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How does fiction make us better at reading minds? Why do some TV shows get us to believe two contradictory things at once? And can cognitive biases be a writer's best friend? We'll think about these and other questions in the light of contemporary neuroscience and experimental psychology, with the help of Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), season 1 of Westworld (Lisa Joy / Jonathan Nolan), and short readings from writers like Louise Glück, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. We'll also ask what we see when we read; whether the language we speak affects the way we think; and why different people react differently to the same book. Plus: is free will a fiction, or were you just forced to say that?

The literature, culture, and politics of France from Louis XIV to Olympe de Gouges. How this period produced the political and philosophical foundations of modernity. Readings may include Corneille, Moli¿re, Racine, Lafayette, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, and Gouges. Taught in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.

This course explores central texts of 19th- and 20th-Century French literature, following the evolution of important literary movements during those centuries of cultural and social transformation. We will study texts in all major genres (prose, poetry, theater, film) related to movements such as Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Surrealism, Theater of the Absurd, and the Nouveau Roman. We will regularly relate literature and film to developments in other arts, such as painting and music. Authors and filmmakers include Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Proust, Ionesco, Varda, Godard, Sarraute, and Ernaux. All readings, discussion, and assignments are in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center.

The history of the French novel is also the history of love. How did individuals experience love throughout history? How do novels reflect this evolution of love through the ages? And, most significantly, how have French novels shaped our own understanding of and expectations for romantic love today? The course will explore many forms of love from the Ancien R¿gime to the 20th century. Sentiment and seduction, passion and desire, the conflict between love and society: students will examine these themes from a historical perspective, in tandem with the evolution of the genre of the novel (the novella, the sentimental novel, the epistolary novel, the 19th-century novel, and the autobiographical novel). Some texts will be paired with contemporary films to probe the enduring relevance of love "¿ la fran¿aise" in the media today. Readings include texts by Lafayette, Pr¿vost, Laclos, Dumas fils, Flaubert, Colette, Yourcenar, and Duras. This is an introductory course to French Studies, with a focus on cultural history, literary history, interpretation of narrative, thematic analysis, and close reading. Undergraduate students should enroll for FRENCH159, while graduate students may enroll for FRENCH256. Readings and discussion in English.

Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma, Justine Triet, Mati Diop. Special guest: director Elena Rossi. Films in French with subtitles; discussion in English.

Restricted to French majors with consent of department. Normally limited to 4-unit credit toward the major. May be repeated for credit.

The intersection of play and violence has been a focal point for historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, even psychologists. In today's world, "gaming" represents a multi-billion dollar industry; in the Middle Ages, those with the means also invested vast sums on games and battle. These ranged from the tournament and the warhorse to hunting and falconry, ivory chess pieces, and musical "rap battles" that pitted contestants against one another. Treatises on the Art of Courtly Love described the conquest of a lover's body as a sport that could be played by women or men. This seminar traces the twin themes of violence and play as enacted by the fighting classes of medieval Europe, beginning with the emergence of the tournament and the crusading movement in the eleventh century. We will investigate how the new ethos of chivalry impacted social relations and the organization of feudal society. And, we will see how tactics and social structures changed with the coming of the gunpowder age. In addition to primary sources including Boccaccio and Machiavelli, the course introduces modern theories of play. Why do humans identify so powerfully with a team? What explains the compulsion to invest financial and emotional resources in play and games?