Courses 2019-20 French

Fall 2019 French Courses

FRENCH 6160-01: TRANSLATION THEORY & PRACTICE

Translation Theory and Practice is a seminar and practicum course designed for undergraduate and graduate students who already have a good command of French, but need to refine their writing skills and perform at an advanced level. The course will provide the students with numerous and diverse opportunities to achieve this goal, through an approach combining the methodology and practice of the art of translation – from the sentence to the discourse level and from basic translation units to complex textual structures.

Instructor: Annette Sojic.

FRENCH 6210-01: HISTORY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE

This course retraces the history of the French language from its Indo-European roots to its contemporary varieties across the world. It focuses both on the external history of the French language, that is, on the historical circumstances that have influenced the evolution of the language, and as on the internal history of the language, that is, on the evolution of its linguistic features. This course also serves as an introduction to Old French, providing students with the fundamental linguistic characteristics of Old French as well as practice in reading and interpreting texts written in Old French.

Instructor: Charles Mignot.

FRENCH 6810-01: FRONTIÈRES ET ESPACES

Instructor: Jean Bidima.

FREN 6820-01: STAGING NATURE

What is Nature? What nature, and what science, make it to the stage? What roles does the stage in turn offer to the various actors of nature, not only human actors? This course explores historical stagings of nature and natural history, human and biodiversity, considering the stage not only as a place for timeless reflection on nature, but also as a timely, opinion-shaping arena, and performance as a site for creation and experimentation with bodies.

Students will learn to think about the cultural history of performance, and the natural history of diversity and bio-diversity that accompanied it, and engage in current debates around the performativity of race and gender.

Instructor: Felicia McCarren.

FREN 7800-01: LITERATURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY

This course explores some of the ways in which literature and photography have influenced each other from the 19th century to the present. We will examine how Francophone writers have incorporated or rejected photography in their texts, and how the ubiquity of photography has prompted literature to redefine its forms and functions.

Instructor: Oana Sabo.