1 - 10 of 108 results for: FRENCH

Do you dream of studying in the Latin quarter? Love the sound of French? And do the names Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre make your mind tingle with excitement?

Then you will want to spend next September immersing yourself in French and reading its most famous Existentialists. Spend mornings brushing up on your spoken and written language proficiency, and afternoons talking about some of the great works of the twentieth century (including L¿Etranger, Huis clos, and Le Deuxième sexe).

We will also broaden our discussions with French films (including Les quatre-cent coups and A bout de soufflé) and other cultural activities (like a trip to the Legion of Honor), including a performance starring YOU! Sophomore College Course: Application required, due noon, April 5, 2016. Apply at http://soco.stanford.edu .

This course provides students with the opportunity to practice speaking French at the advanced level. Recreating the atmosphere of a French salon, participants will develop greater oral proficiency through discussions of literature, film, politics, and contemporary culture. Please note that all Maison Française courses take place at the Maison Française and begin during Week 2 of the quarter. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 23C or equivalent.

Even if many of us don't fully believe in an afterlife, we remain fascinated by visions of it. This course focuses on Near-Death Experiences and the stories around them, investigating them from the many perspectives pertinent to the growing field of narrative medicine: medical, neurological, cognitive, psychological, sociological, literary, and filmic. The goal is not to understand whether the stories are veridical but what they do for us, as individuals, and as a culture, and in particular how they seek to reshape the patient-doctor relationship. Materials will span the 20th century and come into the present. Taught in English.

Focus on the French New Wave's cinematic revolution of 1959-1962. In a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered landmark works such as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Chabro's Le Beau Serge or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, and changed forever the way we make and think about movies. Why did these films look so radically fresh? What do they say about France's youth culture in the early 60s? How is the author's theory behind them still influencing us today? Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Taught in English.

The Global Gateway course examines a history of concepts and historical situations that account for the artistic production of Paris from the Middle Ages to the present. The course asks what made Paris crucial to such production, from the medieval university environment (the Letters of Abelard and Heloise, poetry of Villon), the royal courts and theatre houses (Molière, Racine), to the Revolution and new era of enlightened France (Diderot). We then investigate the emergence of a Paris as a historical figure for modernity (Hugo, Zola, Flaubert, Godard, Apollinaire), concluding with a reflection on contemporary Paris reflected in postwar art and literature (existentialism, Francophonie, the question of French citizenship). Course taught in English, with option of French section.

Close reading of Oscar Wilde's work together with major texts and authors of 19th-century French Decadence, including Symbolism, l'art pour l'art, and early Modernism. Points of contact between Wilde and avant-garde Paris salons; provocative, creative intersections between (homo)erotic and aesthetic styles, transgression; literary and cultural developments from Baudelaire to Mallarmé, Huysmans, Flaubert, Rachilde, Lorrain, and Proust compared with Wilde¿s Salomé, Picture of Dorian Gray, and critical writings; relevant historical and philosophical contexts. All readings in English; all student levels welcome.

Recent developments in and neuroscience and experimental psychology have transformed the way we think about the operations of the brain. What can we learn from this about the nature and function of literary texts? Can innovative ways of speaking affect ways of thinking? Do creative metaphors draw on embodied cognition? Can fictions strengthen our "theory of mind" capabilities? What role does mental imagery play in the appreciation of descriptions? Does (weak) modularity help explain the mechanism and purpose of self-reflexivity? Can the distinctions among types of memory shed light on what narrative works have to offer?

Examines a quintessential French figure "l'intellectuel" from a long-term historical perspective. We will observe how this figure was shaped over time by such other cultural types as the writer, the artist, the historian, the philosopher, and the moralist. Proceeding in counter-chronological order, from the late 20th to the 16th century, we will read a collection of classic French works. As this course is a gateway for French studies, special emphasis will be placed on oral proficiency. Taught in French; readings in French.

An examination of the current debates in France regarding national identity, secularism, and the integration of immigrants, notably from the former colonies. Confronts films' and other media's visual and discursive rhetorical strategies used to represent ethnic or religious minorities, discrimination, citizens' resistance to government policies, inter-racial marriages, or women's rights within immigrant communities. By embodying such themes in stories of love, hardships, or solidarity, the motion pictures make the movements and emotions inherent to immigration tangible: to what effect? Taught in French. Films in French with English subtitles. Additional paper for students enrolled in 235.