67 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 001Elementary French 11
This course sequence (FREN 001-002) is intended for students who begin French in college. FREN 001 meets three days per week. Designed to impart an active command of the language, this course is taught in French and combines the study of grammar with listening, writing, reading and oral practice (speaking). The speaking practice and pronunciation workshops (FREN 013 courses: Atelier and Phonétique) are required attachments to this course. Introduction to literary and expository prose, films, and other authentic media are used to enhance students’ language acquisition skills as well as to develop an understanding of the diverse cultures of the French-speaking world. FREN 001 is offered in the fall semester only.
Students who start in the FREN 001-002 sequence must complete FREN 002 to receive credit for FREN 001. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Jubin. Fall 2027 Jubin. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 002Elementary French 21
This course is intended for students who may have had a little French prior to college or who are continuing from FREN 001 . FREN 002 meets three days per week. Designed to further develop an active command of the language, this course is taught in French and combines the study of grammar with listening, writing, reading and oral practice (speaking). The speaking practice and pronunciation workshops (FREN 013 courses: Atelier and Phonétique) are required attachments to this course. Introduction to literary and expository prose, films, and other authentic media are used to enhance students’ language acquisition skills as well as to develop an understanding of the diverse cultures of the French-speaking world. FREN 002 is offered fall and spring semesters.
Students who start in the FREN 001-002 sequence must complete FREN 002 to receive credit for FREN 001. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2027. Courgey. Fall 2027 Courgey. Spring 2028 Courgey. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 003Intermediate French1
This third semester course is designed to build on the structures learned in elementary FREN 001 and FREN 002 or for students who have studied French prior to college. FREN 003 meets three days per week. It is taught in French. It combines grammar with oral practice (speaking), listening, writing, and reading toward the goal of proficiency. The speaking practice and pronunciation workshops (FREN 013 courses: Atelier and Phonétique) are required attachments to this course. Literature, articles, film, music, and other authentic media produced in French are used to hone language skills and improve communication as well as to provide contexts for understanding the diverse cultures of the French-speaking world. FREN 003 is offered fall and spring semesters. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Courgey. Spring 2027. Jubin. Fall 2027 Courgey. Spring 2028 Jubin.
An elementary conversation course concentrating on developing students’ ability to speak French. Only open to students who have had or are currently enrolled in FREN 001, 002, 003, or 014. May be taken twice. Does not count to fulfill major/minor credit requirements. Humanities. 0.5 credit. Fall 2026. Jubin. Spring 2027. Jubin. Fall 2027 Jubin. Spring 2028 Jubin. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 013L’Atelier: French Oral Production Workshop0
“L’Atelier” (FREN 13.001, 13.002, 13.003) is a mandatory recorded speaking practice workshop attachment to all elementary and intermediate French-language courses that takes place once every two weeks. Several 60-minute sessions will be offered to maximize student participation. It is designed with a dual purpose of reinforcing grammatical structures and thematic vocabulary being studied in the main course and with a view to long-term benefits in terms of enhanced fluency, pronunciation and intonation practice, phonetic accuracy, and general speaking and listening skills. These include increased confidence and autonomy in spoken communication, both in the form of one-way speaking and two-way interaction since many activities simulate real-life dialogues. After being provided with a different online worksheet each time, students will record themselves when ready and submit their recordings electronically. Each student’s audio file will then be graded, and feedback will be provided for content, grammar, and phonetic review. FREN 013 is offered fall and spring semesters. Humanities. 0 credit. Fall 2026. Courgey. Spring 2027. Courgey. Fall 2027 Courgey. Spring 2028 Courgey.
“Phonétique” is a mandatory pronunciation workshop attachment to all elementary and intermediate French-language courses. Sessions meet several times over the course of the semester. Students in advanced courses who want help with pronunciation may also register for this workshop as an attachment. Sessions reinforce speaking with phonetic accuracy and correct pronunciation and intonation with the goal of enhanced fluency in communication. FREN 013A is offered fall and spring semesters. Humanities. 0 credit. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 014Advanced French I: La France et le monde francophone contemporain1
This course gives students the opportunity to develop French language skills through explorations of culture and society in France and the Francophone World. Particular attention will be paid to oral communication, grammar review, and analytical skills in written French. FREN 003 or placement required. This class is the first part of the two-part sequence: French 14. Advanced French I - French 15. Advanced French II. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Jubin. Spring 2027. Jubin. Fall 2027 Jubin. Spring 2028 Jubin.
FREN 015Advanced French II: La France et le monde francophone contemporain (W course)1
This course gives students the opportunity to further develop French language skills through the study of articles, essays, and images. Engage in reading, discussing, and writing about cultural and visual texts selected from ads, newspapers, literature, television shows, comic strips, videos, and film from France and the Francophone World. Controverses (textbook) will be used for learning in-depth the art of writing in French. Particular attention will be paid to oral and written communication and cultural analysis. FREN 014 or placement required. Humanities. Writing Course. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-Paired Fall 2026. Blanchard. Spring 2027. Blanchard. Fall 2027 Blanchard. Spring 2028 Yervasi.
An intermediate to advanced-level conversation course concentrating on improving students’ ability to speak French through the discovery of topics relevant to the contemporary Francophone world. May be taken twice with a different instructor, but may only count once to fulfill major/minor credit requirements.
For students previously enrolled in FREN 014 or above. 0.5 credit. Fall 2026. Robison. Spring 2027. Blanchard. Fall 2027 Blanchard. Spring 2028 Staff. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 017AFirst-Year Seminar: Literature and Medicine1
(Cross-listed as LITR 017FA ) Portrayals of doctors provide a great opportunity to discover some classic works of French Literature, including Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid , Flaubert’s Madame Bovary , Proust’s Swann’s Way , and Albert Camus’ The Plague . Other authors studied are Montaigne and Diderot. Students focus their discussions on the relationship with patients when these are seen as both human beings and objects of science. Another topic of interest is how literature can be viewed as therapeutic. Throughout the seminar, we try to understand what had made these works original in their times and a source of admiration up to our days. Texts and discussions in English. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for INTP.
FREN 017BFirst Year Seminar: Forms of Exile in the Francophone World1
(Cross-listed as LITR 017FB ) Exile can be a multi faceted transnational, cultural, political, social journey, which often affect the vision of the here and there of individuals and populations seeking a better life, some type of asylum, a change of landscape, etc. Through readings of (poems, prose, plays, songs, etc.) French writers and artists from the Hexagon and beyond, we will examine issues such as freedom, resistance, social identity, dreams, hopes, differences, transfer of roles, displacement, abandonment, borders, memory, creation, etc., as expressed by Apollinaire, Baudelaire, DuBellay, Césaire, Hugo, Kacimi, Lahens, Levi-Strauss, Ollivier, Saint-John-Perse, Schwarz-Bart, Tadjo, Verlaine, among others. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST
FREN 017CFirst Year Seminar: Drawing Conflicts: Comics and Visualizing Political Crises1
(Cross-listed as LITR 017FC ) Drawing Conflicts is a new course that examines the use of modern fictional and nonfiction graphic novels to represent and bear witness to critical conflicts in recent history, including the Holocaust, the Iranian Revolution, the Palestinian Conflict, the 1982 and 2006 Lebanon Wars, the Rwandan genocide, and the ongoing “refugee crisis.” This course introduces students to the theory and methodology of comics analysis, while exploring current debates on the depiction and memorialization of traumatic history through this highly commercial medium-traditionally associated with lighter content-, and the extent to which these comics promotes human rights in on-going crises. Highlights include Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Jean-Philippe Stassen’s Deogratias and graphic works by NGO’s to teach about the plight of refugees. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for FREN, FMST, PEAC
FREN 017DFirst Year Seminar: The French Philosophical Novel (W Course)1
(Cross-listed as LITR 017FD ) [W course conducted in English]. From the eighteenth century to the present day, French literature has a rich tradition of authors who are at once novelists and philosophers. From the Enlightenment tales of Voltaire and Diderot, to the existentialist works of Sartre and Beauvoir, to the relational ontology of Glissant’s postcolonial literary universe, several of the central figures of French letters have turned to the novel both as a platform for showcasing their philosophical systems and as a vessel to give shape and meaning to these very systems. The following course proposes to study the interdependence between the novelistic and philosophical enterprises of these authors in order to explore fundamental questions tied to knowledge, identity, and justice. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Eligible for FREN
FREN 017EFYS: Fashioning the Self: The Shapeshifting of Identity in the French and Francophone World1
From as early as the fifteenth century, fashion has been considered an important institution in France. King Charles VII was asked to establish a separate ministry of fashion, so much so that he codified this institution as an integral part of cultural life in Metropolitan France. When we think of the term “fashion” today, images of fluid skirts and dresses, tailored power suits, coats, shirts, trousers, shoes, and other luxe accessories come to mind. Susan Kaiser reminds us that fashion is not a “thing” or “essence”, but rather a social process of negotiation and involves “becoming” in the Deleuzian sense of the term. The structure of fashion as a global system involves change, a break with the old in search of “the eternal occurrence of the new” (Benjamin). Most importantly, fashion is the stuff of identity, forever in motion, negotiating subject positions including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, class, and tribe . This ‘fashioning’ or navigation of power relations involves mixing, borrowing, and belonging gesturing toward change or creolization. In viewing fashion as philosophy, we will examine how fashion has been used and continues to be used as a vestimentary trope of subversion and transgression. The ultimate goal of this negotiation involves the ‘shapeshifting’ of troubled and vexed identities in the French and Francophone context expressed through literature, autobiography, historiography, film, cultural studies, and the ephemeral archive. Seminar will be taught in English. Humanities. 1 credit.
FREN 018Manga, Bande Dessinée, and the Graphic Novel: A Transnational Study of Graphic Fictions1
(Cross-listed as LITR 018FJ , JPNS 018 ) This course provides an introduction to the study of three of the most important contemporary graphic literary forms - manga, bandes dessinées , and the graphic novel - and the national and transnational traditions with which they have become associated. Through a careful study of major artists and key works from Japan and the Francophone world, we explore the particular histories, aesthetic evolutions, and social impact of these sequential art forms, both in their specific places of origin and across the globe. We consider how these graphic fictions have managed to mirror and refract major issues of historical trauma, technology and violence, as well as how they question representations of gender, class, race and ethnicity, even as they wield a form of “soft power.” The transnational impact that some works have played will also be explored through a comparative analysis of local and global dissemination, transnational fan communities, non-Japanese-language manga, and transindustrial exchanges. Texts and discussions in English. Students with knowledge of French and/or Japanese may read the works in the original. There is a 0.5 credit French Attachment for students reading in French ( FREN 018A ). Humanities 1 credit.
FREN 018AAttachment: Manga, Bande Dessinée, and the Graphic Novel: A Transnational Study of Graphic Fictions0.5
(Cross-listed as FREN 018 and LITR 018FJ ) This course provides an introduction to the study of three of the most important contemporary graphic literary forms - manga, bandes dessinées , and the graphic novel - and the national and transnational traditions with which they have become associated. Through a careful study of major artists and key works from Japan and the Francophone world, we explore the particular histories, aesthetic evolutions, and social impact of these sequential art forms, both in their specific places of origin and across the globe. We consider how these graphic fictions have managed to mirror and refract major issues of historical trauma, technology and violence, as well as how they question representations of gender, class, race and ethnicity, even as they wield a form of “soft power.” The transnational impact that some works have played will also be explored through a comparative analysis of local and global dissemination, transnational fan communities, non-Japanese-language manga, and transindustrial exchanges. Texts and discussions in English. Students with knowledge of French and/or Japanese may read the works in the original. There is a 0.5 credit French Attachment for students reading in French. Humanities. 0.5 credit. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
This course is designed to provide students with a broad knowledge of French literature, from the Renaissance to the present. Among the authors included on the syllabus are: Corneille, Graffigny, Balzac, Proust and Genet. Students will read works in their entirety, discuss their significance in class, and listen to short lectures to situate the readings in a historical and cultural context. Humanities. 1 credit.
FREN 041Guerre et paix dans la littérature française1
Through a study of the representations of war and peace in French literature from the 19th and 20th centuries, this course examines the evolving attitudes that intellectuals have held towards pacifist ideologies and violent conflicts, as well as the ethical and aesthetic influences that mass violence has had on their writings. The class will approach this topic from a variety of critical perspectives, including (1) studies of the emotional consequences of trauma, mourning, and shame, (2) a study of the interconnection of societal constructions of gender with representations of conflict and peace, and (3) a discussion of the rise of intellectuals in the face of injustice. Works covered will include testimonies, memoirs, fictional literature and popular culture, bringing together authors such as Balzac, Zola, Camus, Sartre, Duras, and Tardi. Taught in French.
FREN 015 or instructor permission. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for PEAC, GSST Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies/academic-program Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 041AAttachment: Guerre et paix dans la littéra0.5
Attachment to FREN 041 . Humanities. 0.5 credit. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Cinema and literature offer an interesting vantage point to understand the historical events that led to the French Revolution of 1789. Through films such as La Reine Margot , Les Trois Mousquetaires , and Marie-Antoinette , and literary texts related to the circumstances that these films depict, the course aims to provide an overview of early modern French culture. We’ll conclude our discovery by examining the legacy of the French Revolution, in particular as it relates to the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and its representations. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for INTP
FREN 045ALe monde francophone: Littératures afro-caribéennes1
In this course, we will analyze a selection of key literary texts (novel, short story, poetry, film, visual art and/or theater) by authors from the Francophone Caribbean in their historical and cultural contexts. Francophone Afro-Caribbean literatures are the literary and cultural expression of people from the French-speaking Caribbean including Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana. By exploring the construction of a Caribbean identity through and beyond Négritude, Antillanité, Créolité, feminism/womanism, relation and migration, we will critically engage with selected works by Aimé Césaire, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edouard Glissant, Léon Gontran-Damas, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Suzanne Césaire, and many others.
FREN 015 or placement required. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, GLBL-paired. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 045BLa France et le Maghreb1
This course examines the relationship between France and the Maghreb, two cultural spaces that are simultaneously united and divided by their common violent colonial history. Through the study of novels, films, art work and theoretical texts, we will trace the evolution of this conflicted relationship from the 1950’s to present times. We will focus, in particular, on the following topics: (post) colonialism and nationalism, diglossia and Francophonie, gendered representation, immigration and exile, transculturation and globalization. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ISLM, GLBL-Paired
FREN 045CLittératures de la Migration: Diaspora, Exil, Retour1
How do chosen and forced migrations produce and disrupt constructions of identity, belonging and homeland? How is “home” imagined, experienced, and remembered through fictional and autobiographical works? What aesthetic strategies are used in works that span multiple worlds? Through novels, graphic novels and films from Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, and France, from wilful migration to forced displacements, we examine the construction of a Francophone identity, and the possibility of creating nomadic places of memory. Humanities. 1 credit.
This course is an introduction to the filmmakers and history of Francophone West African cinemas, including film, video, and new media. Students will study the history and culture of this region, be introduced to key film concepts, and develop their ability to do in-depth film analysis. Students must attend weekly screenings.
FREN 015 or instructor permission. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, FMST, GLBL-paired Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies/courses Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 045ELittératures de la Migration: Diaspora, Exil, Retour1
How do chosen and forced migrations produce and disrupt constructions of identity, belonging and homeland? How is “home” imagined, experienced, and remembered through fictional and autobiographical works? What aesthetic strategies are used in works that span multiple worlds? Through novels, graphic novels and films from Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, and France, from wilful migration to forced displacements, we examine the construction of a Francophone identity, and the possibility of creating nomadic places of memory. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2028 Gueydan-Turek.
FREN 045FLa représentation /mémoire/ écopoétique de la plantation1
Excessive human activity has been the dominant influence on the climate and the environmental conditions that we are experiencing across the globe. Colonialism (neocolonialism), capitalism, and racial/ethnic hierarchies will be at the center of our critique by asking what past and future modes of resistance might emerge to aid us in navigating our current impasse. This seminar engages with contemporary literature by francophone writers, poets, theorists, and artists who creatively reflect on the ways in which rising sea levels, deforestation, excessive oil drilling practices, and extreme shifting weather conditions occur in the wake of a string of relational ecological disasters. Topics included in this course range from the memory and afterlives of slavery on the postplantation to the aesthetics of ecological catastrophes (and renewal) represented through the emergence of a poetry and poetics that take an ecological stance toward the world. Selected works by Édouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Edwidge Danticat, Françoise Vergès, Yanick Lahens, Dany Laferrière, and Louis-Philippe Dalembert among others will be considered in this meditation on the Anthropocene/ Plantationocene. Course will be conducted in French. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2027. Smith.
The French novel witnessed a series of formal innovations throughout the nineteenth century that went hand in hand with developments in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. In the first half of the century, novelists like Stendhal and Honoré de Balzac revolutionized the novel in ways that allowed for new levels of psychological depth, placing an emphasis on inner monologues, the sometimes-conflicting impulses motivating their characters, and detailed observations of the minutiae of everyday behavior. Building off these aesthetic innovations, novelists of the second half of the century pushed these psychological studies still further, turning directly to (and sometimes against) the work of psychiatrists, neurologists, and criminologists for inspiration-explicit and implicit references to the theories of Charcot, Lombroso, and Krafft-Ebing abound in the pages of the Realist, Naturalist, and Decadent authors constituting the corpus of this class. The following course will explore the dialogue that takes place between literature and psychology throughout the nineteenth century, tracking the novel’s shift from broad depictions of madness to more nuanced psychiatric diagnoses and even sympathetic depictions of various psychological states that speak to contemporary discussions around neurodiversity. Authors include: Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Rachilde (in addition to excerpts from primary sources of nineteenth-century psychology). Taught in French.
Fr 15 or with instructor permission. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 050Nature/Culture1
This course will examine a collection of literary and cinematic works that explore the idea of a nature/culture dichotomy, calling into question both what it means to be human and what it means to be natural. Topics include: the interplay between human beings and their environment; animal studies/animal ethics; the idea of human nature (and its critics). Authors and directors include: Rousseau, Hugo, Zola, Maupassant, Vivien, Huysmans, Colette, Truffaut, Bresson, among others. Taught in French.
FREN 015 or instructor permission. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 051Littérature et médecine1
We will study portrayals of doctors and their interactions with patients in works by authors such as Molière, Flaubert, and Proust-hence, this course also functions as a general introduction to French literature. What is at stake when physicians interact with patients? How can patients exist both as human beings and as objects of science? We will seek to understand how the dialogue between doctors and patients exists as a text, and how literature can be understood as therapeutic. At the end of the semester, students will meet with a “real,” practicing physician to draw further conclusions from their readings. Taught in French.
FREN 015 or with instructor permission. Humanities. 1 credit. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 052Francofous: La Folie dans la littérature afro-caribéenne1
From the eighteenth century to the present day, French literature has a rich tradition of authors who are at once novelists and philosophers. From the Enlightenment tales of Voltaire and Diderot, to the existentialist works of Sartre and Beauvoir, to the relational ontology of Glissant’s postcolonial literary universe, several of the central figures of French letters have turned to the novel both as a platform for showcasing their philosophical systems and as a vessel to give shape and meaning to these very systems. The following course proposes to study the interdependence between the novelistic and philosophical enterprises of these authors in order to explore fundamental questions tied to knowledge, identity, and justice. Taught in French. Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Robison.
FREN 057Bande dessinée, nouvelle Manga et romans graphiques1
The bande dessinée, the Francophone analog to comics, has evolved alongside contemporary youth culture to become a locus for expressions of sociocultural and aesthetic changes, as well as antiestablishment discourses. In the context of issues such as social class, cultural diversity, and feminity/masculinity, this course will connect canonical comics (such as Asterix and Tintin) with more current cutting-edge forms including la nouvelle Manga and graphic novels from Rwanda, Algeria, Lebanon and Iran. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for FMST, GSST
FREN 059Extraterrestres, robots, monstres: La Science-fiction française et le posthumanisme1
The present course is anchored in a series of encounters with the types of radical Others made possible through science fiction. From Moon dwellers to robots, from deep sea monsters to interdimensional organisms, the beings found within this course’s syllabus speak to a complex posthumanism underlying the rich history of French science fiction. Throughout the semester, we will board 17 th -century rockets, 19 th -century submarines, and 20 th -century gliders as we explore questions tied to the nature of consciousness, ecological disaster, techno-dystopia, and encounters with (and empathy for) alterity. Particular attention will be paid to the merveilleux scientifique of J.-H. Rosny (whose Xipéhuz and Moedigen are among the most unique of all sci-fi creatures), as well as to the proto-steampunk of Jules Verne-additional texts (and/or excerpts of texts) by: Cyrano de Bergerac, Voltaire, Auguste de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Louise Michel, Camille Flammarion, Ágota Kristóf, among others. Humanities. 1 credit.
FREN 070Writing and Screening the Nation: A Comparative Perspective1
(Cross-listed as GMST 070 , CPLT 070 ) This course explores the continued relevance and resonance of the First and Second World War across European cultural productions, be they literary, cinematic or graphics works. More specifically, through a comparative lens of mostly French and German works, we investigate how these works participate in the formation and re-shaping of national and transnational memories: the relationship between what disappears, what remains, and what re-emerges in that process. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL
LITR 070F The following course offers a critical examination of the central ideas guiding the French Enlightenment, paying particularly close attention to the notion of “otherness” underlying the Enlightenment project, that is, that which is facilely left out in the eighteenth century’s valorization of reason. In opposition to the Enlightenment idea of the rational man is the irrational animal, a binary that materialist thinkers like La Mettrie and Condillac are quick to blur; in opposition to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (the crowning civil rights document from the French Revolution) is Olympe de Gouges’ Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, a text that criticizes eighteenth-century gender inequalities; in opposition to the Enlightenment’s enormous blind spots around race is Claire de Duras’ Ourika, a novel that decries the pervasive racism of the eighteenth century. Throughout the semester, we will study the novels, essays, and dialogues that shape the major ideas of the Enlightenment, while also paying particular attention to that which lies in the shadow of the Enlightenment. Authors include: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Condillac, La Mettrie, Graffigny, Gouges, Sade, Duras. Humanities. 1 credit. Spring 2027. Robison.
FREN 071Frictions: Francophone Literature from the Arab World1
We will examine novels from the Arab World, written in French, in order to explore and question francophone literature's ability to reflect, bolster, and interrogate the postcolonial nation. We will discuss (1) evolving notions of diglossia, Francophonie and world literature, and the role that French has come to play in voicing socio-cultural dissatisfaction, (2) how the changing realities of transnational migration challenge the postcolonial nation-state, (3) and the extent to which oppositional discourses run the risk of being commodified and participate in the ‘postcolonial exotic.’ Readings will be drawn from across the Maghreb, with particular attention paid to new voices that were catalyzed by periods of political unrest, including the Algerian war of Liberation, its decade-long civil war, the “Lead years” in Morocco and the 2011 Tunisian revolution. Taught in English. Humanities. 1 credit.
FREN 072The French Novel in Translation: Balzac, Flaubert, Proust1
(Cross-listed as LITR 072F ) This course is designed to provide students with a broad knowledge of French literature, from before the Revolution to the present. Among the authors included on the syllabus are: Molière, Voltaire, Balzac, Baudelaire, Proust, Camus and Sartre. Students will read works in their entirety, discuss their significance in class, and listen to short lectures to situate the readings in a historical and cultural context. There is a 0.5 credit French Attachment for students reading in French ( FREN 072A ). Humanities. 1 credit.
FREN 072AAttachment: The French Novel in Translation: Balzac, Flaubert, Proust0.5
This course is designed to provide students with a broad knowledge of French literature, from before the Revolution to the present. Among the authors included on the syllabus are: Molière, Voltaire, Balzac, Baudelaire, Proust, Camus and Sartre. Students will read works in their entirety, discuss their significance in class, and listen to short lectures to situate the readings in a historical and cultural context. 0.5 credit.
Crosslisted with LITR 073F and FMST 052 . This course is an in-depth exploration of the development and evolution of the French New Wave in postwar France. We will concentrate on the history of the New Wave in France from the 1950s through the late 1960s by the close study of the styles of individual filmmakers, the “film movement” as perceived by critics, and the New Wave’s contribution to modernizing France. The primary emphasis will be on the stylistic, socio-political, and cultural dimensions of the New Wave, and the filmmakers and critics most closely associated with the movement. Directors who were once all film critics for the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma will be studied along side other important filmmakers of the era. Taught in English. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-paired
(Cross-listed as LITR 074F ) The following course offers a critical examination of the central ideas guiding the French Enlightenment, paying particularly close attention to the notion of “otherness” underlying the Enlightenment project-that is, that which is facilely left out in the eighteenth century’s valorization of reason. In opposition to the Enlightenment idea of the rational man is the irrational animal, a binary that materialist thinkers like La Mettrie and Condillac are quick to blur; in opposition to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (the crowning civil rights document from the French Revolution) is Olympe de Gouges’ Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen , a text that criticizes eighteenth-century gender inequalities; in opposition to the Enlightenment’s enormous blind spots surrounding race is Claire de Duras’ Ourika , a novel that decries the pervasive racism of the eighteenth century. Throughout the semester, we will study the novels, essays, and dialogues that shape the major ideas of the Enlightenment (and the revolutionary modes of thinking that accompany it), while also studying that which lies in the shadow of the Enlightenment. Authors include: Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Condillac, La Mettrie, Gouges, Duras. (Conducted in English. Texts in translation.) Students with knowledge of French may read the works in the original. There is a 0.5 credit French Attachment FREN 074A for students reading in French. Humanities. 1 credit.
FREN 075Witness Draw Resist: Representing Peace and Justice in Comics1
Crosslisted with LITR 075F Witness Draw Resist is a new course that examines the use of modern fictional and nonfiction comics and graphic novels to represent critical conflicts in recent history, including the Holocaust, the Iranian Revolution, the Israelo-Palestinian Conflict, the 1982 and 2006 Lebanon Wars, the Rwandan genocide, and the ongoing “refugee crisis.” This course introduces students to the theory and methodology of comics analysis in conjunction with their role in memorial and democratic praxes, whether to bear witness, teach on socio-political issues, promote human rights or serve advocacy groups. We’ll also explore current debates on the depiction of traumatic history through this highly commercial medium-traditionally associated with lighter content, and the extent to which these graphic works may help understand crises in a new light. Course is taught in English. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for FREN.
FREN 076Beyond the Boulevards: The Black Atlantic in the City of Light1
(Cross-listed with BLST 076 ) Paris, the “Colonial Metropolis” is known for its wide, tree-lined Haussmannian boulevards punctuated by off-white limestone buildings. How did the City of Light become the “second home” for the African diaspora in the Transatlantic world? This seminar explores how the Paname not just as a French capital, but as a crucial rhizomatic node in the Black Atlantic became a site where African, American, and Caribbean identities collided and transformed creating a distinctly modern/post-modern expression. From the jazz-soaked nights of 1920’s Montmartre to the contemporary hip-hop scenes in the Louvre expressed in visual culture, we will explore how Black artists used “the view from another shore” to redefine freedom and citizenship. Students will master the art of academic writing through iterative drafts, close-reading/viewing workshops, and an original research project on the intersection of race, space, nationality, and cultural memory in the past and present from Josephine Baker, Beyoncé, to Aya Nakamura and beyond. Taught in English. W course. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Fall 2026. Smith.
This course explores the way youth cultures are represented in French and Francophone cinema and literature and the dynamic relationship that these youth have to the forces they resist. In this class, you will work on developing ways to speak and write critically about youth cultures across the Francophonie. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-core Fall 2027 Yervasi.
This advanced course will explore the ways in which literary, visual and cultural representations of sexual difference and gender roles disrupt the cultural imagination of everyday life in North Africa and its Diasporas in France. Special attention will be given to representations of Arab women and queer subjectivities as sites of resistance against dominant masculinity. We will analyze the ways in which representations of gender have allowed for a redeployment of power, a reconfiguration of politics of resistance, and the redrawing of longstanding images of Islam in France. Finally, we will question how creations in French that straddle competing cultural traditions, memories, and material conditions can queer citizenship. In French. This advanced course (along with an optional attachment) is suitable as an Honors preparation. Eligible for BLST and GSST.
Advanced content course or instructor’s approval. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ISLM, GSST Fall 2026. Gueydan-Turek. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 091Senior Capstone (W course)1
This course will be dedicated to discussions of the various topics chosen by majors and minors for their research paper. Although this course is required of French/Francophone majors and minors, it is open to other advanced students. Humanities. Writing course. 1 credit. Spring 2027. Robison. Spring 2028 Smith.
FREN 104Honors Seminar: La littérature et les sciences de la vie au 19e siècle2
This course will explore the 19th-century French novel’s manifold engagement with contemporaneous life sciences in order to track how the literary practices of the period were shaped by the century’s rapidly shifting biological paradigms. The course material is threefold: 1) it will consider primary sources of 19-century life sciences (from Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck’s early evolutionary model of transformism, to Claude Bernard’s experimental physiology, to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection); 2) it will draw from a collection of novelists, all of whom made extensive implicit and explicit references to the sciences of their day (texts by Saint-Pierre, Sand, Balzac, Zola, Rachilde, and Flaubert); and 3) it will rely upon a wide range of critical lenses coming from present-day scholarship in ecocriticism/ecofeminism, animal studies, postmodern philosophy, and critical histories of science (excerpts of texts by Foucault, Deleuze, Haraway, Latour, Thiher, and Weil). Taught in French.
Advanced content course in French or instructor’s approval. Humanities. 2 credits. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 106La Modernité2
In this course, we will examine poetry of modernity and the city. We will examine how the city’s complexities–its development, cultures, revolutions, and inhabitants–contribute to a poetic vision that is reflected in the texts of 19th- and 20th-century major and minor writers of the French-speaking world. Poets include Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and the Surrealists, among others. This course can be taken for 1 credit. Humanities. 2 credits.
This course addresses how the colonial encounter has shaped modern perceptions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality through the production, circulation and consumption of deformed images of its colonial subjects. From noble savages and whimpering slaves to hideous monsters and seductive harem girls, we will examine the dynamics of representation embedded in colonial narrations and visual constructions of the “Other,” focusing on conceptualizations of power as they relate to race, sexual politics and the gendering of the colonial subject. Primary texts include literature of the slave trade, orientalist fictions and photographs, colonial films, museum exhibitions and world’s fairs, and contemporary works of fiction that deal with the legacy and sometimes continue the colonial desire. Has a Francophone component. May be taken for 1 credit with permission from the instructor. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for BLST, ISLM, GSST, GLBL - Paired
This seminar is designed to acquaint students with the major works of Molière and 17th-century culture. We will investigate: Molière’s political relationship with Louis XIV at Versailles, the discourse of early modern feminism of the précieuses and the femmes savantes; the critique of religious hypocrisy, and the influence of early modern notions of anthropology, notably medicine, on Molière’s notions of selfhood. These aspects will be brought forward through close attention to the poetics of comedy and the art of the comedian. Humanities. 2 credits.
FREN 115Honors Seminar: Representations of Blackness in Francophone2
(Cross-listed as BLST 115 ) What is blackness in France? How can it exist as a category (whether real or imagined) in a space where race technically does not exist? In this course we will explore these questions through a close consideration of the cultural production including literature, visual art, history, culture, and politics emanating from or dealing with ‘Black France’. The texts presented/examined in this course will consider “race” as both fact and fantasy in socio-historical relationship between the metropolitan France, its DOM-TOM periphery and the wider French colonial empire. Taught in French.
Advanced content course in French or instructor’s approval. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for BLST, GLBL-core. Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
FREN 116La Pensée géographique2
Cartography, psychogeography, rhizomes, and so much more! How and why do philosophical and critical thinkers rely on spatial and geographical metaphors to work through some of their more complex ideas? How might some of these metaphors become models for understanding and analyzing literary and filmic texts? In this course, we will explore some of the central ideas behind this spatial turn in theory and criticism in conjunction with the study of French and Francophone texts: from medieval explorers and maps of early France and French empire to films across the Francophonie to Situationism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism. Seminar will be conducted in French. May be taken for 1 credit with permission of the instructor. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for INTP, GLBL-paired
Reading prose or poetry has powerful effects on how the human brain functions. Through authors such as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Proust, and Nathalie Sarraute, we will study modernist poetics to appreciate materially the healing and emancipatory potential of literature, notably with regard to issues of trauma, identity formation, and embodiment. Humanities. 2 credits.
