Marc Bizer

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Description

Today, thanks to journalists such as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) but also Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food), eating is recognized as an integral (and problematic) part of national and individual identity. This seminar will focus on the relationship between eating, hunger, and identity by looking at modern non-fictional as well as literary and filmic accounts of eating, fasting, and starving. The course will be divided into three sections: politics, poetics, and culture. In the politics section of the course, we will study the physiological and political dimensions of hunger: first how hunger affects the body, and then how starvation can be a result of marginalization, exploitation, and victimization, both nationally and internationally. In the poetics part, we will read works where eating, hunger and fasting are acts of self-definition and revolt. The last portion of the course, devoted to cultural questions, will use filmic representations of eating and hunger to stimulate discussion about the ways in which they are conditioned by cultural and national identities. Discussion throughout the course will be complemented by whole-class volunteer visits at the Capitol Area Food Bank, a local soup kitchen, sustainable farm, etc.

Required Texts

For part I (politics), we will read Russell’s Hunger: An Unnatural History, and a variety of texts highlighting different key aspects of the politics of hunger. For part II (poetics), we will read Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” and “The Metamorphosis,” Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, and Amélie Nothomb’s The Life of Hunger (changes possible).The films viewed and discussed in part III (culture) will be chosen by the students, except for one chosen by the instructor as a special surprise.

Course Requirements

Students write 2 short papers (4-5 pages each 15% and 20%; a research paper on an aspect of a work read in the first part of the course and a literary analysis of a work from the second). Throughout the course, students will keep a journal (25%) composed of one-page writings on at least six reading/viewing assignments. During the third part of the course, students will work in teams to organize a film festival and will be responsible for animating discussion on the films viewed. Participation will count for 40% of the final grade, since it will consist not only of regular participation in class discussions, the volunteer blog, but also of an oral report on one of the reading assignments.

Representing Difference in France, Middle Ages to the Present

In this course we will be looking at cultural documents (texts, films) covering the Middle Ages through the 21^st century in order to examine the representations of groups in France whose shared religion, ethnicity, social class, and gender makes them seem fundamentally different from more dominant counterparts. We will study how the marginalized are seen by the dominant group (from without) but also how the dominant group(s) are seen by the marginalized (from within), along with self-representations of the marginalized. The goal will be to arrive at a better understanding of the different purposes that these representations serve: marginalization and oppression to be sure, but also self-satire and identity formation.

The course will be divided thematically into 3 major sections:

1. Representing Islam
2. Artists vs. Bourgeois
3. Feminisms

Student outcomes:

1. Students will be able to analyze and demonstrate how religion, ethnicity, social class, and gender  are represented across different historical periods, from the Middle Ages to the present.
2. Students will be able to demonstrate how these representations reflect historical and cultural changes.
3. Students will be able to complete all of the above activities at an Advanced-Low level on the ACTFL proficiency scale

Readings :

La Chanson de Roland

Louise Labé, Œuvres poétiques (selected poems)

Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

Montesquieu, Les Lettres persanes (excerpts)

Duras, Ourika

Flaubert, “Un cœur simple”

Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième sexe (excerpts)

Guène, Kiffe kiffe demain

Films : "Le Grain et le mulet," "La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille," "L’Une chante, l’autre pas"

FR 325E : Crisis and Conflict, 1100-1700 

Course Description

This course will be taught in French

In this course we will look at a variety of conflicts: between Christians and Muslims or French and “Others,” Bourgeois and Artists, Men and Women, the Individual and Society, but also between periods, such as the Renaissance vs. the Middle Ages

At the same time, the course will offer an introduction to important texts, literary traditions and genres during this time period; students will acquire techniques of close literary analysis through historical and cultural contextualization, in particular the practice of the explication de texte. Much learning in the course will take place through small group work (in breakout rooms) and discussion.

We will use the latest online tools and techniques to make your online experience as engaging and instructional as possible.

Readings (provisional)

La Chanson de Roland

Le Roman de Renard

La Farce du Maître Pathelin

François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (excerpts)

Louise Labé, selected sonnets

Du Bellay, Regrets

Ronsard, selected poems

Montaigne, De l’amitié

Molière, Le Misanthrope

Jean Racine, Phèdre (+ film)

Pascal, Pensées

La Fontaine, Fables

Montesquieu, Les Lettres persanes

Grading Policy

Participation on Perusall (and on Zoom, if possible) 20%

Intervention 5%

Quizzes 10%

Papers (2 x 15%) 30%

Exams  (10%, 10%, 15%) 35%

This course deals with the representation of difference (gender, religious, cultural, political, economic, social) in literature. How does the language used to describe characters of differing identities influence our interpretation of these characters?

In this seminar we will attempt to grasp key features of “tragedy” and the tragic in the West by reading not only plays, but epics, romances, novellas, and histoires tragiques across Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and English literature from earlier periods in order to gain a sense of the original possibilities of the genre. In this seminar we will examine how tragedies represent various types of conflict involving gender, the resistance to authority, free will vs. determinism, clemency and revenge, but also how these representations mediate history. The goal will be to see whether and in what form tragedy is possible in the modern era.

Fall 2019

FR 325D : Self and Society

Course Description

This course will be taught in French

According to a well-accepted yet controversial account, the social types or masks associated with medieval culture gradually gave way to the individual during the early modern period. In this course we will sample a wide variety of texts from the Middle Ages to the present; we will analyze how the appearance of the self is conditioned by social class (such as aristocracy and bourgeois society) but also by and within genres (such as lyric poetry, romance, the essay, comedy, the novel, film). In so doing we will see that while the self initially emerges in response to various social pressures, eventually experiencing radical aloneness, in most recent times, as social media have demonstrated, technological progress greatly augments social pressures that threaten to submerge it.

Students will practice techniques of close literary analysis through historical and cultural contextualization, in particular the practice of the explication de texte. Much learning in the course will take place through small group work and discussion.

Readings (provisional) 

Selection of Medieval and early modern French poetry

(Christine de Pisan, Charles d’Orléans, Joachim du Bellay, Louise Labé)

François Rabelais, Gargantua,Thélème, Tiers livre(extraits)

Michel de Montaigne, “De l’expérience”

Molière, Le Misanthrope

Pascal, Trois discours sur la condition des grands

Graffigny, Lettres d’une Péruvienne

Chateaubriand, René

Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (selections)

Proust, Combray

Alain Resnais et Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima Mon Amour

Michel Houellebecq, La Possibilité d’une île

Grading Policy

Class Participation                              15%

Discussions/exercises on Canvas       10%

Two 3-4 page papers  (2 x 20%)        40%

Exams  (15%, 20%)                            35%

Course Description:

Today, thanks to journalists such as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) but also Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food), eating is recognized as an integral (and problematic) part of national and individual identity. This seminar will focus on the relationship between eating, hunger, and identity by looking at modern non-fictional as well as literary and filmic accounts of eating, fasting, and starving. The course will be divided into three sections: politics, poetics, and culture. In the politics section of the course, we will study the physiological and political dimensions of hunger: first how hunger affects the body, and then how starvation can be a result of marginalization, exploitation, and victimization. In the poetics part, we will read works where eating, hunger and fasting are acts of self-definition and revolt. The last portion of the course, devoted to cultural questions, will use filmic representations of eating and hunger to generate discussion about the ways in which they are conditioned by cultural and national identities. Discussion throughout the course will be enriched by a whole-class volunteer project at the Capitol Area Food Bank, a local soup kitchen, sustainable farm, etc.

Course Requirements:

Students write 2 short papers (4-5 pages each 15% and 20%; a research paper on an aspect of a work read in the first part of the course and a literary analysis of a work from the second). Throughout the course, students will keep a journal (25%) composed of one-page writings on at least six reading/viewing assignments. During the third part of the course, students will work in teams to organize a film festival and will be responsible for animating discussion on the films viewed. Participation will count for 40% of the final grade, since it will consist not only of regular participation in class discussions, the volunteer blog, but also of an oral report on one of the reading assignments.

Texts (subject to change):

For part I (politics), we will read Russell’s Hunger: An Unnatural History, and a variety of texts highlighting different key aspects of the politics of hunger. For part II (poetics), we will read Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” and “The Metamorphosis,” Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, and Amélie Nothomb’s The Life of Hunger(changes possible). The films viewed and discussed in part III (culture) will be chosen by the students, except for one chosen by the instructor as a special surprise.

About the Professor:

Marc Bizer is professor of French literature at the University of Texas at Austin and a specialist of sixteenth-century French literature which includes some notable scenes of gluttony. His third book analyzes the political uses of Homer in Renaissance France. In his free time, he is an avid movie-watcher and a bit of a computer geek. He has very active and articulate boy/girl twins, currently nine years old, who have been spending the spring attending elementary school in Montpellier, France.

Course Description:

French for Graduate Students in Other Departments has as its fundamental goal to help graduate students meet the foreign language requirements of their individual departments. Yet in terms of specific course outcomes, French for Graduate Students in Other Departments is designed to instruct students to read French at an advanced level. By “read” is meant being able to comprehend successfully and translate accurately academic texts that are typical in the student's field of study.

There are no prerequisites for this course, but it goes without saying that some prior knowledge of French or the experience and study of foreign languages will facilitate the learning process.

Required texts: Sandberg and Tatham, French for Reading

Class Work:

Class work consists of preparing the assigned grammar/reading/translations. There will be frequent quizzes. Mastery of the material will also be verified by two exams consisting of grammatical and reading comprehension questions and translations: a midterm and an exam given on the last day of class. Dictionaries are permitted on the exams (but not the quizzes). Finally, so that students will have a chance to work on French-language material in their own area of interest or specialty, all students must complete a translation project that will be due on the second to last day of class. 

Grading:

The final grade, calculated on a credit/no credit basis, will be broken down as follows:

Attendance/Participation:         10%
Quizzes                                   10%
2 exams (20% & 30%)            50%
Translation Project                  30%

Course Description:

French for Graduate Students in Other Departments has as its fundamental goal to help graduate students meet the foreign language requirements of their individual departments. Yet in terms of specific course outcomes, French for Graduate Students in Other Departments is designed to instruct students to read French at an advanced level. By “read” is meant being able to comprehend successfully and translate accurately academic texts that are typical in the student's field of study.

There are no prerequisites for this course, but it goes without saying that some prior knowledge of French or the experience and study of foreign languages will facilitate the learning process.

Required texts: Sandberg and Tatham, French for Reading

Class Work:

Class work consists of preparing the assigned grammar/reading/translations. There will be frequent quizzes. Mastery of the material will also be verified by two exams consisting of grammatical and reading comprehension questions and translations: a midterm and an exam given on the last day of class. Dictionaries are permitted on the exams (but not the quizzes). Finally, so that students will have a chance to work on French-language material in their own area of interest or specialty, all students must complete a translation project that will be due on the second to last day of class. 

Grading:

The final grade, calculated on a credit/no credit basis, will be broken down as follows:

Attendance/Participation:         10%
Quizzes                                   10%
2 exams (20% & 30%)            50%
Translation Project                  30%

Spring 2018

FR 326K : Introduction to French Literature I

Course Description

This course will be taught in French

This course will familiarize you with the important texts, literary traditions, and genres of French literature from its beginnings to the 18^th century; it will also teach you the techniques of close literary analysis through historical and cultural contextualization, in particular the practice of the explication de texte. Much learning in the course will take place through small group work and discussion.

In addition, here are some of the fun things you will learn:

1. Which religion started the idea of holy war
2. Where theater comes from
3. How early capitalism contributed to the emergence of the individual
4. When critical thinking and scientific observation start to appear (hint: well before the Enlightenment!)
5. Which French writer is the ancestor of bloggers
6. When science supports faith and when they start to conflict
7. Which French cultural undertaking is the ancestor of Wikipedia
8. And much, much more!

Readings

Littérature française: Textes et contextes, Tome I, R.-J. Berg

Racine, Phèdre

Course packet (on Canvas and at GSB)

Grading Policy

Class Participation                               15%

Quizzes                                               10%

Discussions/exercises on Canvas        10%

Two 3-4 page papers   (2 x 15%)        30%

Exams  (10%, 10%, 15%)                   35%

FR 326L: Introduction to French Literature II

Course Description

This course will be taught in French and carries the Global Cultures flag

In this course we will study French and Francophone literature from 1750 to the present. Through our readings we will examine the aesthetics, thematics, and politics of literary movements from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, Existentialism, Negritude and Post-Colonialism. The reading list includes novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and film.

Readings (subject to modification)

Rousseau, Rêveries du promeneur solitaire

Duras, Ourika

Balzac, Sarrasine

Flaubert, "Un cœur simple"

Proust, Combray (excerpts)

Sartre, Huis Clos

Camus, L’Exil et le royaume

Duras, Hiroshima Mon Amour

Pineau, Un papillon dans la cité

Selected poetry

Course Requirements

Each student will be required to come to every meeting fully prepared to discuss the assigned readings. Class participation will account for 15% of the final grade. Quizzes and other in-class exercises count for 10%. There will be two papers, one of which will be an explication de texte, amounting to 30% of the grade. There will also be three exams, totaling 45% of the grade.

Grading Policy

Class participation:      10%

Group presentations    10%

Quizzes:                      5%

Two 5-page papers:     30% (15% & 15%)

Exams:                         45% (20% & 25%)

FR358

Literature and Gastronomy

This course is designed as an introduction to the history of gastronomy in France, from the Middle Ages through the 20^th century, as seen through the lens of literary and culinary texts. In so doing we will pay close attention to how culinary discourses reflect not only social norms and identities, but also ideologies of subjugation and manipulation involving gender, class, and ethnicity. Last but not least, everyone will be required to prepare French recipes from different periods and cook!

Note: this course will be taught in French

Readings (subject to modification):

Le Mesnagier de Paris (Livre de poche)

Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du goût (Champs classiques)

Course packet: texts by François Rabelais, Madame de Sévigné, Grimod de la Reynière, Zola, Proust, Roland Barthes, et Pierre Androuet

Films (for example):

Vatel

Le Festin de Babette

Grading:

Participation                            20%

Commentaries on reading        20%

Group Meal preparation          25%

Midterm                                  15%

Second exam                           20%    

Course Description:

French for Graduate Students in Other Departments has as its fundamental goal to help graduate students meet the foreign language requirements of their individual departments. Yet in terms of specific course outcomes, French for Graduate Students in Other Departments is designed to instruct students to read French at an advanced level. By “read” is meant being able to comprehend successfully and translate accurately academic texts that are typical in the student's field of study.

There are no prerequisites for this course, but it goes without saying that some prior knowledge of French or the experience and study of foreign languages will facilitate the learning process.

Required texts: Sandberg and Tatham, French for Reading

Class Work:

Class work consists of preparing the assigned grammar/reading/translations. There will be frequent quizzes. Mastery of the material will also be verified by two exams consisting of grammatical and reading comprehension questions and translations: a midterm and an exam given on the last day of class. Dictionaries are permitted on the exams (but not the quizzes). Finally, so that students will have a chance to work on French-language material in their own area of interest or specialty, all students must complete a translation project (see below) that will be due on the second to last day of class. 

Grading:

The final grade, calculated on a credit/no credit basis, will be broken down as follows:

Attendance/Participation:         10%
Quizzes                                   10%
2 exams (20% & 30%)            50%
Translation Project                  30%

Spring 2017

FR 326K : Introduction to French Literature I

Course Description

Note: This course will be taught in French and carries a Global Cultures flag

This course is designed not only to familiarize you with the important texts, literary traditions, and genres of French literature from its beginnings to the 18^th century, but teach you the techniques of close literary analysis through historical and cultural contextualization, in particular the practice of the explication de texte. Much learning in the course will take place through group work.

Readings

Littérature française: Textes et contextes, Tome I, R.-J. Berg

Racine, Phèdre

Course packet

Grading Policy

Class Participation                               15%

Quizzes                                              10%

Discussions/exercises on Canvas          10%

Two 4-5 page papers   (2 x 15%)         30%

Exams  (10%, 10%, 15%)                   35%

FR 390K

Portrait and Self-Portraiture:

Representing the Self and Other in Medieval and Early Modern France

Course Description:

While there is evidence that portraiture existed as early as the Neolithic period, it remains extremely relevant today given its importance on social media, especially as self-portrait. We will move back and forth between visual and written portraiture (with an emphasis on written portraiture), examining to what extent one sheds light on the other, as we study the uses and evolution of portraiture from the early Middle Ages to the end of the 17^th century. We will endeavor to to grasp key features of the emerging genres of the written portrait and self-portrait (and biography, autobiography, and mémoire) over this crucial time period, according to three historically significant portrait subjects: Kings, Women and Self. The goal will be to discern these key features and use them to deconstruct portraits across these three subjects, to analyze convincingly how portraits negotiate the problems of representing identity (both that of the portraitist and the subject) according to their engagement with social, psychological, and artistic practices and expectations.

Readings:

Shearer West, Portraiture

Joinville, La Vie de Louis XI

Pierre Abélard, The Calamities of Peter Abelard

Petrarch, Canzoniere (selected poems) and The Ascent of Mount Ventoux

Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires (excerpts)

Christine de Pizan, Cité des Dames

Blasons Anatomiques du corps féminin (in Labé, Œuvres poétiques)

Ronsard, Amours (selected sonnets)

Louise Labé, Œuvres poétiques

Michel de Montaigne, Essais (selected)

Marie de Gournay, Apologie de la femme écrivant

Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie and Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus

Molière, Le Misanthrope

Grading:

Participation                            20%

Presentations (2)                     20%

Brief paper (5-7pp.)                20%                            

Final Paper                              40%

Fall 2016

FR 326K : Introduction to French Literature I

Course Description

This course will be taught in French and carries a Global Cultures flag

This course is designed not only to familiarize you with the important texts, literary traditions, and genres of French literature from its beginnings to the 18^th century, but teach you the techniques of close literary analysis through historical and cultural contextualization, in particular the practice of the explication de texte. Much learning in the course will take place through group work.

Readings

Littérature française: Textes et contextes, Tome I, R.-J. Berg

Racine, Phèdre

Course packet

Grading Policy

Class Participation                               15%

Quizzes                                              10%

Discussions/exercises on Canvas          10%

Two 4-5 page papers   (2 x 15%)         30%

Exams  (10%, 10%, 15%)                   35%

Description:

Eating is recognized as an integral, and sometimes problematic, part of national and individual identity. This seminar will focus on the relationship between eating, hunger, and identity by looking at modern journalistic as well as literary and filmic accounts of eating, fasting, and starving. The course will be divided into three sections: politics, poetics, and culture. In the politics section of the course, we will study the physiological, political, and ethical dimensions of hunger: first how hunger affects the body, and then how starvation can be a result of marginalization, exploitation, and victimization. In the poetics part, we will read works where eating, hunger and fasting are acts of self-definition and revolt. The last portion of the course, devoted to cultural questions, will use filmic representations of eating and hunger to generate discussion about the ways in which they are conditioned by cultural and national identities. This discussion will be enriched by students’ hands-on experience of the politics and economics of hunger by a volunteer experience at the Capitol Area Food Bank, a local soup kitchen, sustainable farm, etc.

Texts/Readings (subject to change):

Sharman Russell, Hunger: An Unnatural History

Packet of readings pertaining to "Politics" section of course

Knut Hamsun, Hunger

Franz Kafka, “A Hunger Artist” and “The Metamorphosis”

Amélie Nothomb, The Life of Hunger

Assignments:

Participation:  40%

First Paper:     15%

Second Paper: 20%

Journal:           25%

About the Professor:

Marc Bizer, originally from Amherst, Massachusetts, has taught at UT since 1992. He holds an A.B. in Comparative Literature from Brown University, a Master’s in French Literature from the Sorbonne, and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Princeton University. He is the author of three books, as well as of numerous articles: Homer and the Politics of Authority in Renaissance France (Oxford University Press, 2011), Les Lettres Romaines de Du Bellay: Les Regrets et la Tradition Epistolaire (University of Montreal Press, 2001), and La Poésie au Miroir: Imitation et Conscience de soi dans la Poésie Latine de la Pléiade (Champion, 1995). He is the recipient of sabbatical fellowships from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the American Philosophical Society, and the Loeb Classical Library Foundation. He won a silver award for innovative instructional technology for his Reading Between the Lines web site (2008). He has 6-year-old boy/girl twins who are frequently hungry.

FR 326K : Introduction to French Literature I

Course Description

This course will be taught in French and carries the Global Cultures flag

This course is designed not only to familiarize you with the important texts, literary traditions, and genres of French literature from its beginnings to the 18^th century, but teach you the techniques of close literary analysis through historical and cultural contextualization, in particular the practice of the explication de texte. Much learning in the course will take place through group work.

Readings

Littérature française: Textes et contextes, Tome I, R.-J. Berg

Racine, Phèdre

Course packet

Grading Policy

Class Participation                               15%

Quizzes                                               10%

Discussions/exercises on Canvas        10%

Two 4-5 page papers   (2 x 15%)        30%

Exams  (10%, 10%, 15%)                   35%

FR 391K / CL 382 : Deconstructing tragedy

In this seminar we will attempt to grasp key features of “tragedy” and the tragic in the West by reading not only plays, but epics, romances, novellas, and histoires tragiques across Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and English literature from earlier periods in order to gain a sense of the original possibilities of the genre. In this seminar we will examine how tragedies represent various types of conflict involving gender, the resistance to authority, free will vs. determinism, clemency and revenge, and how these representations mediate history. The goal will be to see whether and in what form tragedy is possible in the modern era.

This course will be taught in English and all readings will be made available in English.

Readings (subject to change):

Aristotle, Poetics

Sophocles, Antigone

Euripides, Medea

Virgil, Aeneid (Book 4)

Boccaccio, Decameron (selections from Day 4)

La Châtelaine de Vergi

Jean de Coras, Arrest Memorable & Natalie Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre

Théodore de Bèze, Abraham Sacrifiant

Robert Garnier, La Troade

Corneille, Le Cid, Cinna

Racine, Britannicus, Phèdre

Shakespeare, Hamlet

Kierkegaard, “Ancient Tragedy’s Reflection in the Modern”

Grading:

Participation:                                       20%

Presentation and short paper               30%

Final Paper                                          50%

coming

Eating is commonly recognized as an integral (and problematic) part of national and individual identity. This course will focus on the evolving relationship between eating and identity by looking at cultural, literary, and filmic manifestations accounts of eating (including cannibalism), and gastronomy from the medieval period to the present, in literature, cultural criticism, and film. Our understanding of this relationship will be enlightened and enlivened by various historical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical readings.  

Readings:

Medieval

Lai d’Ignauré

Roman du chatelaine de Couci et de la dame de Fayel

La Châtelaine de Vergi

Renaissance

Rabelais, Œuvres (extraits)

Montaigne, “Des cannibales”

17e siècle

La Fontaine, Fables

Madame de Sévigné: Lettre sur la mort de Vatel

18e siècle

L’Encyclopédie (extraits photocopiés)

Brillat-Savarin, Physiologie du gout

Grimod de la Reynière

19e siècle

Baudelaire, Les paradis artificiels

Gautier, divers poems sur le haschisch et l’opium

Balzac, “Traité des excitants modernes”

Zola, Le Ventre de Paris et Germinal

Charles Monselet, critique gastronomique

20e siècle

poems de Valéry, Ponge

Proust, extraits de A la recherché du temps perdu

Roland Barthes, Mythologies et L’Empire des signes (extraits)

films:

Le Festin de Babette

Vatel

Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie

La Grande Bouffe

Grading:

Participation                           20%

Commentaires de lecture         10%

Presentation                            10%

Short paper                             25%

coming

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Please check back for updates.

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Required of all first-year graduate students in the Department of French and Italian.  

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FLAGS:   GC

Required of all first-year graduate students in the Department of French and Italian.  

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FLAGS:   GC

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FLAGS:   GC

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Please check back for updates.

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The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Spring, 2019

C L 385 (34015): Foundation of Literary Theory and Criticism

Course Title (ALT):  Building Comparative Literature in Theory: From Eden to Arcadia

Comparative Literature (CL) has, from its modern origins as a field in the 20th century, defined itself vis-à-vis its visions of various "theory projects": models of how literature, texts, writers and readers exist, work, circulate, and intervene in their environments.  To study CL's canon of theory, then, means to study the ideological interventions by means of which the discipline has defined itself and to recover its strategies for constructing and legitimating its core ideologies through canonical discussions and textual sources. 

This course will trace the projects that CL has used to define itself and its work with literature and culture; it will take up the "epochs" of theory as historical reconstructions that must be understood in terms of their original historical contexts, not just and the contemporary uses to which they have been put.  Literary scholars in general and CL ones in particular have expropriated  "theory texts" from historical disciplinary forms, including rhetoric, philosophical exegesis/hermeneutics, poetics, ethics, and philosophical ontology/epistemology, then repurposed them as canonical texts supporting their own activities in the service of various ideologies of art, nation, identity, culture, and society. The source eras to be studied include, in rough outline:

• The Classical Era (Plato, Aristotle, Greek and Roman discussions of rhetorical and dramatic literature):  literature, modalities of communication as performatives;  its function as public understandingfor the audience and the polis
• Medieval Era (including Middle Eastern commentary traditions):  the question of textual authority, exegesis, the "arts of reading," and the status of texts as revelation
• Renaissance:  the historicity of texts and the science of reading; art and taste
• Early Modern era (late 18th to late 19th centuries):  the correlations of textuality with aesthetics, and the philosophy of art and the genius (focus on the reader and on education of the mind)
• The Dawn of Modern Theory (late 19th century to end of WW I):  From Philology to the Science of Literature (a study of the ethics of scholarship). 

Post-World War II CL theory emerged out of a brew of these sources, whose urgency often gets lost as the background to today's debates about culture, literature, and the privileges that had grown up around them.  As acts of reading and interpretation were embedded by CL scholars into the universities as a master theory discipline, and as CL now moves into its third or fourth generation, it is time to recover these models for cultural and literary knowledge production that often refute the naturalizing claims made about them.  Class discussion will focus on the disciplinary frameworks that CL codified as its historical canon and legitimation, and on what assumptions about texts, writers, readers, and cultural processed have to be recovered.

By the end of the semester, students will be able to:

• identify, define, and exemplify major arguments / issues / debates that have been hallmarks of CL theory, both as used in the modern discipline and at their origins
• use particular theories to construct interpretations of texts (both as a précis and in essay form)
• understand and exemplify how the theory project is used in their own area(s) of specialization (and in terms of language use in that specialization)-- how an essentially Eurocentric reconstruction of aesthetic-critical thought could itself be coopted for new ideologies of understanding texts and cultures.

 READINGS (all available on CANVAS):

• Wellek and Warren, A Theory of Literature (various)
• Hazard Adams' Critical Theory Since Plato (3rd ed), and small parts of Critical Theory since 1965
• Supplemental materials:
• Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction,  Susan Bassnett (1993)
• First edition of Critical Theory since Plato

 ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING:

• 2 (depending on size of class, might end up being group projects) 5-minute introductions to assigned theory readings (oral presentation and 1-page summative handout); strict time limits will be imposed, because these are intended to start class discussions (5% each)
• 3 analytic précis (1 page / 5 % each), aimed at uncovering the epistemological premises of chosen theory texts
• 2 short (5 page) systematic interpretations of a short story or poem guided by a particular interpretive optic (parallel to those required in the CL QE; 15% each)
• Final class project, done in stages (total 45% of the grade, allowing individual students to track how the CL canon has affected, is or is not parallel to the theory use and issues foregrounded within their own disciplinary/national contexts: annotated bibliography with prose commentaries as reflecting the ideologies of the US university literature-culture projects. The final section will be a short essay (ca. 1000 words) on how these texts cause or relieve problems of Eurocentrism or the evaluation of other regional cultural interpretive projects, marginalization, essentialization, reification, (dis)empowerment of interpretive communities, and manipulations of cultural power reified in institutions -- an individual stock-taking of the relevance of the CL history project for today's literary and cultural studies.

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FR 320E • Advanced French I

Prerequisites

FR 612, 312L, 312M, 312N, or the equivalent.

Course Description

This course will be taught in French.

The objective of this course is to improve all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) through a series of communicative tasks (compositions, listening comprehension activities, dictations, oral practice, etc.). Emphasis is placed on diversifying vocabulary, mastering a wider range of grammatical structures, increasing fluency, and developing appropriate rhetorical strategies for essay writing in French. And finally, participants can expect to learn about social issues in the French-speaking world (e.g. role of media in society, immigration, globalization, education, etc.)


Grading Policy

Chapter Exams (4 x 10%) 40%

Oral Exams  (3 x 5%) 15%

Compositions  (4 x 5%) 20%

Daily Assignments  15%

Final Project  10%

FINAL EXAM: NO


Texts

Oukada, Larbi. 2nd Ed. 2012. Controverses. Boston: Thomson/Cengage Heinle. (ISBN textbook 9780495797777; workbook 9781439082065): Required

Hawkins, French Grammar and Usage, (2nd edition), 2001, MCG, ISBN: 9780658017988: Recommended

Oxford, Compact Oxford Hachette French Dictionary, 3rd Ed., Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780198610717: Recommended

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Topics in literature or culture, with a focus on study in depth or on synthesis.

test 2 from add/edi course first screen

test 2 from add/edi course first screen

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FR 322E • Advanced French II

Prerequisites

FR 320E with a grade of at least a C

Course Description

This course will be taught in French.

The objective of this course is to improve all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) through a series of communicative tasks (compositions, listening comprehension activities, dictations, oral practice, etc.). Emphasis is placed on diversifying vocabulary, mastering a wider range of grammatical structures, increasing fluency, and developing appropriate rhetorical strategies for essay writing in French. And finally, participants can expect to learn about social issues in the French-speaking world (e.g. role of media in society, immigration, globalization, education, etc.)

Grading Policy

Chapter Exams (4 x 10%) 40%

Oral Exams  (3 x 5%) 15%

Compositions  (4 x 5%) 20%

Daily Assignments  15%

Final Project  10%

FINAL EXAM: NO

Texts

Oukada, Larbi. 2nd Ed. 2012. Controverses. Boston: Thomson/Cengage Heinle. (ISBN textbook 9780495797777; workbook 9781439082065): Required

Hawkins, French Grammar and Usage, (2nd edition), 2001, MCG, ISBN: 9780658017988: Recommended

Oxford, Compact Oxford Hachette French Dictionary, 3rd Ed., Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780198610717: Recommended

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