French

This course takes students on a journey from the seemingly familiar surroundings of everyday France to a more complex and enriched understanding of the key debates and issues which have defined French and Francophone identities over the centuries. Using source material in French (also available in translation for ab initio students), it focuses on figures and places that seem easily recognizable to many students and scholars of France and explores the networks of often competing ideas and values that have shaped who or what they are perceived to be today.

This course is a communicative course aimed at developing students' understanding and production of the language at CEFR level A2/B1. The course consolidates knowledge of French grammar and develops reading and writing skills. Students work on listening and speaking skills and students have the opportunity to practice the language with their peers on a variety of everyday topics such as talking about past experiences and events and expressing opinion, as well as discussing selected movies.

This course covers French literary works from the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries, focusing on poetry and "factual" genres, a terminology encompassing a wide range of text forms and types of writing (essays, chronicles, historical accounts, reports, diaries, epistolary texts, speeches, etc.). The course is divided into two parts, one devoted to the history of poetic genres and their problematics; the other to a diachronic survey of "factual" texts, exposing their diversity and the difficulties of generic apprehension they give rise to. Each section studies different works and authors in relation with the theme.

The city and language course introduces students to French history, culture, and language through team-taught instruction. In the “City as Public Forum” sessions, students are introduced to French history and culture through a series of lectures and site visits. Students discover some of the fascinating ways the core principles of social justice were tested in theory and practice on the streets of Paris in the past and explore how they evolved into the pillars of French society today. The course focuses on just how an ideal society should be forged, where all are free individuals and members of a cohesive community at the same time. Trying to make individuals believe—as religions do—in the primacy of the collective, and in its concomitant goal of protecting human rights, is at the core of social justice in France. From 52 B.C.E to today, France has been an exemplar of how—and how not—to construct a just society. To render these values visible, and therefore legible, to all by adding a physical dimension—whether constructive or destructive—to the usual means of establishing laws or setting policies, is what distinguishes the history of France's capital city of Paris. Those who control Paris—be they monarchs, revolutionaries, or presidents, past and present—believe that erecting all kinds of physical structures will render their values concrete and immutable. The ideal French society did not always necessarily mean a democratic or inclusive one. Since the French Revolution, however, institutionalizing the concept of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” has been France's greatest universal achievement and a source of constant upheaval, eliciting a unique form of secular activism that has led to targeting buildings and monuments that no longer reflect the collective's values. Students discuss how the diverse social actors, who constitute “the French,” continue to thrust their bodies and minds into the physical spaces of the public sphere in the pursuit of social justice. In the “Unlocking French” sessions, students learn targeted language skills through situational communication, so they have the opportunity to use everything they learn as they go about their daily activities.

This course provides a better understanding of France, its population, their characteristics, and the country’s political life. The curriculum focuses on current French society and its evolution in relation to the weight of history, its territorial dynamics, and cultural and political ideals.

This course improves conversational French at some of the highest levels of French grammar, such as the subjective, conditional, and simple forms. Grammar worksheets, in-class videos, debates, and class discussions are used to improve oral and reading comprehension to reach proficiency goals and prepare for language competency certification at the B2/C1 level. Emphasis is placed on the field and vocabulary of the Sciences.

This course is a comprehensive introduction to basic vocabulary, grammatical structures and speech patterns of written and oral French for students with no previous knowledge of French. 

This French conversation course is an intermediate-level course. It is based on the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). It prepares students for the B1 level of the DELF: oral comprehension and production.  

The course goals include: ability to listen to real-world conversations or radio broadcasts on general or specialized topics multiple times and answer questions based on what has been understood. Ability to describe one’s personality, present one's strengths and weaknesses, talk about love stories, discuss friendships, talk about health and explain health issues, describe objects, talk about different types of houses, discuss jobs and create ideas for future careers, talk about sports activities, and share ideas for creative leisure activities. 

Prerequisites: French conversation 1 and French conversation 2 

This course is dedicated to eloquence in French as a foreign language. It gives students the keys to speaking with ease, convincing and captivating their audience. The course works on the fluency, clarity, and impact of speeches, using documents from French culture in an intercultural perspective. Listening to and understanding others enables everyone to progress and "carry your voice," as Stéphane de Freitas puts it. The main activities include: vocal and body warm-up: work on breathing, posture, self-confidence, sound-based games; spontaneous expression games: exercises to free speech and enrich vocabulary; active listening and critical thinking skills; practice in prepared speeches: learn to structure, argue, work on tone and emotional management, appropriate oratory techniques and classic French rhetoric. This course offers a comprehensive approach to improving speaking skills and mastering eloquence by blending oratory techniques, practical exercises and creativity. Qualified guest speakers will enhance the practical aspects of the course.

In contemporary literature, the African city appears as a space in permanent flux, capable of taking on very diverse, complex and sometimes difficult to define forms. The course on the relationship between the colonial city and the post-colonial city is part of a general reflection on urban space in Africa. It aims to examine its history, architecture, sociology and representations. In the vast repertoire of representations, there is one constant that is the fruit of the continent's history, the trace of its colonial heritage. Today's African metropolises were often yesterday's small colonial towns. Modelled on European models, colonial cities, far from remaining pure "European enclaves", were transformed from the outset into mixed-race spaces, places of encounter, cross-fertilization and confrontation between Western and indigenous societies and cultures, but also places of cultural syncretism. Based on readings and analyses of texts from Nocky Djedanoum's collection Amours de villes, villes africaines (2001) and Léonora Miano's Contours du jour qui vient (2006), this course explores the ways in which cities are represented in African literature, and the different conceptions of the city as a place of rupture and negotiation between past and present.