59 courses with the subject FREN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
FREN 101French I4
Emphasizing the active use of the language, this course develops the fundamental skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It includes an introduction to the cultural background of France and the Francophone world. Class sessions are supplemented by weekly small group meetings with a French graduate assistant. For students with no previous work in French. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED. Every fall.
FREN 101 with a grade of C- or better, placement test or permission of instructor. Every semester. (4 Credits)
FREN 111Accelerated French I-II4
This course develops fundamental skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It includes introduction to the cultural background of France and the francophone world. It is designed for students who have had some French prior to enrolling at Macalester or who want to review basic structures. The course prepares students for French III and includes two lab. Sessions. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED. Every semester.
FREN 320Francophone Theater of Exile and Immigration4
In this course, we will examine recent theater and film from all over the francophone world, with a focus on three main topics: the act of writing and performing while living in exile, the idea of the Other on the stage, and the development of colonial and post-colonial subjects in francophone drama. The form of each work that we study will vary widely, from classical theater to minimalist contemporary staging. In addition to literary and cultural analyses, we will explore three different aspects of theater production: acting, directing, and writing, with projects in French for each of those roles.
FREN 322Introduction to Cinema in Francophone Africa
This introductory course is designed to provide a broad historical overview of cinema in Francophone Africa. We start out with a journey back to Francophone cinema’s roots in the colonial past, when film was enlisted to serve various educational purposes as part of the French civilizing mission. Then we do a deep dive into the early postcolonial period to revisit classics such as Afrique 50, Les Statues meurent aussi, Afrique-sur-Seine, Moi un Noir, among a few others. Finally, beginning with Ousmane Sembene’s 1963 Borom Sarret (The Cart Driver), we chart the history of film in Francophone Africa, including North Africa (Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, and Algeria), from the early sixties to the present.
This course offers a comparative introduction to postcolonial literature and some film from the Pacific region, in particular from Polynesia (Tahiti, New Caledonia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Hawai’i). The course examines recent works by major literary figures through a postcolonial prism, and focuses on representations of the political and social legacy of colonialism in these territories. For each country studied, we begin with a brief historical review of colonization in dialogue with a text written by a colonial visitor or settler. We then examine resistance to colonialism and colonialist discourse in the works of prominent contemporary indigenous authors, in dialogue with current political debates in each territory. Course themes include the social and cultural effects of colonialism and imperialism on colonized peoples in Polynesia; differing conceptions of race, ethnicity and indigeneity in each country studied, and their relation to the histories of British, French and U.S. imperialism in the Pacific; the rise of indigenous nationalist movements, and the challenges they confront in an age of globalization marked by new Pacific power rivalries; questions of language in a Pacific space still dominated by its colonial division into distinct “Anglonesian” and “Franconesian” spheres; and the island as a unit of political organization as opposed to alternative pan-Oceanic conceptions of inter-relationship. Authors studied may include Katherine Mansfield; Patricia Grace; Witi Ihimaera; Victor Segalen; Chantal Spitz; Titaua Peu; Célestine Vaite; Herman Melville; Lee Cataluna; Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Offered occasionally.
FREN 332Border-Crossings and Immigration in Western Europe Through Literature and Cinema4
Global media have long been fascinated with images of migrants from the South enduring perilous journeys in their attempts to enter Europe through land or sea. These images have produced series of standard narratives, especially since the 2010s, rather than a deep understanding. They have also produced series of immigration policy changes as well as humanitarian initiatives. With the help of theorists such as Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Achille Mbembe and Sarah Mekdjian, this course will analyze mass media images of immigration, juxtaposing them with more nuanced representations from migrant and European cinema and literature. From representations and accounts of detention camps, to those of integration, hospitality and success the course materials includes human rights reports, memoirs, fiction, graphic novels, films. The course functions as a discussion seminar. Student work includes presentations, digital work, and short papers. Occasionally.
Cross-Listed as AMST 336 In his unpublished essay, “I choose exile,” Richard Wright declared, “To live in Paris is to allow one’s sensibilities to be moved by physical beauty. I love my adopted city. Its sunsets, its teeming boulevards, its slow and humane tempo of life have entered deeply into my heart.” Paulette Nardal wrote in her essay “Awakening of Racial Consciousness” that living in Paris in the 1920s had created for Black women the “need of racial solidarity that would not be merely material” and an “awakening to race consciousness” that they had not experienced or understood fully before leaving home and meeting Blacks from other countries in Paris. This course will look at the relationship that Blacks have had to France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will explore the art, literature, music and political protest that were generated in the “City of Lights.” The presence of African Americans has usually been seen, by both themselves and others, as a commentary on race. We will examine the lives of Blacks who left the United States expressly to escape the burdens of discrimination and came to Paris as self-conscious refugees from racism. We will also examine the lives of Blacks who left the French colonies to pursue a western education in France, but who developed broader philosophical ideologies, including the cultural, artistic and literary movements of la Négritude. We will examine their experiences and critique the myth of a color-blind France.
FREN 204 or higher Offered occasionally. (4 Credits)
FREN 344Francophone Islands: An Oceanic Perspective4
The course examines the commonalities and differences between francophone islands located in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and French Polynesia. For instance, while the creole spoken in Mauritius is very similar to that spoken in Haiti, the two independent nations have a different history and culture. The archipelagos of the three regions have been subject to different colonization and decolonization processes and some islands are still part of France. Vulnerable to the threats of climate change, military displacement and nuclear testing, they also provide models of resistance, marronage, and resilience. The course will engage with the rich literary, artistic, and other cultural productions (food and music) of the three regions, with the rich diversity of cultures within each area, and explore the complex ecotonic seascapes and trans-island archipelagic networks they create. The course provides the opportunity to look at the world from an oceanic perspective. It functions as a discussion and research seminar, with presentations, short essays and digital work. Offered occasionally.
This workshop is an initiation in the art and craft of translation, in this case the language pair French-English. In the first two weeks, students are introduced to the nuts and bolts of translation, including the seven stock-in trade procedures that any translator, knowingly or not, brings to bear on any source language-target language transfer (borrowing, literal translation, calque, modulation, transposition, equivalence, and adaptation). After this theoretical overview, the focus shifts toward practical matters. Thus, true to the collaborative spirit of a community of practitioners, students workshop their projects in class, peer-reviewing and peer-editing their drafts to achieve the best possible outcome within the completion timelines set by the instructor. Using Kerry Lappin-Fortin’s La traduction: un pont de départ (second edition) as our textbook, student assignments will consist of short translations from French into English (versions) or English into French (thèmes), writing exercises, short quizzes, and two exams. Students will also make presentations on translation tools and aids, and their term paper will be in the form of a critical essay introducing their final translation project to a general audience.
Any 300-level course. Offered occasionally. (4 Credits)
FREN 371French Intellectuals in/and the World4
This seminar presents an overview of French and Francophone intellectuals who have engaged with issues of social justice, gender, race, class, language, ethics, solidarity work, science and religion across time from the Middle Ages to the present. The course revolves around a period, an intellectual, an issue and how that issue resonates today. The course is about establishing connections between different spaces and times, including colonial and postcolonial periods. Notions of civic engagement and commitment vary and the course engages with with thinkers from all corners of the francophone world, from Christine de Pisan to Boubacar Boris Diop. Taught in French.
What does it mean to live a “good” life? How are the concepts of well-being and happiness connected to cultural and artistic endeavors? To answer these questions, we will study works of fiction, art, and philosophy from the 17th to the 21st centuries, exploring visions of utopian societies during times when dramatic shifts in political, social, and cultural life changed the ways people defined happiness and well-being from themselves and for their societies. We will also explore how our own views of well-being and happiness are influenced by those of earlier time periods. Taught in French. Counts as the pre-20th century course for the French major.
FREN 420French Avant-Gardes in the 20th and 21st Centuries4
The course will expose students to some of the most important writers, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, visual artists, and thinkers of the twentieth-century. It will serve both as a survey of the most important literary, artistic, and intellectual movements and as a sampling of the most brilliant and innovative prose, poetry, and performance. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with some of the cultural productions that have been strongly influenced by scientific, linguistic, psychoanalytical, colonial, anti-colonial, post-colonial, racial, and gender-based theories of the century. The course will expose students to intersectional readings of texts and images that represent the long lasting effects of the twentieth-century ruptures on writers and artists in France and the Francophone world through the study of various themes. The course functions as a discussion seminar. Student work includes presentations of relevant materials and short papers. Taught in French.
Nature is a temple where living columns sometimes emit confused lyrics - Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal To hell with civilization, long live nature and poetry ! - Théodore Rousseau, peintre The Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism had a major impact on the environment in France during the nineteenth century, as it did in other European countries and the U.S. In what ways did the French respond to the environmental crisis in the nineteenth century and how did that set the stage for later developments? In 1854, the same year that Thoreau published Walden, the French created the Société Nationale de la Protection de la Nature. And in 1861 the first Réserve Naturelle was created by the French government to protect the forests of Fontainebleau from clear cutting, due in large part to the well-written petitions by writers and artists such as Victor Hugo, George Sand, and others. In this course, we will look at a number of literary, cultural, and political texts written during the nineteenth century that focus on nature, the environment, and issues related to the rapid urbanization and industrialization of France. We will also study artworks by the Barbizon school, and by later artists including the impressionists of the later part of the nineteenth century. Texts will include works by well-known authors such as Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, and Emile Zola, but also less well-known writers Olympe Audouard and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore among others. We will also study a variety of
The course is intended primarily for advanced students who have studied in a French-speaking country, and is a requirement for all majors. The themes and theoretical approaches of the seminar will vary depending on the faculty teaching the course. ALL COURSES ARE TAUGHT IN FRENCH UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED.
Varies by semester. Taught in French. Recent offerings have included: Child Soldiers through Texts and Films, Quebec and Others, From the Far East to the Antipodes: Francophone Representations of Asia and the Pacific, and The Animal and the Human in the French Enlightenment.
Four courses in French among those designated for the completion of a major. Permission of instructor. Work with Internship Office. Every semester. (1 Credits)
FREN 623Internship3
Study abroad is strongly recommended. The internship does not count toward the major.
Four courses in French among those designated for the completion of a major. Permission of instructor. Work with Internship Office. Every semester. (3 Credits)
FREN 624Internship4
Study abroad is strongly recommended. The internship does not count toward the major.
Four courses in French among those designated for the completion of a major. Permission of instructor. Work with Internship Office. Every semester. (4 Credits)
FREN 631Preceptorship1
Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor. Work with Academic Programs. Every semester.
