2022-2023 French Courses

French 01: 2 Sections (McConnell) at 10, (Méfoude-Obiono) at 11.

This course is open to true beginners, students with one or two years of high school French or students with a score of 0-530 on the SAT II Subject Test. Emphasis will be on speaking and dialogue with your peers. You will learn to introduce your family and friends, share what your daily life looks like, talk about what you do for leisure. Your final assignment will be to do an oral presentation in French describing your home town. Does not serve to satisfy Distributive or World Culture Requirements.

French 02: 2 Sections (Kane) at 12 and 2.

This course is open to students who have completed French 1 on campus, those with three or four years of high school French, or those with a score of 540-600 on the SAT II Subject Test. You will expand your possibilities of expression by learning how to use the past and future tenses, to say where you've been and where you're going. You will share childhood memories and exchange ideas about plans for your education and career. While building your vocabulary, you will deepen your cultural knowledge with introductions to multiple francophone countries around the world. Your final assignment will be to choose a francophone country and do an oral presentation for your peers on its history, geography, architecture, art or traditions. Does not serve to satisfy Distributive or World Culture Requirements.

Prerequisites: French 1 or qualifying placement through the French Placement 2026 exam.

French 03: 4 Sections (Mosenthal) at 9L and 10, (Doyle) at 11 and 12.

This course is open to students who have completed French 2 or French 11 on campus, those with a score of 610-710 on the SAT II Subject Test or a score of 4 on the AP. You will explore several themes of contemporary life and learn to discuss travel, technology and its influence, wellness and healthcare, and social relationships. Your final assignment will be to seek out information on a current issue facing a francophone country—the environment, racism, poverty, freedom of speech, immigration, the colonial past, religious conflicts—and present it to your peers through a medium of your choice: film, interview, blog, skit, music or poster. Does not serve to satisfy Distributive or World Culture Requirements.

Prerequisite: French 2, French 11, or placement by qualifying test through the French Placement 2026 exam.

French 11: Intensive French (McConnell) at 9L: This 1-credit course is designed for students with little or no knowledge of the French language, but who have a strong background in another Romance language (i.e. Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, Latin).  It might also be suitable for students who have been exposed to French through family ties or have spent some time in a francophone environment. French 11 is an accelerated course that combines French 1 and 2 in one term, offering an exciting and fast-paced atmosphere in which to learn French. 

French 08: 2 Sections (Méfoude-Obiono) at 12, (LaGuardia) at 2.  Practice in the active use of the language combined with an introduction to major aspects of French society. Each week students will write papers and participate in discussions based on books, articles, and films emphasizing social and historical concepts. 
Dist:SOC; WCult:W

Prerequisite: Completion of FR3 or exemption from FR3

French 10.03:  Introduction to French Literature, "Invitation au Voyage" (Beasley) at 12:  In this course we will examine travel narratives as well as literary works that inspire us to travel physically and metaphorically.  How do words express as well as transform the traveler's experience?  How do we engage with other worlds through literature?  How do texts create other worlds?  We will examine texts and their contexts from the Middle Ages to the present. Dist:  LIT; WCult: W.

Prerequisite:  French 8 or permission of the instructor.

French 10.17:  Introduction to French Literature, "Saints, Martyrs, Demons" (Hollister) at 11: Many of French fiction's most iconic characters have been marked as holy or unholy, saintly or damned. This course will ask what the famous saints, martyrs and demons of French cultural history have to say about morality, politics, and social issues (notably class, gender, race, and sexuality). Works by Racine, Voltaire, Sade, Diderot, Balzac, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Eluard, Aragon, Bataille, Sartre, Barthes, Clouzot, Bresson, Césaire, and Yourcenar. Dist: LIT; WCult: W

Prerequisite: French 8 or permission of the individual instructor.

French 40.04: "Molière à 400 ans" (Beasley) at 2: Molière is France's best known and most universally loved playwright.  This year has seen an explosion of colloquia, new books, and new stagings of his works to mark the 400^th anniversary of his birth.  In this course we will draw upon this renewed interest to examine the phenomenon that is Molière.  Our analysis will begin with Molière's original context, seventeenth-century France and court of the Sun King, asking questions such as:  How did Molière create a new form of comedy? What was the role of theatre in society? What was the relationship between politics and theatre?   How did the public experience Molière's comedy?  The goal of course is not simply to get to know the 17^th century and Molière.  We will use Molière to interrogate larger questions such as: How does one playwright come to represent a culture?  How does Molière become a myth?  How do theatrical practices change over time and why?  How has Molière has been used and to what ends?  Why do we refer to the French language as "la langue de Molière?"  We will study productions of Molière's plays in different contexts, from eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) to 21^st-century Brooklyn and the theatre company "Molière in the Park."  You will develop a knowledge of the most important periods of French history and culture, as well as one of its most famous writers.  But we will also interrogate his relevance today in France and outside of the hexagon.  We will interrogate the role of theatre/art in general in the construction of national memory, identity, and history. Throughout the course there will be a number of guest lectures by leading specialists in the US, the UK, and France.

In consultation with the professor and the major/minor advisor, this course can be used to fulfill the Fr. 22/23 requirement for the major or minor, as well as the pre-19^th-century requirement. Dist: LIT; WCult: W

Prerequisite: French 10 or permission of the instructor.

French 50.05: Montaigne and Proust at 10A (Kritzman): Montaigne and Proust, two of the greatest prose writers in the French literary tradition, represent distinct historical periods (the Renaissance and early twentieth century France) in which the idea of subjectivity is a major intellectual concern. Using Montaigne and Proust's first person narratives as emblematic of their times, the course will examine how self-portraiture is manifested in time and space and reflects upon broader notions of character, sensation, gender and sexuality, history and memory. Particular attention will be payed to how writing can be viewed as a way to suspend time, delay death and prolong life and sensation. Paradoxically we shall discover in each writer the failure of "autobiographical" narrative to establish identity. Selections will include representative Essais of Montaigne, Proust's Du coté de chez Swann and Le temps retrouvé, and short essays by Bergson, Bersani, Deleuze, de Man, Derrida, Genette, Kristeva and Lacan. Dist: LIT; WCult:W

Prerequisite: French 10 or permission of the instructor.

French 75, "French Cinema from the Golden Age to the Present" (Hollister) at 2A: An overview of French cinema from the silent era to the contemporary. Examines films associated with major social and cultural movements in France – surrealism, modernism(s), poetic realism, Left Bank cinema, the New Wave, social cinema, postmodernism(s), feminist and queer cinema, postcolonial cinema – as well as genres like melodrama, comedy, romance, crime film. Dist:ART; WCult:W

Prerequisite:  French 10 series or permission of the intstructor.

French 01: 2 sections Kane 12 and Gavat 10

French 02: 2 sections McConnell 9L and 10

French 03: 3 sections Mosenthal 9L and 10 and Mefoude 10

French 08: 1 section  Sanders 12- Practice in the active use of the language combined with an introduction to major aspects of French society. Each week students will write papers and participate in discussions based on books, articles, and films emphasizing social and historical concepts. Dist:SOC; WCult:W

French 07.07: First Year Seminar Sanders 10-Colonial Encounters-This course investigates how colonial encounters generated literary and scientific descriptions that outlined the effects of colonialism. The texts we will study, however, depict these effects as part of the natural world. During the term, we will read literary and scientific works from European writers who imagine nature through colonial encounters. In theorizing nature outside of Europe, they construct a version of nature which is intimately connected to the process of colonization. Through engagement with primary and secondary sources, students will identify how literary and scientific rhetoric represent nature within colonial spaces. Students will then interpret and analyze the consequences of this cultural heritage: nature as a space from which to extract resources, as an object of knowledge from which scientists objectively unlock the mysteries of life, or as an Edenic sphere whose beauty is destroyed through colonization.You must arrive on time.

French 10.16: "The Feeling of Love" at 12 (Elhariry): An introduction to the origins of the feeling of love: French literature explained through love, from the Middle Ages to the modern moment, in Tristan et Iseut, and in poems, plays, essays, short stories, and novels by Louise Labé, Montaigne, Du Bellay, Ronsard, Racine, Marivaux, Rousseau, Voltaire, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Flaubert, Houellebecq. Dist: LIT; WCult: W

Prerequisite: French 8 or permission of the individual instructor.

French 25: Introduction to French Literature and Culture IV: Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries at 11 (Hollister): This course examines the radical transformations of literary form and vision that characterize twentieth-century France with its two World Wars, its colonial conflicts, and the challenges to French identity posed by immigration and globalization. We will use lyric poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography, and film to explore literary movements such as surrealism, existentialism, the new novel, the theater of the absurd and écriture féminine, as well as the recent impact of immigrant and minority writers. Readings and films may include works by Proust, Breton, Colette, Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Duras, Delbo, Cixous, Sebbar, Resnais, Malle, and Kassovitz.

French 78: Senior Major Workshop at 2 (Elhariry): As part of this culminating experience, each major will work on an independent project, either a senior thesis or expanding upon work begun in a previous course. The independent project will be developed within the framework of this course using a selection of critical texts that can be viewed as models of literary, cultural, and historical analysis. Lectures by a variety of faculty members will supplement the readings. Students will gain mastery in literary and cultural analysis, close analytical reading skills and composition in French.  French 78 may be used to continue research on your honors thesis.  This course is open only to French and Italian Department senior majors or by petition, which is due by the fifth day of classes of Fall term.

LSA/LSA+ Toulouse: St. Clair 

FSP Paris: Beasley

French 01: 1 section @ 11 (Doyle)

French 02: 2 sections @ 9L and 10 (McConnell)

French 03: 3 sections (@ 9L and 10 Mosenthal and @ 10 Méfoude-Obiono)

French 08: 2 sections (@ 2 Méfoude-Obiono and @ 10 Sanders) Practice in the active use of the language combined with an introduction to major aspects of French society. Each week students will write papers and participate in discussions based on books, articles, and films emphasizing social and historical concepts.  Dist:SOC; WCult:W

French 11: 1 section at 12 (Doyle) This 1-credit course is designed for students who have studied French for one to three years in high school, or those who have been exposed to French through family ties or have spent some time in a Francophone environment. It is also suitable for students with little or no knowledge of the French language, but who have a strong background in another Romance language (i.e. Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, and also Latin).  French 11 is an accelerated course that combines French 1 and 2 in one term, offering an exciting and fast-paced atmosphere in which to learn French. 

French 10.16: 1 section (12 Elhariry) An introduction to the origins of the feeling of love: French literature explained through love, from the Middle Ages to the modern moment, in Tristan et Iseut, and in poems, plays, essays, short stories, and novels by Louise Labé, Montaigne, Du Bellay, Ronsard, Racine, Marivaux, Rousseau, Voltaire, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Flaubert, Houellebecq.  NRO eligible

French 45.01: Dartmouth Meets the French Enlightenment (12 Sanders): Can we trace Tri-Kap's origin to the secret societies, masonic lodges, salons and cafés that arose prior to the French Revolution? This course will trace the migration of texts from France to Dartmouth where 18th-century literary societies - Social Friends (1783), United Fraternity (1786), Phi Beta Kappa (1787), and later Tri-Kap (1842) – read French Enlightenment texts on human rights as well as on the forms of sociability recently developed in France and at Dartmouth.

Prerequisite: A course in the FREN 10 series or permission of the instructor.  NRO eligible

French 70.02: Francophone Literature at 2 (Elhariry): This course will involve the study of Francophone literature outside Europe. This may include the literature of Africa, the Caribbean, Québec and Southeast Asia. Dist: LIT; WCult: Varies

Prerequisite: A course in the FREN 10 series or permission of the instructor. NRO eligible

FSP Paris: LaGuardia