61 - 70 of 123 results for: FRENCH

An overview of the current awakening of French political thought as it is grounded in a new reading of the great classics of French social thought, from Rousseau to Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant. Readings of Lefort, Castoriadis, Louis Dumont, Ricoeur, Furet, Manent, Ferry, Renaut, Gauchet, Raynaud, etc. Discussions in French and in English.

A comparative seminar on medieval love books and their reception. We will examine and question the notion of "amour courtois," which arose in the lyrics and romances of medieval France and was codified in Romantic-era criticism. Primary readings will be enriched by thinking about this notion through the lens of modern theories of desire, such as those of Girard, Lacan, and Zizek. Conducted in English with readings in translation.

Introduction to medieval French literature through the analysis of representations of cross-cultural contact in historical perspective. Class conducted in French. Readings in modern French translation (with occasional reference to Old French) and in English. Readings include La Chanson de Roland; Le Charroi de Nîmes; La Prise d'Orange; Le Conte de Floire et Blancheflor; and Chrétien de Troyes, Cligés. No previous knowledge of Old French or medieval literature is expected; willingness to engage with historical texts and questions required.

Every story is in some ways a travel story, a journey from here to there. In this seminar we'll explore how different people in different times and places experimented with the travel-story form to make sense of their social worlds. We'll focus on the twentieth century, during which people, images, and ideas moved around the world at an unprecedented scale and with increasing speed. Some journeys take us across oceans, while others are limited to just a few city blocks. For a final project students may complete a standard research paper related to themes of the course, or may produce their own travel narrative, however they choose to interpret this rubric. nSPECIAL GUEST LECTURER: Pico Iyer, travel writer.

This course examines the relationship between art and the market, from the château-builders of the French Renaissance to avant-garde painters in the nineteenth-century Salon des Refusés. Using examples drawn from France, this course explores the relationship between artists and patrons, the changing status of artists in society, patterns of shifting taste, and the effects of museums on making and collecting art. Students will read a mixture of historical texts about art and artists, fictional works depicting the process of artistic creation, and theoretical analyses of the politics embedded in artworks. They will engage in sustained analysis of individual artworks, as well as the market structures in which such artworks were produced and bought. The course will be taught in English, with the option of readings in French for departmental majors.

More than any other European country and any other period, 19th century France seems to be dominated by the conflict between capital and periphery, between Paris and the provinces. If Paris was the capital of the 19th century, then what of the rest of France? Is it a space of conservatism, boredom, and stagnation, or one of natural beauty, escape, and transgression? In this seminar we will look at how French novels of the period analyzed and re-imagined life outside of Paris and, conversely, how a sense of what life in the provinces is had a reflection on different novelistic genres. Readings by Balzac, Flaubert, Hugo, Sand, and Zola. Taught in French.

This course explores the emergence of Francophone cinema and literature from North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco) in the post-independence era: aesthetics, exile, language métissage, race and gender relations, collective memory, parallax, nationalism, laicité, religion, emigration and immigration, and the Arab Spring will be covered. Special attention will be given to judeo-maghrebi history, and to the notions of francophone / maghrebi / "beur" / diasporic cinema and literature. Readings from Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Kateb Yacine, Albert Camus, Colette Fellous, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Leila Sebbar, Benjamin Stora, Lucette Valensi, Abdelwahab Meddeb. Movies include Viva Laldjérie, Tenja, Le Chant des Mariées, Française, Bled Number One, Omar Gatlato, Casanegra, La Saison des Hommes. Taught in French. Films in French and Arabic with English subtitles.

The Enlightenment as a philosophical, literary, and political movement. Themes include the nature and limits of philosophy, the grounds for critical intellectual engagement, the institution of society and the public, and freedom, equality and human progress. Authors include Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, Diderot, and Condorcet.

An overview of the current awakening of French political thought as it is grounded in a new reading of the great classics of French social thought, from Rousseau to Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant. Readings of Lefort, Castoriadis, Louis Dumont, Ricoeur, Furet, Manent, Ferry, Renaut, Gauchet, Raynaud, etc. Readings in French. (Translations in English will be made available whenever possible.) Discussions in French and in English.