FREN 70 New Directions in Francophone Literature and Culture

This course will involve the study of Francophone literature and culture outside Europe. This may include the cultural production of Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Québec, and Southeast Asia. The course will introduce students to writing, cinema, and music produced by misfits, outsiders, and figures marginal to France and the French republic of letters. Readings are accompanied by class visits by the authors whenever possible. The course has three main objectives:

1. To situate modern and contemporary francophone literary and cultural production within the context of an æsthetic history: Who and what are the precedents to today's books, cinema, and music?
2. To underscore that the French language is neither French, nor belongs to France: What makes a language so capacious, plastic, and malleable?
3. To enable and empower students to think, speak, and write freely and creatively in their own idiosyncratic version/vision of French: How can a foreign language be transformed into an intimate language?

These will be the principles guiding our explorations of some of the most exciting and provocative cultural production in French today. Readings may include texts by PNL, Françoise Vergès, Kaoutar Harchi, Elsa Dorlin, Abdelkébir Khatibi, Assia Djebar, David Diop, Laure Murat, Abdellah Taïa, Georges Henein, Edmond Jabès, Joyce Mansour, Habib Tengour, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Linda Lê, Hubert Aquin, Andrée Chédid, Nadia Tuéni, Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, and Évelyne Trouillot.

Instructor

See department website

The Timetable of Class Meetings contains the most up-to-date information about a course. It includes not only the meeting time and instructor, but also its official distributive and/or world culture designation. This information supersedes any information you may see elsewhere, to include what may appear in this ORC/Catalog or on a department/program website. Note that course attributes may change term to term therefore those in effect are those (only) during the term in which you enroll in the course.