FRENCH (FREN)
This seminar investigates what fashion has meant to French-speaking writers, artists, and philosophers through the centuries. We will explore key episodes in the history of French fashion and discover how French thinkers have interpreted the allure and significance of fashion from multiple perspectives. Taught in English; no knowledge of French required. First Year Seminar.
This seminar explores how French-speaking writers and artists have engaged with medical culture. Hallucinations, depression, hysteria, paranoia, anxiety, neurosis, body dysmorphic disorder, obsession, and pain are some symptoms that will be reflected in the narratives of this course. We will study a group of writers and artists across time and space who explore, adapt, and converse with contemporaneous medical learning in their creative works. Taught in English; no knowledge of French required. First Year Seminar.
Introduces the essential elements of French structure and vocabulary and aspects of French and francophone culture. Aural comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. Students may not receive credit for both FREN 101 and FREN 111.
Continues the study of essential elements of French structure, vocabulary, and aspects of French and francophone culture. Aural comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. Students may not receive credit for more than one of the following: FREN 102, 105 or 401.
Accelerated course that covers FREN 101 and 102 for students with previous study of French. Aural comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. Students may not receive credit for both FREN 105 and FREN 102 or 401.
Gives students the opportunity to better understand the different facets of French-speaking regions across the modern world (including Africa, the West Indies, and North America) by looking at their geography, their historical and political development, varied cultural aspects, and their links with the United States. In English.
Exploration of French food culture in film, literature, and historical texts, examining gastronomy in relation to national and individual identity, immigration, cultural specificity, tradition and innovation, markets, sociability, and excess and lack. In English. Formerly offered as FREN 286.
Develops language skills for communication. Review of elementary French with increasing emphasis on reading and writing in the context of contemporary French and francophone culture. Students may not receive credit for both FREN 203 and 402. Honors version available.
Continued development of language skills for communication through reading and discussion of texts and authentic materials. Emphasis on accurate grammar in written and oral expression. Students may not receive credit for both FREN 204 and 402. Honors version available.
Introductory conversation for building oral proficiency while increasing awareness of French culture. Emphasis on vocabulary and grammatical accuracy; writing activities support speaking. Honors version available.
Skills for literary studies through poetry, theater, and prose from the Renaissance to the present. Lectures, discussions, and written assignments. Honors version available.
French is evolving, changing, and becoming a multifaceted language, adapting to modernity and cultural realities. This course focuses on today's French across the French-speaking world and explores the diversity of relationships that French-speakers have with this shared heritage. Previously offered as FREN 250.
Exploration of cultural relations between France and the Americas from early modern colonial encounters to 21st-century perspectives on diversity and multiculturalism.
Exploration of questions related to sex and gender during the French Revolution and their reflection in literature, philosophy, and art. In English.
This course examines the literary, social, and political issues brought to the fore in 20th and 21st century Francophone Caribbean literature (e.g. Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique) with a particular emphasis on language, identity, race, and gender.
Learning contract required. Students participating in UNC-led study abroad programs develop activities to supplement instruction in on-campus courses. Supervised by the on-campus instructor, students file reports on the sites, language, and culture of the country in which they are studying. Pass/Fail only. Permission of the instructor and the instructor's department.
Recommended preparation, FREN 255, 260, or 262. Intensive grammar review and composition to improve accuracy and develop writing skills, using process and task-oriented approaches.
This course examines the evolution of the French healthcare system from its creation to today and the depiction of illnesses as well as healthcare workers in contemporary culture. Current issues related to health, illnesses, and healthcare in France and the Francophone World will be discussed.
A recitation section or stand-alone course for selected courses that promote the use of foreign language proficiency across the curriculum (LAC). May count toward the major or minor in French. Co-registration required unless a stand-alone LAC course, contact instructor or view Notes to determine.
Intermediate conversation to expand speaking skills through vocabulary building, discussion of selected texts, and activities that produce conversation. Ongoing development of writing skills.
Students will expand their active vocabulary, refine their mastery of grammar and hone communication skills to facilitate their cultural immersion during study abroad in Montpellier. Topics of current interest will allow students to explore French and regional culture while perfecting their written and oral expression and comprehension. Open only to students in France.
Open only to students in Montpellier, France. Introduction to French literature through the study of a selection of representative texts. Prepares students for the academics required at a French university. Students will also gain knowledge and experience of the intellectual culture and educational organization of France.
Examines how French-language plays and films explore questions of identity through stories of imposture, disguise, cross-dressing, and mistaken identity. Authors studied include Molière, Marivaux, De la Chenelière, and others.
Practice of vocabulary and discourse strategies pertinent to business-related activity in French. Readings and discussions emphasize cultural awareness for interaction in cross-cultural settings.
This course explores the depiction of crime in literature: from medieval tricksters and classical tyrants to romantic crimes of passion; from the destruction of social and ethical codes to the global victims of (civil) war.
Exploration of cultures, arts, theories, politics, and histories of resistance in France and the French-speaking world from 1789 to the present.
Focuses on important aspects of the culture, society, history, geography, politics, art, and literature of France and its regions as well as the French-speaking world.
The Enlightenment has been called the "age of conversation" on account of its salons- sociable gatherings where men and women of different backgrounds assembled to debate issues of the day with wit and elegance and to discuss how to change society. This course offers a deep dive into salon culture, its development of the arts of spoken language and sociability, its impact on Enlightenment thought on key issues such as inequality, and its historical legacies.
Oral communication and composition on contemporary topics in French and francophone cultures. Study of cultural texts, articles from the French press, and video documents.
The course provides a survey of bandes dessinées and graphic novels (BDs) with a view to exploring how this medium has changed over time in the French-speaking world. Students will analyze the BDs' aesthetic, stylistic, compositional, and sociopolitical effects in works ranging from Tintin, Astérix, or Lucky Luke to a more recent and diverse array of authors and artists who all testify to the evolving role of the bandes dessinées.
French-language theater. Specific topics to be announced in advance by the instructor. Previously offered as FREN 380.
Specific topics to be announced in advance by the instructor. Previously offered as FREN 381.
Specific selections announced in advance by the instructor. Previously offered as FREN 382.
What is the philosophical novel? Fiction written by a philosopher? A philosophical book in disguise? A fun story that explores serious ideas? From eighteenth-century radical philosophy, the great social changes of the nineteenth century, to the existentialist and feminist literature of the twentieth century, we will read texts by Denis Diderot, Madame de Staël, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others.
This course is dedicated to games. We will explore critical approaches to media, paying particular attention to the technologies underlying their use and to theories of mediation.
Theory and practice of translation through a dual approach of conceptual readings and classroom discussion and workshops in interdisciplinary fields. Emphasizes cultural role of the translator as mediator.
The course focuses on the exploration of a range of problems posed by the effects of human activity on our environment and examines initiatives undertaken in France and specifically in the Occitania region to combat these problems. Course open to students in UNC in Montpellier Summer. Course taught in English.
An overview of literatures, cultures, and histories of the French-speaking world from Antiquity to 1789.
An overview of literatures, cultures, and histories of the French-speaking world since 1789.
Readings in francophone literatures from literary and cultural perspectives. Areas of study may vary (African, Canadian, European, etc.).
The evolution of identity and nationhood in Québécois literature from the 1960s to the present. Includes the study of francophone literature of immigration in Québec.
How wars, women's movements, immigration, and globalization have influenced the notion of Frenchness.
Interdisciplinary studies of France's role in the construction of European identity.
Possible topics include cinema, transnational francophone literatures, gender studies. In English.
Examines the cultural encounters between France and Vietnam and China, the socio-historical context of French colonialism in Vietnam, and the literary and cultural production to which it gave rise.
Films of the major directors of the French New Wave of the 1950s through the 1970s, including Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer. Examination of earlier films informing these directors. The impact of the New Wave on global cinema. In English. Recommended preparation: FREN 260 or CMPL 143 or the equivalent.
During Louis XIV's reign, the French monarchy reinforced its majesty through the power of art. Magnificent buildings, stunning spectacles, and laudatory literature enhanced the reputation of the king. At the same time, art and literature served as tools of resistance, as writers and artists produced overt critiques or subtle satires of the regime. We will study Louis XIV's France as a case study to understand the ambivalent social and political force of art.
Study of French cinema from 1895 through 1950, including early French film, silent cinema, surrealism, poetic realism, and postwar cinema. Concepts and vocabulary for film criticism. Conducted in English. Recommended preparation: FREN 260 or CMPL 143 or the equivalent.
Study of French cinema from 1950 to the present, including postwar cinema, the New Wave, and the French film industry in the age of globalization. Concepts and vocabulary for film criticism. Conducted in English. Recommended preparation: FREN 260 or CMPL 143 or the equivalent.
Examines selected topics in French and francophone studies. Content varies by semester and instructor.
Research project on topic agreed upon by the student and faculty member. Includes bibliographic work and research approaches.
Covers levels one and two of the basic language sequence in one semester. Designed for highly motivated undergraduate/graduate language learners, especially those who have experienced success with learning another language. Intensive approach to developing all skills but with an emphasis on speaking. Students may not receive credit for both FREN 401 and any of the following: FREN 101, 102, 105.
A continuation of FREN 401. Covers levels three and four in one semester. Develops all skills, with increasing emphasis on reading, writing, and cultural analysis. Designed for highly motivated undergraduate/graduate language learners, especially those who have experienced success with learning another language. Prepares students for advanced courses. Students may not receive credit for both FREN 402 and any of the following: FREN 203 and 204.
Review of advanced grammar. Exercises in translation from English into French of literary and critical materials. Free composition and training in the use of stylistic devices.
An introductory course designed to enable students to read medieval texts with rapidity and accuracy. Phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax. In English.
Scrutinizes the political, philosophical, aesthetic, and literary movements produced in and about the Francophone Caribbean (Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique) and its signature texts.
A study of structuralist and poststructuralist methods in poetics, semiotics, psychoanalysis, sociology, and philosophy.
This class will follow Muslim women's experiences and changing roles in France and the United States from the 1970s through today.
Intensive study of a single major author of the romantic or postromantic period. The subject changes from year to year among writers in the different literary genres.
Examines selected topics in French and francophone studies. Content varies by semester and instructor.
Provides training in research methodology either for a B.A. honors or M.A. thesis topic related to contemporary European studies. Students will learn to conceptualize an original research project and to identify and assess the current intellectual debates in their chosen areas of research.
Aimed at health care professionals in a variety of fields, this class is designed to help them practice, consolidate, and improve their language skills, while encouraging students to develop a fuller understanding of health care systems in French-speaking regions of the world and to compare conditions with those in the United States. This course does not fulfill the FL requirement and does not count for the French major. Previously offered as FREN 405.
This course examines the limits of universalism in today's "multicultural" France and how the European Union affects French universalism and French resistance to identity politics.
Study of the production of films from francophone sub-Saharan and North African communities.
Studies of a single author, a literary movement, or an aesthetic movement from the avant-garde to postmodernism.
Exploration of the interaction between technology and sociability in 19th- through 21st-century French literature, with an emphasis on questions of modernization, industrialization, colonization, globalization, subjectivity, and ethics.
Readings in a variety of medieval texts in light of contemporary literary theory.
Theory, literary texts, films, and cultural phenomena associated with postmodernism and the interaction of art, philosophy, film, literature, and popular culture.
Explores early modern literary representations of the Mediterranean as a space of cross-cultural encounter, exchange, rivalry, and negotiation.
Focus on contemporary fictions and films, and the writing of history from both the French (French-Algerian or "Pieds noirs," French draftees) and the Algerian sides.
Recommended preparation, FREN 370. Interdisciplinary seminar on a cultural topic or a theme through readings in literary and nonliterary texts.
Recommended preparation, FREN 370. Major currents in French Renaissance poetry: the Rhétoriqueurs, the break with the Middle Ages, Italian influences, the formation of the French Renaissance sonnet, poetry and gender, poetry and politics, the Pléiade. Clément Marot, Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Olivier de Magny, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim Du Bellay.
Recommended preparation, FREN 370 (for students taking the course for French credit), or one course from ENGL 225 to ENGL 229, or one course from CMPL 120 to CMPL 124. Study of French-English literary relations in the Renaissance, focusing on literary adaptation and appropriation, poetics, political writing, and related areas. Conducted in English; students may do written work in French for major or minor credit.
The phonology, morphology, and syntax of French are traced from the Latin foundation to the present. Lectures, readings, discussions, and textual analysis. In English.
Study of the sound system and prosody features of standard French, emphasizing practical application in a variety of oral activities. Requires learning linguistic terminology and the phonetic alphabet. In English.
Introduction to phonology, morphology, and syntax of modern standard French. Application of modern linguistic theory to the teaching of French. In English.
Evolution of francophone literature from a literary and cultural perspective (Maghreb, Africa, Caribbean Islands, and Canada).
An examination of national and transnational identity within European culture and recent economic and ethnologic changes in Western Europe and France.
Intensive study of a major 18th-century writer.
In-depth study of the genealogy of the concept of libertinage as a philosophical discourse and aesthetic manifestation.
Recommended preparation for French majors and minors, FREN 300 and one of FREN 255, 260, or 262; for all other students, CMPL 143. Themes, periods, and movements in the history of French cinema. The course may cover early cinema, silent film, poetic realism of the 1930s, postwar cinema, the French New Wave, or late twentieth- and early twenty-first century cinema. Taught in English or French. See department announcements for current topic and language of instruction.
Examines selected topics in French and francophone studies. Content varies by semester and instructor.
French language for reading. For students with no background in French or those needing a review of grammatical structures and vocabulary in preparation for the reading knowledge exam for graduate degrees (FLPA).
Evolution of the novel of French expression from the 20th to the 21st century.
This course focuses on the representation of identities in Franco-Arab contexts and in various artistic productions (fiction, photography, paintings, comics, films, etc.), with a special focus on Algeria, Tunisia, France, Lebanon, and Québec.
In-depth study of a particular aspect of 17th-century literature and culture. Possible topics are the court and its elsewhere, Frenchness and foreignness in the 17th century, theater and theatricality, enchantment and disenchantment.
This seminar examines 17th- and 18th-century French literature in relation to the intellectual, social, and political movements of the Enlightenment. See department announcements for current topic and reading list.
Evolution of identity and nationhood in Québécois literature from the 1960s to the present, including the study of the literature of immigration (diasporic or littrature migrante).
Examines selected topics in French and francophone studies. Content varies by semester and instructor.
Required of students reading for honors. Preparation of an essay under the direction of a member of the faculty. Topic to be approved by thesis director in consultation with honors advisor.
Restricted to senior honors candidates. Second semester of senior honors thesis. Thesis preparation under the direction of a departmental faculty member.
Semiotic readings in French and Francophone theater at the crossroads of cultures from the avant-garde to postmodernism.
An introduction to feminist literary theory, focusing on feminist writings from France (in translation) and their sources in psychoanalysis and poststructuralism. Anglo-American counterparts and adaptations of the French theorists in the United States will also be treated.
Readings in 16th and 17th-century French theater, Crébillion père and Voltaire. Selection of texts will be announced by the instructor.
Intellectual currents (religious, scientific, epistemological) and morals as reflected in such writers as Bayle, la Mettrie, Condillac, Helvétius, d'Holbach, the Encyclopedists, and others.
Cultural encounters between France, Vietnam and China and overview of the French presence in Vietnam from the 1880's to the end of the colonial period in 1954.
Examines selected topics in French and francophone studies. Content varies by semester and instructor.
A study of the evolution of poetry and poetics in modernity beginning with Baudelaire.
A study of major realistic and naturalistic novelists (Flaubert, the Goncourts, Daudet, Zola, Maupassant, and Huysmans).
A study of short narrative as a hybrid genre from a literary and cultural perspective.
Fiction from the 1880s through WWI and its aftermath: modernity (the1850s), decadence, naturalism, the Avant-garde, and the belle époque.
Doctoral students only.
Topic determined by instructor and announced in advance.
Master's Thesis Substitute
Research in a special field under the direction of a member of the graduate faculty.