FREN 0100 Basic French

This is the first half of a two-semester course. Four meetings a week for oral practice. One hour of work outside of class is expected every day (grammar/writing, oral practice, reading). Enrollment limited to 15.

Stéphanie Gaillard

FREN 0300 Intermediate French I

A semi-intensive elementary review with emphasis on all four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Class activities include drills, small group activities, and skits. Class materials include videos, a French film, short stories, and various other authentic documents. Prerequisite: FREN 0200 or placement (Previous experience with French is required to take this class). Four meetings per week, plus a 50-minute conversation section with TAs.

Stephanie Gaillard

FREN 0400 Intermediate French II

Continuation of FREN 0300 but may be taken separately. A four-skill language course that stresses oral interaction in class (three meetings per week plus one 50-minute conversation section). Materials include audio activities, film, and a novel. Short compositions with systematic grammar practice. Prerequisite: FREN 0300, FREN 0200 with permission, or placement.

Stéphanie Gaillard

FREN 0500 Writing and Speaking French I

A four-skill language course that stresses oral interaction in class. Thematic units will focus on songs, poems, a short novel, a graphic novel, films, and a longer novel. Activities include a creative project using Comic Life, and a systematic grammar review. Prerequisite: FREN 0400, FREN 0200 with written permission, or placement.

Stéphanie Ravillon

FREN 0600 Writing and Speaking French II

Prerequisite for study in French-speaking countries. Class time is devoted mainly to conversation and discussion practice. Writing instruction and assignments focus on essays, commentaries, and to a lesser degree, on story writing. Apart from reading assignments for discussion (press articles and literary excerpts), students select two novels to read. Prerequisite: FREN 0500 or placement.

Stéphanie Ravillon

FREN 0720D Contes et identités

MWF 10:00-10:50 - Location TBA

Folktales are fantastical stories, but they are also connected to social realities in profound and surprising ways. In this course we will explore what folktales and their adaptations in literature and film have to tell us about the cultures in which they are (re)told. Focusing on stories from France, the Maghreb, West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America, we will consider how storytelling and folktales both reaffirm and critique social structures and how, in former colonies of France, adaptations respond to (post)colonial realities. Using a comparative approach, we will examine how similar folkloric plots are treated across different contexts, but also how and why certain tales are privileged in each culture. Along with critical readings and films, we will study adaptations by d’Aulnoy, Perrault, Ben Jelloun, Mammeri, Senghor, Dadié, Diop, and Chamoiseau, among others. Taught in French.

Lewis Seifert 

FREN 1020B History of the Romance Languages

TTh 10:30-11:50 (Crosslist with HISP1210E)

The Romance family is one of the most widely-spoken and politically important language families. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the history and linguistic characteristics of the Romance family. Our purpose is to learn the factors that led to the development of modern standard Romance languages, and provide an understanding of Romance structures and their linguistic relationships. The course covers language families; genetic relationships (family trees); typological comparison; internal versus external history; language contact and borrowing; Romance Pidgins and Creoles; Standard language versus dialect; social variation; concepts of Phonetics and Phonology; Morphology; Syntax; Semantics; Lexicon. In English.

Ourida Mostefai

Mercedes Vaquero

FREN 1040D Molière et son monde

MWF 12:00-12:50 - Location TBA

In-depth study of Molière's theater and its cultural contexts. We will examine how Molière uses a variety of theatrical forms to portray the monarchy, social class, religion, medicine, and gender relations of seventeenth-century France. Plays by Molière will be studied alongside other literary texts and documents of the period as well as films (performances of plays, historical fiction. Prerequisite: a course at the 0600 or 0700 -level or equivalent proficiency. Contact the instructor to verify your proficiency if you have not taken French at Brown

Lewis Seifert

FREN 1130G Modernismes poétiques

TTh 2:30-3:50 - Location TBA

Poetry begins with (more) white space on the page. The modernist remaking of poetry - beginning somewhere in the second half of the 19th century and lasting more or less through the first half of the 20th – brought about an exponential increase in the volume of that space, and in various other extensions of it (e.g. into design and drawing, into the unconscious). The course will briefly examine the origins of those transformations in the 19th century and follow through their ramifications in poets such as Apollinaire, the Surrealists, Cocteau, Bataille and Ponge. Taught in French. Prerequisite: a course at the 0600- or 0700-level or equivalent proficiency. Contact the instructor to verify your proficiency if you have not taken French at Brown

David Wills

FREN 1410T L'experience des refugies

TTh 1:00-2:20 - Location TBA

An exploration of the experience of refugees and immigrants with two components. The first component consists of close study of the French context from Decolonization up through the current refugee crisis based on literature, film, the press, and critical essays. The second component of this course will give students the opportunity to work with refugee/recent immigrant communities in Providence. This is a community-engaged course requiring substantial commitment beyond the classroom. Taught in French. Prerequisite: a course at the 0600- or 0700-level or equivalent proficiency. Contact the instructor to verify your proficiency if you have not taken French at Brown. *undergraduate only

Virginia Krause

FREN 1710L Géopolotiques et fractures identitaires au Moyen Orient  (Geopolitics and Identity Divides in the Middle East)

MWF 1:00-1:50 - Location TBA

In this course, we will explore Near Eastern Francophone literature through a period of civil wars and societal fractures, focusing on major themes that haunted modern Levantine authors, including history, “Phénicianisme” versus Arabism, identity versus alterity, nationalist feminism, sectarianism, and universalism. Readings will cover literary productions from 1919 until 1998 and will be supplemented with contextualization articles in French and English. Taught in French. Prerequisite: a course at the 0600- or 0700-level or equivalent proficiency. Contact the instructor to verify your proficiency if you have not taken French at Brown.

Maan Alsahoui

FREN 1710L Théorie transsaharienne: Philosophies et littératures d’Afrique du Nord et de l’Ouest  (Africa in Theory Philosophy)

W 3:00-5:30 - Location TBA

The African continent is the source of multiple theoretical reflections. From political theory to philosophy and history, Africa is at the heart of a burgeoning body of theory that this course sets out to examine. The singularity of this course resides in the fact that it will maintain, a continental perspective that includes the Maghreb or North Africa within Africa throughout the semester. Emphasis will be placed on French-speaking sources from West and North Africa, which are often neglected in English-speaking contexts. The need for such a perspective is represented by Frantz Fanon’s Pan-Africanism, which calls for the abolition of the Saharan frontier between "North" and "Black" Africa. Marginalized or simply unknown authors will be studied, including: Abdelkebir Khatibi, Paulin Hountondji, Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, Malek Bennabi, Youssef Seddik, Hichem Djaït, Mohammed Talbi, Lepold Sedar Senghor, among others.

Mohamed Meziane