French Graduate Studies

Graduate study in French includes course work in all the major periods and areas, including the Francophone literatures of Quebec, the Caribbean and the Maghreb. This structure provides the breadth needed for interdisciplinary work and required of today’s teachers. Students may also take courses in the different languages and literatures offered by our faculty and are encouraged to investigate interdisciplinary relations from a comparatist perspective. They often participate in such programs as Caribbean Literary Studies, and the Center for Latin American Studies.  All our students receive excellent training in the latest methodologies in second language acquisition.

The faculty has particularly strong research interests in postcolonial studies, performance studies, gender and queer studies, philosophy and esthetics, and comparative literature. Current research topics include “insularity” in the French and Spanish Caribbean, gendered spaces in the seventeenth century, colonialism and medieval studies, women’s theater in Québec, ethics and aesthetics, homotextualities in modern and contemporary literature, postcolonial and multicultural issues in contemporary France, and the commedia dell’arte.

In regional terms, the program provides excellent support for Caribbean studies and comparative Franco-Hispanic studies. Indeed, a bilingual track in Spanish or another language can be an important asset in today’s highly competitive job market.

Students beginning dissertation research have access to various international centers of scholarship, including among others, the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Université de Paris (III, IV, VII, X), University of Tunis-La Manouba, Center for the Study of Rhetoric at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and Center for Mediterranean Studies at the University of Bari (Italy). 

Current students are developing a range of innovative dissertation projects, including: the imaginative roles of French Guyana in colonial and postcolonial fiction, the shared literary anthropologies of Haiti and Brazil, the role of photography in the work of Marcel Proust, and the representation of genocide.

Recent alumni hold appointments at Long Island University, California State University at Fullerton, and the University of Puerto Rico.

 

Course work

Minimally, students complete at least one three-credit course in each of the traditionally defined areas of literary history, as well as introductory courses in theories of literary interpretation and foreign language teaching.  The seminars themselves, however, are not traditional surveys but rather innovative explorations of current theoretical and interdisciplinary work in their respective fields.  The recent course titles and descriptions listed below give some idea of the range of the curriculum.

Middle Ages

FRE561 Lieux d’exclusion: penser l’exil à travers le moyen âge L’épopée: de Charlemagne à la colonie

FRE611 Géographies impériales: mutations de l’espace agressé

16th century

MLL612 Women Writers in Early Modern Europe

FRE613 Lectures de Pascal (ou Pascal de Montaigne à Boris Vian)

17th century

FRE613 Love and War in the Classical Gendered Spaces in Early Modern France

18th Century

FRE564 Homotextes du Classicisme au crépuscule des Lumières

FRE614 Modernités et Post-Modernités de Sade (Sade en Amont et en Aval)

19th century

FRE565 The Nineteenth-Century French Novel: Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Zola

FRE565 Rimbaud et Verlaine: poésie et passion

FRE615 Flaubert, Baudelaire, et les limites du langage

20th/21st Century

FRE565 Du Levant et du Maghreb français à la France levantine et maghrébine : hospitalités, hostilités, lisières, hybridités

FRE616 Le roman français de 1913 à 2000:  "Ecrire la France"

introduction to literary theories

MLL505 Literary Theory

Foreign Language Teaching

MLL503 Theoretical and Research Foundations of Communicative Language Teaching

Francophone Studies

FRE604 Antillaises en Mouvement(s):  La question du genre dans la litterature antillaise du XX siecle

FRE571 Théâtre francophone: identité, alterité, exil

FRE575 Francophonie de l'intérieur et polyphonie metisse dans la France post-coloniale

Additional courses may be required, depending on students’ backgrounds; students who have previously completed graduate course work may petition for a waiver of some course areas. In general, students have ample opportunity to elect additional courses according to their particular areas of interest. Recent elective offerings include:

MLL621 Borders and Bridges: Insularism in the 20th Century French and Hispanic Caribbean

POR591 Do romance romantico até a atualidade

POR591 Historia Cultural do Brasil

POR591 Estudos Culturais do Brasil: Musica e Sociedade