printer friendly pageFRENCH 181: Philosophy and Literature (CLASSGEN 81, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, GERMAN 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181)
Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin. Taught in English.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FRENCH 199: Individual Work
Restricted to French majors with consent of department. Normally limited to 4-unit credit toward the major. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-12
| Repeatable
for credit
FRENCH 205: Songs of Love and War: Gender, Crusade, Politics (FEMGEN 205)
Analysis of medieval love, satirical and Crusade lyrics of the trouabdours. Study of deictic address, corporeal subjectivity, the female voice, love debates, and the body as a figure of political conflict. Course readings include medieval treatises on lyric and modern translations of the troubadour tradition. Works by Ovid, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born, La Comtessa de Dia, Thibaut de Champagne, Raimon Vidal, Dante, and Pound. Taught in English. Course includes a lab component for creation of multi-media translation projects: trobar. stanford.edu.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Galvez, M. (PI)
FRENCH 210: Representation and Theatre Culture in 20th Century France (TAPS 353)
This course will examine some major French playwrights such as Alfred Jarry, Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Jean Tardieu, Albert Camus or Jean Anouilh in their global cultural environment. Discussion in English; French majors read in French.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Apostolides, J. (PI)
FRENCH 218: Skepticism and Atheism in Early-Modern French Thought
Religious belief was a fundamental part of early-modern life, and the proposition that human beings could not prove God's existence had profound implications for all realms of human experience. This course will explore the complex relationship between philosophical skepticism and religious belief in early-modern Europe (particularly France) and investigate how these heterodox philosophies transformed the understanding of humanity's interaction with the surrounding world. We will begin by looking at the origins of religious unbelief and the revival of Pyrrhonian skepticism in the 16th century. By placing the atheists and the skeptics in dialogue with their deist and Christian opponents, we will see how these ideas evolved over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries and consider the influence of these subversive theories on the social and political fabric of Europe. Taught in English. Readings in French (English translations available).
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
Instructors:
Matytsin, A. (PI)
FRENCH 221: Conceiving Other Worlds: Travel Narrative and Science Fiction in Early-Modern France
This course will concentrate on the important role of science fiction and travel literature in early-modern France. Although these narratives were intended to describe distant worlds and different ways of living, they frequently revealed more about the aspirations, assumptions, hopes, and concerns of the cultures in which they originated than about their actual subject matter. Authors frequently sought to determine the identity and uniqueness of their own cultures by contrasting them against the 'otherness' of their imagined subjects. Similarly, by describing either utopian or dystopian civilizations, writers attempted to highlight the problems that plagued their own societies. Among other texts, we will read selections from Montaigne's 'Essais,' Cyrano de Bergerac's 'L'Autre monde ou les états et empires de la Lune,' Huygens's 'Nouveau traité de la pluralité des mondes,' Fontenelle's 'Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes,' Voltaire's 'Micromegas,' Bougainville's 'Voyage autor du monde,' and Diderot's 'Supplement au voyage de Bougainville.' Taught in English. Readings in French (English translations available).
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
Instructors:
Matytsin, A. (PI)
FRENCH 229: Literature of Global Health (COMPLIT 229, HUMBIO 175L, MED 234)
This course examines the ways literary and medical writers have used the narrative form to explore the ethics of care in what has been called the developing world. We will begin with a call made by the editor-in-chief of
The Lancet for a literature of global health -- modeled on the social reform novels of the nineteenth century, which are meant to have helped readers develop a modern public health conscience. We will study global health ethics as a field initially rooted in philosophy and policy that address questions raised by practice in resource-constrained communities abroad. And we will spend the quarter understanding how colonial and world literatures may deepen and even alter these questions. Readings will be selected from Albert Schweitzer, Aime Cesaire, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Antonio Olinto, Ben Okri, Amitav Ghosh, Anne Fadiman, and Paul Farmer.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-GlobalCom, GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
Instructors:
Ikoku, A. (PI)
FRENCH 253: Honoré de Balzac (COMPLIT 253)
Working through a selection of novels by the author widely considered as a founder of western (19th-century) "Literary Realism." Balzac's will be contextualized within his life and the French culture and literature of his time. We will also approach, from a philosophical point of view, the emergence and functions of "Literary Realism." Another focus will be Balzac's work as exemplary of certain traditions within Literary Criticism (particularly Marxist Literary Criticism). Taught in English.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Gumbrecht, H. (PI)
FRENCH 265: The Problem of Evil in Literature, Film, and Philosophy (POLISCI 338E)
Conceptions of evil and its nature and source, distinctions between natural and moral evil, and what belongs to God versus to the human race have undergone transformations reflected in literature and film. Sources include Rousseau's response to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake; Hannah Arendt's interpretation of Auschwitz; Günther Anders' reading of Hiroshima; and current reflections on looming climatic and nuclear disasters. Readings from Rousseau, Kant, Dostoevsky, Arendt, Anders, Jonas, Camus, Ricoeur, Houellebeck, Girard. Films by Lang, Bergman, Losey, Hitchcock.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Dupuy, J. (PI)
FRENCH 271: Thinking Modernity: Montaigne to Lafayette
From the times of the religious wars to those of Louis XIV, a series of French thinkers played a major role in the speculations that helped establish the norms of what is now thought of as "Western modernity." We will look at some of these, especially their moral and political philosophy in the contexts of a centralizing growth toward bureaucratic absolutist monarchy, of increasing colonization and imperialist urges, of growing intolerance (leading eventually to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes - more or less simultaneous in 1685 with the promulgation of the
Code noir, seeking to control the treatment of slaves in the colonies). We shall also be interested in the complex "development" of the modern western "individual," of new notions of "truth," ethical conduct, the politics of authoritarian individualism, the aesthetics of "taste," and the perplexities of gender politics. Closely examining a number of works, we will look at the interplay between these contexts and the epistemology, psychology, ethics and politics that gradually became normative. Authors from among: Montaigne, Gournay, Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes (
De cive), Cyrano, Madame de Lafayette, but participants may wish to bring other authors to the table. Taught in French.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Reiss, T. (PI)
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