preparation of teaching materials. Prerequisite: fluency in the teaching language. FRENCHED 572 useful but not necessary.

672 Teaching Assistant Workshop I

Training of new teaching assistants in techniques of the teaching of French. Credit, 2. 

697 Practicum in French and Francophone Literature and Civilization

Sears

698 M.A.T. Teaching Practicum

774 Foreign Language Research

Recent research studies in foreign language education.

Italian Studies

507 Dante and the Duecento

Selections from the works of Dante and his contemporaries; intensive study of the Divine Comedy. 

514 Prehumanism and the EarlyRenaissance  (2nd sem)

Literature of the 14th and 15th centuries; Petrarca, Boccaccio, Poliziano, Lorenzo de Medici, Michelangelo. Mazzocco

524 The High Renaissance

Literature of the late 15th and 16th centuries; Machiavelli, Castiglione, Ariosto, Tasso. Mazzocco

554 Neoclassicism and Romanticism

The works of Foscolo, Leopardi, and Manzoni.

555 19th-Century Novel

Development of the novel from Verga to Svevo.

559 19th-Century Theater

Italian theater from Verga to the present.

564 Pirandello and Theatricality

Theoretical readings on "theatricality," from Freud, Benjamin, Kafka, Lacan, and Derrida used to deconstruct representation in terms of `repetition'. The divide between reality and illusion and madness and sanity as the fundamental deictic dilemma of Pirandello's pathbreaking play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Focus on its key issues in order to understand the challenges of "Pirandellian" writers Primo Levi and Antonio Tabucchi. How these writers demonstrate the impossibility of showing life's miscellany. Stone

565 20th-Century Novel

Development of the novel from Pirandello to the present.

567 Modern Poetry

Italian poetry from Carducci to the present with emphasis on hermeticism.

569 20th-Century Theater

Development of the Italian theater from the early grottesco to the present. Chiarelli, D'Annunzio, Pirandello and the theater of the absurd, Betti, De Filippo and others.

597B Boccaccio (1st sem)

Mazzocco

597S Medieval and Renaissance Siena

(1st sem)

Interdisciplinary study of the city of Siena, its history and culture, from 1200 to the end of the Sienese republic in the mid-16th century. Topics include Dante's Siena in the Commedia; literary and artistic achievements; urban and religious architecture; trade and the origins of European banking; contrade and the Palio; "civic religion" and its monuments; the Black Death of 1348; Siena's humanist Pope; St. Catherine and the cult of holy women; Siena under the dominion of Florence and Spain. Slides, videos, and substantial individual projects. Taught in English.

597B Petrarch and His Legacy: Voice, Myth, Gender In the Renaissance Lyric

Intensive introduction to Petrarch's  Canzoniere or Rime sparse, and to "Petrarchism" as elaborated in Italy and France in the 15th and 16th centuries. The function of mythological prototypes in the creation of the lyric persona; the development of a "female voice" within a male-centered lyric tradition: the literary and social constitution of women as object and subject, as beloved and as lover, as image and as voice in the role(s) attributed to them and in those they invent or assert for themselves.