How and why was Impressionism invented in Paris in the early 1870s, and why does it still matter today? This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition, celebrated by a new exhibition, Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism at the Musée d' Orsay and the National Gallery of Art. A trip to see this show in Washington will ground our investigation into the social conditions, geographies, and ideologies that informed this radical new way of painting. Readings will include primary sources alongside brand new and classic scholarship on the Impressionist avant-garde.

Through a comparative focus on the concepts of dialectic and difference, we read some of the formative theoretical, critical and philosophical works which continue to inform interdisciplinary critical theory today. Works by Lukács, Adorno, Jameson, Freud, Heidegger, Husserl, Derrida, Arendt, de Man and Benjamin are included among the texts we read.

This class develops the basic structures and vocabulary for understanding, speaking, writing, and reading in French. Classroom activities foster communication and cultural competence through comprehension and grammar exercises, skits, conversation and the use of a variety of audio-visual materials.

This course is a continuation of FRE 101 and is designed to promote proficiency through speaking, listening, and writing. Classroom activities include videos, films, small group work and a task-based approach to grammar. Graded work consists of 4 exams, 2 compositions with rewrites, an oral presentation, and a final project.

FRE 103 is an intensive beginning and intermediate language course designed for students who have already studied French (typically no more than 2-3 years). Covering in one semester the material presented in FRE 101 and FRE 102, this course prepares students to take FRE 107 the following semester. FRE 103 is designed to develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in French in a cultural context using authentic materials. Classroom activities include comprehension and grammar exercises, conversation, skits, and working with a variety of audio-visual and online materials.

The main objective of this course is to develop your listening, speaking and writing skills, while allowing you to explore contemporary French-speaking societies. It offers a thorough review of French grammar and a wide range of communicative activities chosen to improve proficiency and give practice of newly acquired linguistic material. The course will build your confidence in French while giving you a foundation for the understanding of French-speaking cultures and exposing you to their rich literary and artistic productions. A wide range of authentic material will be offered, including films.

The main objective of this course is to examine what it means to communicate in a foreign language while helping students strengthen their linguistic skills and gain transcultural and translingual competence. Students will reflect on differences in meaning through the study of diverse cultural modules, including politics, art, current events, migration, and French and Francophone literary texts and films.

FRE 108 is an intermediate to advanced class that will take you on a journey through various periods of French/Francophone history and culture and offer an opportunity to reflect on important questions at the center of contemporary debates. Examples include: the role of the State, urbanism, pandemics and ecology, healthcare, education, race and identity. We have selected a wide variety of materials (films, videos, newspaper articles, literary texts, etc.), so you will develop your ability to communicate and write on a wide range of topics in French and gain understanding of French and francophone cultures and societies.

This interdisciplinary, discussion-based course takes you on a journey into the supernatural while improving your fluency in French. It provides a broad survey of genres and mediums, including fairy tales, utopias, comics, science fiction, and films. Exploring the boundaries between reality and imagination, we will examine works by authors such as Perrault, Maupassant, Chamoiseau, Hergé, Ibrahima Sall, Voltaire, Chris Marker, and Coline Serreau. Through the study of language and the analysis of cultural material, the course will give you a deeper understanding of Francophone societies and strengthen your oral, writing and analytical skills.

This course is a discussion-based seminar, taught entirely in French, integrating cultural and linguistic learning. We will explore the Francophone world, examining a wide range of topics and issues and interacting with guest speakers from the regions studied. The course will provide intensive language practice, with an emphasis on the acquisition of a rich lexical base for social, economic, political and cultural topics and consolidation of grammatical foundations. Topics will vary from semester to semester and may include environmental, educational, health, social, cultural and political issues as well as aesthetic considerations.

FRE/THR 211 will offer students the opportunity to put their language skills in motion by exploring French theater and acting in French. The course will introduce students to acting techniques while allowing them to discover the richness of the French dramatic canon. Particular emphasis will be placed on improving students' speaking skills through pronunciation and diction exercises. At the end of the semester, the course will culminate in the presentation of the students' work.

An intensive discussion-based seminar, designed to integrate linguistic and cultural learning. We will examine contemporary debates on important cultural, social and political issues, allowing you to gain enhanced cultural understanding and knowledge while honing your skills. Topics include the promises of the "Thirty Glorious Years", the social transformations of the sixties and seventies (family life, women's rights, etc.); as well as the challenges brought by the post-colonial period and globalization: immigration, social exclusion and inequalities, rise of the far-right nationalism, problems in the "banlieues" and debates on secularism.

The City of Light beckons. Beyond the myth, however, this course proposes to look at the real sides and "lives" of Paris. Focusing on the modern and contemporary period, we will study Paris as an urban space, an object of representation, and part of French cultural identity. To do so, we will use an interdisciplinary approach, through literature, history, sociology, art history, architecture, etc. And to deepen our understanding, we will actually travel to Paris. During Fall Break (Oct. 11-19), students will not only (re)visit the city, but also meet guest speakers and conduct personal projects they will have designed in Princeton.

This course focuses on developments of the past thirty years in French and francophone literature (the francophone component including Martinique, Guadeloupe, Senegal, Canada, and Vietnam). It examines especially-in contexts informed by issues of class, gender, race, migration, and generation-multiple ways in which a self is constituted and evolves in relation to other selves, to groups, and to history. The texts to be read include both fiction and nonfiction of an autobiographical inflection. Emphasis will be placed not only on substantive relational questions but also on the formal literary resources of which these authors make use.

This course will explore classic French and Francophone cinema from Meliès and Lumière to the Nouvelle Vague. Directors to include Vigo, Renoir, Godard, Truffaut, Rouch, Varda, and Djibril Diop Mambety. The course will investigate both the specific cinematic languages developed by these various directors, as well as the historical and political context in which these films developed.

Through multidisciplinary, multimodal creative writing, and project-based assignments, FRE 306 will explore the intersections of travel narratives with utopian thoughts and their philosophical and aesthetic implications. Travelogues offer images of otherness, yet in utopian discourses otherness is suppressed in the name of equality. How are concepts such as diversity, equity and inclusion problematized in this context? FRE 306 will tackle this question by studying works across different genres and periods, exploring issues such as race, gender, migration and ecology while reinforcing their linguistic, creative and critical skills.

Filmmaking was always inspired by different kinds of texts (scripts, plays, novels, comics...) while raising crucial questions: Why retell a story that is already well-known? What makes a good adaptation? How faithful should it be? When does it become appropriation? Engaging comparatively with the texts and their cinematic transformations, we will examine the limits and possibilities of adaptation as an art through a wide range of genres and topics (social class, humor, love, homosexuality, intercultural relations, racism, colonialism, art...) and cultures from different countries (Canada, France, Japan, Morocco, Senegal).

Throughout early modern Europe, and in France in particular, literary, and linguistic reinvention coincided with, and was perhaps inextricable from, the beginnings of European global imperialism and nationalism. This course serves as an introduction to the development, politics, and aesthetics of early modern French literary practices as they are contextualized in this global colonial history. By examining a number of early modern texts of a variety of genres-travel narratives, linguistic manifestoes, poetry, dialogues, and essays-this course will explore interconnections between the development of the French language and imperialism.

This course will study a selection of the writings of Aimé Césaire, a towering figure of the 20th century in poetry, theatre, and postcolonial critique and politics. Césaire's poetry is arguably the most accomplished oeuvre of any anticolonial poet of the century, and a pinnacle of modernist French poetry tout court. Similarly, Césaire's theatrical works are outstanding moments in the creation of a theatre of decolonization, while his celebrated critical pieces, such as the "Discours sur le colonialisme", articulate the ethical and political grounds for the struggle to end colonialism.

This course explores the first century of encounters between France and the Americas. Taking Montaigne's landmark essay "On Cannibals" as our guide, we weigh the devastating impact of European conquest on indigenous American peoples and cultures; we consider how the apparent "discovery" of a "new world" shook the foundations of European knowledge; and we ask what new ethical demands and political possibilities emerge as the legacy of this encounter. We read early modern travel narratives and political philosophy alongside contemporary decolonial theory, and we examine the afterlife Montaigne's "cannibals" in works by Shakespeare and Césaire.

Each new technology generates its own set of apprehensions, expressed through opinion pieces, literature, film, art, and public debates. This course surveys fearful responses to technologies such as print, electricity, radio, telegraph, telephone, photography, robots and automatons, the automobile, chemical warfare, the atom bomb, cloning, drones, IVF and technologies of reproduction, GMOs, mechanization, surveillance technologies, cell phones, the Minitel and Internet, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, etc. What patterns can be found in these fears? How have writers and artists channeled these in their work?

This course dives into the richness of French-language literature and culture from different genres and time periods. The focus will be on textual analysis and translation, with additional forays in "reading" other cultural material such as film. In addition to close and far reading, students will receive practical training in translation, archival research, and digital humanities. We will also explore a variety of theoretical frameworks students may apply to their own research projects, such as semiotics, media studies, postcolonial studies and environmental humanities.

A multisensory history of the French language. To foster discussions on the cultural, musical, literary, and epistemological relevance of producing historical linguistic knowledge, we will review the documents and monuments of the history of French, once a regional variation of Latin that turned into a global language. Our overview will include examples such as the spelling "errors" of the Latin graffiti of Pompeii, medieval French poems written in Hebrew script, plurals in "-aux", linguistic innovation in literature from Québec, Martinique, and Maghreb, and contemporary debates on Franco-Malian artist Aya Nakamura's songs.

What do novels teach? And can novels be taught? The age of the novel is also the age of education, with the gradual advent of mass literacy, universal education, and democratic citizenship. How does the novel track, chart, reinforce, subvert, and perform the pedagogy of the modern citizen? From Rousseau's Émile to the Nouvelle Éducation (20C), via Guizot, the 1848 Republic, the Commune, and the Ferry laws, reformers of various stripes pinned their hopes for a new society on education. Reading novels and pedagogical texts side by side, we look at the tangled (hi)stories of education and citizenship and ask what role literature has played.

This trans-historical course looks into three moments (antiquity, 16th c., and 19th-20th c.) to explore the connections between lyricism and same sex desire. With Sappho and her reception as a starting point, the readings and discussions focus on the poetry of the Pleiade and then modernist poetry from Baudelaire and after. Together with the cultural context regarding gender and sexuality, the course approaches lyricism's expression of the self in relation to an exploration and questioning of one's gender and sexuality, but also the lyric as the privileged genre for expressing socially non-normative desires and positions.

This course examines the four great forces haunting the literatures of the Americas: the Amerindian genocide and the slave trade; the slave plantation; the sudden growth of cities; globalization. It explores the processes of creation as well as the literary and theoretical works to which they have given rise, and includes consideration of works from the plastic arts, photography, and film. Among the many topics to be broached: the nature and effects of historical trauma; creolization; the folktale and its teller; the Caribbean archipelago; contemporary migration; the view of the landscape.

The goal of this seminar is to provide first-year graduate students with a formal introduction to the Department's curriculum and requirements, through practical training in the various methods of research and scholarly activities and productions. It also familiarizes students with fundamental theoretical texts and approaches to a variety of critical fields pertaining to French studies. Finally, it offers concrete outlooks on their professional future by showcasing ways of optimizing their career prospects in the realm of academia, but also in other domains.