France

This transdisciplinary course covers utopian and dystopian visions in literature, painting, film, television, and political discourse, both past and present. It successively covers the main themes and concerns of various schools of utopia (alotopias, primitivism, Robinsonades, blueprint utopias, etc.) and dystopia (far-right and far-left politics, populism and demagoguery, fear of new technologies, fear of government censorship, dark anti-feminist visions of the future, fear of the growing need for conformity and political correctness, fear of growing crime and violence, etc.). The course broadens the vision of dystopian art, typically considered a Western phenomenon, to include key names from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. It includes student presentations of themes related to dystopia as presented in works from various cultures and countries of origin.

This course, divided into two parts, studies a British novel and an American novel and their cinematic adaptations. It provides a close reading of FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN by Cormac McCarthy, and then introduces the basics of film theory to understand each movie. The main objective of this to familiarize students with the joint study of a literary work and one or more film adaptations by relying on several case studies.

This course focuses on the origin and fundamentals of French theater: how it started and how it has become the theater we know today. It explores the following movements: The Fairground Theater, Pantomime before the Revolution, the Boulevard du Temple and pantomime after the Revolution, Melodrama, the evolution of performance halls and sets in the 18th and 19th centuries, Panorama and Diorama, and the circus.

French 53C is the third part of the three-part 53ABC intensive advanced beginning conversation and grammar course sequence. The course immerses students in the French language and culture through daily class sessions and occasional instructor-led site visits. The 53ABC course sequence includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing with a focus on communication. Students have the opportunity to use everything they learn in class as they go about their daily activities. Students can expect to be able to talk about daily life, food, travelling, Paris, and a wide variety of activities. While students are learning how to speak the language, they continue their introduction to the culture of the French-speaking world. To immerse students in the language, only French is spoken in class. Although students are not expected to understand every word, they should try to follow the gist by paying attention to the context. Students find their comprehension increasing as the course progresses. The goal of the 53ABC course sequence is to help students develop the ability to communicate in spoken and written French. By the end of the course sequence, students should be able to understand the following at a level appropriate to a novice-high learner. Engage in short conversations with a sympathetic interlocutor in French, using simple sentences and basic vocabulary, with occasional use of past and future tenses, on familiar topics (such as the academic environment, family, food, and the home environment, habitual activities, memories, travelling and accommodations, facts and beliefs, opinions and emotions, health and illness, friendship, love and romance, etc.) and express their basic everyday needs. Use the present, and use occasionally the past, near future, and future, of high-frequency regular and irregular verbs, use reflexive verbs to talk about their daily routines, use reciprocal verbs, and use occasionally the imperative, conditional and subjunctive moods, as well as use subject, object, and relative pronouns, articles, prepositions, possessive and demonstrative adjectives, adverbs, interrogative expressions, negative expressions, idiomatic expressions, expressions of quantity, and time and weather expressions. Read, understand, and discuss short, non-complex, and highly predictable texts, for which there is contextual/extralinguistic support, on very familiar topics. Write with some accuracy on familiar topics in simple French, using the recombination of practiced vocabulary and structures to construct sentences. Understand basic French spoken by someone who is sympathetic to non-native and beginning students of French on familiar topics, using context and extralinguistic support to determine meaning. Reflect upon basic cultural differences as reflected in a variety of French and Francophone contexts, such as varying levels of familiarity/formality, etiquette, cuisine and dietary habits, family structures, commerce and the professional world, etc., as well as in cultural products such as film, performances, news, and music.