French (FRENCH)

FRENCH 110. French Painting from Watteau to Monet. 3-5 Units.

This course offers a survey of painting in France from 1700 to around 1900. It introduces major artists, artworks, and the concepts used by contemporary observers and later art historians to make sense of this extraordinarily rich period. Overarching themes discussed in the class will include the dueling legacies of coloristic virtuosity and classical formalism, new ways of representing visual perception, the opposing artistic effects of absorption and theatricality, the rise and fall of official arts institutions, and the participation of artists and artworks in political upheaval and social change. The course ends with an interrogation of the concept of modernity and its emergence out of dialogue and conflict with artists of the past. Students will learn and practice formal analysis of paintings, as well as interpretations stressing historical context.
Same as: ARTHIST 110, ARTHIST 310, FRENCH 310

FRENCH 118. Literature and the Brain. 3 Units.

Recent developments in and neuroscience and experimental psychology have transformed the way we think about the operations of the brain. What can we learn from this about the nature and function of literary texts? Can innovative ways of speaking affect ways of thinking? Do creative metaphors draw on embodied cognition? Can fictions strengthen our "theory of mind" capabilities? What role does mental imagery play in the appreciation of descriptions? Does (weak) modularity help explain the mechanism and purpose of self-reflexivity? Can the distinctions among types of memory shed light on what narrative works have to offer?.
Same as: COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 218, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F

FRENCH 120. Coffee and Cigarettes: The Making of French Intellectual Culture. 4-5 Units.

Examines a quintessential French figure "l'intellectuel" from a long-term historical perspective. We will observe how this figure was shaped over time by such other cultural types as the writer, the artist, the historian, the philosopher, and the moralist. Proceeding in counter-chronological order, from the late 20th to the 16th century, we will read a collection of classic French works. As this course is a gateway for French studies, special emphasis will be placed on oral proficiency. Taught in French; readings in French.

FRENCH 121. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Politics, Philosophy, and Literature. 3-5 Units.

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." This seminar explores the work of one of the most important and enigmatic thinkers about the problems of modern society: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Students will read a selection of his most important works in dialogue with other important thinkers of his time. They will grapple with Rousseau's political philosophy in his critique of modernity and his vision for remaking politics, as well as his moral philosophy and influential fictional visions of education and love. We will discuss not only Rousseau's landmark contributions to debates about authenticity, transparency, and self-interest, but also his troubling views on gender. The class will conclude with Rousseau's autobiography and its profound meditation on the formation of selfhood. Taught in French.
Same as: FRENCH 221A

FRENCH 124A. Napoleon. 3-5 Units.

Who was Napoleon? A fierce patriot or a traitor of the Revolution? A beloved emperor or a merciless dictator? There is not one single or indeed final answer to these questions: in this course we shall learn to make a distinction between the historical figure (his life and actual deeds) and the literary character (how his detractors or enthusiasts represented him). We will explore the multi-faceted representations of Napoleon with a particular focus on his portraits in poems, novels, essays, paintings and sculptures. The syllabus will include readings and excerpts from Balzac, Stendhal, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Tolstoy, Manzoni, Foscolo, Calvino. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 124C

FRENCH 129. Camus. 4-5 Units.

"The admirable conjunction of a man, of an action, and of a work" for Sartre, "the ideal husband of contemporary letters" for Susan Sontag, reading "Camus's fiction as an element in France's methodically constructed political geography of Algeria" for Edward Said, Camus embodies the very French figure of the "intellectuel engagé," or public intellectual. From his birth in 1913 into a poor European family in Algeria to the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, from the Mediterranean world to Paris, Camus engaged in the great ethical and political battles of his time, often embracing controversial positions. Through readings and films, we will explore his multiple legacies. Readings from Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Assia Djebar, Kamel Daoud, Mouloud Feraoun, Alice Kaplan, Edward Said, Edwidge Danticat. Students will work on their production of written French, in addition to speaking French and reading comprehension. Taught in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Same as: COMPLIT 229B, CSRE 129, HISTORY 235F

FRENCH 12Q. Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Middle Ages and Renaissance. 3-4 Units.

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? The second quarter focuses on the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Europe's re-acquaintance with classical antiquity and its first contacts with the New World. Authors include Dante, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Milton. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take HUMCORE 11 and HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar).
Same as: DLCL 12Q, HUMCORE 12Q, ILAC 12Q

FRENCH 13. Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern. 3 Units.

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This third and final quarter focuses on the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon.
Same as: DLCL 13, HISTORY 239C, HUMCORE 13, PHIL 13

FRENCH 130. Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance French Literature. 4 Units.

In this introductory course, we will read some key texts of literature written in French between 1100 and 1600, paying special attention to how gender, ethnicity and love played a role in the doing and undoing of communities. What does it mean to be a woman writer when most things were written by men? What does it mean to be a man, at court or at war? What did people learn when traveling to Asia or to the New Continent, and how did it impact the way people conceived of ethnicity? How did people think of ethnic difference in their midst? How can love strengthen an empire, and how can one be sincere when copying a love-poem? These cultural questions will be answered with special attention to literary form. Different genres might have yielded different possibilities to not just represent, but also imagine ways of living together; perhaps the very structure of a sentence allows one to construe one¿s own identity. While the course will be taught in French, no knowledge of Old French, Latin, or Occitan is required. All readings will be done in modern French or English translation. Assignments and discussions are all in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center.

FRENCH 131. Absolutism, Enlightenment, and Revolution in 17th- and 18th-Century France. 4 Units.

The literature, culture, and politics of France from Louis XIV to Olympe de Gouges. How this period produced the political and philosophical foundations of modernity. Readings may include Corneille, Molière, Racine, Lafayette, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, and Gouges. Taught in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.

FRENCH 132. Literature, Revolutions, and Changes in 19th- and 20th-Century France. 4 Units.

This course will explore several important texts of 19th- and 20th-Century French literature, with the aim of following the evolution of the main literary movements during those centuries of important cultural and social changes. We will study texts related to movements such as Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Surrealism, the Absurd, the Nouveau Roman in all major genres (prose, poetry, theater, film) and will regularly refer to other arts, such as painting and music. Authors include Chateaubriand, Musset, Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Proust, Céline, Radiguet, Ionesco, Robbe-Grillet, Duras, Gary. All readings, discussion, and assignments are in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center.

FRENCH 133. Literature and Society in Africa and the Caribbean. 4 Units.

This course explores texts and films from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will explore the connections between Sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb and the Caribbean through both foundational and contemporary works while considering their engagement with the historical and political contexts in which they were produced. This course will also serve to improve students' speaking and writing skills in French while sharpening their knowledge of the linguistic and conceptual tools needed to conduct literary analysis. The diverse topics discussed in the course will include national and cultural identity, race and class, gender and sexuality, orality and textuality, transnationalism and migration, colonialism and decolonization, history and memory, and the politics of language. Readings include the works of writers and filmmakers such as Djibril Tamsir Niane, Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, Patrick Chamoiseau, Leonora Miano, Leila Slimani, Dani Laferrière and Ousmane Sembène. Taught in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center. This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
Same as: AFRICAAM 133, AFRICAST 132, COMPLIT 133A, COMPLIT 233A, CSRE 133E, JEWISHST 143

FRENCH 140. Paris: Capital of the Modern World. 4-5 Units.

This course explores how Paris, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, became the political, cultural, and artistic capital of the modern world. It considers how the city has both shaped and been shaped by the tumultuous events of modern history- class conflict, industrialization, imperialism, war, and occupation. It will also explore why Paris became the major world destination for intellectuals, artists and writers. Sources will include films, paintings, architecture, novels, travel journals, and memoirs. Course taught in English with an optional French section.
Same as: FRENCH 340, HISTORY 230C, URBANST 184

FRENCH 148. Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave. 3-5 Units.

Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Same as: FRENCH 248, ITALIAN 148, ITALIAN 248

FRENCH 149. Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art. 3-5 Units.

Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Same as: ARTHIST 119, ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 349, ITALIAN 149, ITALIAN 349

FRENCH 150. Season and Off-Season of North-African Cinema and Literature. 3-5 Units.

This course explores the emergence of Francophone cinema and literature from North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco) in the post-independence era: aesthetics, language metissage and hybridization, ethnic interactions, gender relations, collective imagination and collective memory, nationalism, popular culture, religion, urbanism, post-colonialism, migration, and the Arab Spring will be covered. Special attention will be given to Moroccan cinema, and to the notions of francophone/maghrebi/"beur"/diasporic cinema and literature. Readings from Franz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Kateb Yacine, Albert Camus, Reda Bensmaia, Assia Djebar, Colette Fellous, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Michel de Certeau, Benjamin Stora, Lucette Valensi, Abdelwahab Meddeb. Movies include Viva Laldjérie, Rome plutot que vous, Les Sabots en or, Les Silence des Palais, Halfaouine, Satin Rouge, Le Chant des Mariées, and Mort à Vendre. Taught in French. Films in French and Arabic with English subtitles.
Same as: FRENCH 350

FRENCH 152. French Painting from the Revolution to Impressionism. 3-5 Units.

This course offers a survey of painting in France from 1700 to around 1900. It introduces major artists, artworks, and the concepts used by contemporary observers and later art historians to make sense of this extraordinarily rich period. Overarching themes discussed in the class will include the dueling legacies of coloristic virtuosity and classical formalism, new ways of representing visual perception, the opposing artistic effects of absorption and theatricality, the rise and fall of official arts institutions, and the participation of artists and artworks in political upheaval and social change. The course ends with an interrogation of the concept of modernity and its emergence out of dialogue and conflict with artists of the past. Students will learn and practice formal analysis of paintings, as well as interpretations stressing historical context.
Same as: FRENCH 352

FRENCH 153. « Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité » : French Political Myths and Concepts. 3-5 Units.

"Liberté, égalité, fraternité," but also "laïcité," "diversité," "parité," "universalisme" : the French have forged over the last two centuries key political concepts that are articulated together in a unique way and shape the political consciousness, modes of engagements, aspirations and current debates of what has been called "the most political nation in the world." Along with mythologies such as the People, the Nation, the providential Leader, or the "enemy from within," they are at the centre of semantic and political battles, tugged over by the Left, the Right, populist movements, activists and counter-cultures. How did they emerge? How do they apply today? How does theory compare to practices, principles to day-to-day realities? An introduction through case-studies, films, paintings, cartoons, and texts from political theory, history, politics and literature. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 353

FRENCH 154. Film & Philosophy. 3 Units.

Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 154A, ENGLISH 154F, ITALIAN 154, PHIL 193C, PHIL 293C

FRENCH 154E. Film & Philosophy CE. 3 Units.

Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English. Satisfies the WAY CE.
Same as: ITALIAN 154E, PHIL 193E, PHIL 293E

FRENCH 166. Food, Text, Music: A Multidisciplinary Lab on the Art of Feasting. 3-5 Units.

Students cook a collection of unfamiliar recipes each week while learning about the cultural milieus in which they originated. The course focuses on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a time of great banquets that brought together chefs, visual artists, poets, musicians, and dancers. Students read late-medieval cookbooks under the guidance of professional chefs, learn songs and poetry with the help of visiting performers, and delve into a burgeoning scholarly literature on food history and sensory experience. We will also study trade routes and food networks, the environmental impact of large-scale banquets, the science of food, and the politics of plenty. This course may count towards the Medieval component of the French major, and corresponds to DLCL 121, a course requirement for the Medieval Studies Minor. Students interested in applying for course must email the professor (jrodin@stanford.edu) by 20 September with a statement of up to 350 words that includes: (a) reasons for wanting to take the class; (b) relevant background in cooking/medieval studies/etc.; (c) stated commitment to attend all ten course meetings; and (d) any dietary restrictions/preferences.
Same as: FRENCH 266, FRENCH 366, MUSIC 133, MUSIC 333

FRENCH 175. CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People. 3-5 Units.

This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities, at different moments in time: Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, Colonial Mexico City, Enlightenment and Romantic Paris, Existential and Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Roaring Berlin, Modernist Vienna, and bustling Buenos Aires. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation); authors we will read include Boccaccio, Dante, Sor Juana, Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Gogol, Irmgard Keun, Freud, and Borges. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade.
Same as: COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, ITALIAN 175, URBANST 153

FRENCH 181. Philosophy and Literature. 3-5 Units.

What, if anything, does reading literature do for our lives? What can literature offer that other forms of writing cannot? Can fictions teach us anything? Can they make people more moral? Why do we take pleasure in tragic stories? This course introduces students to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. It addresses key questions about the value of literature, philosophical puzzles about the nature of fiction and literary language, and ways that philosophy and literature interact. Readings span literature, film, and philosophical theories of art. Authors may include Sophocles, Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Proust, Woolf, Walton, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Students master close reading techniques and philosophical analysis, and write papers combining the two. This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.
Same as: CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, ITALIAN 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181

FRENCH 185. Texts and Contexts: French-English Translation. 3-5 Units.

This course introduces students to the ways in which translation has shaped the image of France and the Francophone world. What texts and concepts were translated, how, where, and to what effect? Students will work on a translation project throughout the quarter and translate texts from French to English and English to French. Topics may include the role of translation in the development of cultures; the political dimension of translation, translation in the context of migration, and the socio-cultural frameworks that shape translations. Case studies: Camus, Fanon, Glissant, de Beauvoir, Meddeb, Duras. Prior knowledge of French language required.
Same as: COMPLIT 285, CSRE 285, FRENCH 285

FRENCH 187. Sex, Gender, and Violence: French Women Writers Today. 1-5 Unit.

Long before the 2017 #Metoo campaign, French women writers have explored through powerful fictions and autobiographies the different shades of economic, social, psychological, physical, or sexual violence that is exerted against, but also by and between, women. How does literature - the power of words - address, deconstruct or comfort power dynamics (during sex and between the sexes) that are usually silenced, taboo or unspeakable? Themes explored: sex and gender, sex and power, rape culture, sexual and moral taboos (incest, abortion, pornography, infanticide, lesbianism), the body as social stigma or source of meaning. Special attention given to narrative and descriptive strategies designed to avert, expose, deconstruct or account for specifically feminine experiences (rape, orgasm, pregnancy). Authors include Marie Darrieusecq, Christine Angot, Annie Ernaux, Marie NDiaye, Virginie Despentes, Leila Slimani, Ivan Jablonka along with feminist theory. Taught in French.
Same as: FEMGEN 187X, FEMGEN 287X, FEMGEN 387X, FRENCH 287, FRENCH 387

FRENCH 192. Women in French Cinema: 1958-. 3-5 Units.

Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The myth of the feminine idol in French films in historical and cultural context since the New Wave until now. The mythology of stars as the imaginary vehicle that helped France to change from traditional society to modern, culturally mixed nation. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the film industry. Filmmakers include Vadim, Buñuel, Truffaut, Varda, Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Tonie Marshall. Discussion in English; films in French with English subtitles.
Same as: FEMGEN 192, FILMSTUD 112

FRENCH 199. Individual Work. 1-12 Unit.

Restricted to French majors with consent of department. Normally limited to 4-unit credit toward the major. May be repeated for credit.

FRENCH 205. Songs of Love and War: Gender, Crusade, Politics. 3-5 Units.

Analysis of medieval love, satirical and Crusade lyrics of the trouabdours. Study of deictic address, corporeal subjectivity, the female voice, love debates, and the body as a figure of political conflict. Course readings include medieval treatises on lyric and modern translations of the troubadour tradition. Works by Ovid, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born, La Comtessa de Dia, Thibaut de Champagne, Raimon Vidal, Dante, and Pound. Taught in English. Course includes a lab component for creation of multi-media translation projects: trobar. stanford.edu.
Same as: FEMGEN 205

FRENCH 214. Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett. 3-5 Units.

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 281E, COMPLIT 381E, FRENCH 314, ITALIAN 214, ITALIAN 314

FRENCH 218. Literature and the Brain. 3 Units.

Recent developments in and neuroscience and experimental psychology have transformed the way we think about the operations of the brain. What can we learn from this about the nature and function of literary texts? Can innovative ways of speaking affect ways of thinking? Do creative metaphors draw on embodied cognition? Can fictions strengthen our "theory of mind" capabilities? What role does mental imagery play in the appreciation of descriptions? Does (weak) modularity help explain the mechanism and purpose of self-reflexivity? Can the distinctions among types of memory shed light on what narrative works have to offer?.
Same as: COMPLIT 138, COMPLIT 238, ENGLISH 118, ENGLISH 218, FRENCH 118, PSYC 126, PSYCH 118F

FRENCH 219. The Renaissance Body in French Literature and Medicine. 3-5 Units.

If the Renaissance is famous for discovering unknown continents and ancient texts the body too was a new territory of conquest. How did literature respond to the rise of an anatomical gaze in the arts and in medicine and how did it stage the aesthetic religious philosophical and moral issues related to such a promotion or deconstruction of the body? Does literature aim at representing the body or does it use it instead as a ubiquitous signifier for intellectual emotional and political ideas? The locus of desire, pleasure and disease, the body also functioned as a reminder of human mortality and was caught in the web of gender issues, religious controversies and new norms of behavior. Texts from prose fiction (Rabelais) poetry (Scève Ronsard Labé D'Aubigné) essays (Montaigne) and emblem literature. Extra documents include music scores tapestries paintings philosophical and anatomical plates from medical treatises. Taught in French.
Same as: FRENCH 319

FRENCH 220. Rethinking Francophonie in the 21st Century. 3-5 Units.

This course is a critical examination of literature from the Francophone world of the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will travel through time and space with a selection of novels, poems, epics, memoirs, essays, manifestos and short stories. In this historical and cultural journey through Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Vietnam and Mauritius, our objective will be to provide a reassessment, of what "Francophonie" means in the 21st century. While exploring francophone societies we will examine several canonical texts together with more recent works and consider their engagement with the historical and political contexts in which they were produced. Topics discussed in the course will include: race and representation, national and cultural identity, immigration and nationalism, transnationalism and diaspora, littérature-monde, language politics, postcolonialism and universalism. Readings will include the works of: Aimé Césaire, Lyonnel Trouillot, Edouard Glissant, Boubacar Boris Diop, Alain Mabanckou, Kim Thúy, Ananda Devi, Fatou Diome, Simone Swartz-Bart, Abdelkader Khatibi, among others. Taught in French.

FRENCH 221A. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Politics, Philosophy, and Literature. 3-5 Units.

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." This seminar explores the work of one of the most important and enigmatic thinkers about the problems of modern society: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Students will read a selection of his most important works in dialogue with other important thinkers of his time. They will grapple with Rousseau's political philosophy in his critique of modernity and his vision for remaking politics, as well as his moral philosophy and influential fictional visions of education and love. We will discuss not only Rousseau's landmark contributions to debates about authenticity, transparency, and self-interest, but also his troubling views on gender. The class will conclude with Rousseau's autobiography and its profound meditation on the formation of selfhood. Taught in French.
Same as: FRENCH 121

FRENCH 228. Science, technology and society and the humanities in the face of the looming disaster. 3-5 Units.

How STS and the Humanities can together help think out the looming catastrophes that put the future of humankind in jeopardy.
Same as: ITALIAN 228, POLISCI 233F

FRENCH 228E. Getting Through Proust. 3-5 Units.

Selections from all seven volumes of "In Search of Lost Time". Focus on issues of personal identity (perspective, memory, life-narrative); interpersonal relations (friendship, love, homosexuality, jealousy, indirect expression); knowledge (objective truth, subjective truth, necessary illusions); redemption (enchantment, disenchantment, re-enchantment); aesthetics (music, painting, fiction); and Proust's own style (narrative sequence, sentence structure, irony, metaphor, metonymy, metalepsis). Taught in English; readings in French or English.

FRENCH 230. Giambattista Vico & Claude Lévi-Strauss. 3-5 Units.

An intensive reading of Vico's New Science with special emphasis on Vico's theory of anthropogenesis, myth, and the poetic origins of human consciousness. Vico's thought will be placed in relation to Lévi-Strauss's theories of myth and so-called "primitive thought". Readings include Vico's New Science and Lévi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth", and the first chapters of his book The Savage Mind. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 330, ITALIAN 327

FRENCH 236. Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge. 3-5 Units.

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
Same as: AFRICAAM 236B, COMPLIT 236A, CSRE 140S, FRENCH 336, HISTORY 245C, URBANST 140F

FRENCH 238. Art and the Market. 3-5 Units.

This course examines the relationship between art and the market, from the château-builders of the French Renaissance to avant-garde painters in the nineteenth-century Salon des Refusés. Using examples drawn from France, this course explores the relationship between artists and patrons, the changing status of artists in society, patterns of shifting taste, and the effects of museums on making and collecting art. Students will read a mixture of historical texts about art and artists, fictional works depicting the process of artistic creation, and theoretical analyses of the politics embedded in artworks. They will engage in sustained analysis of individual artworks, as well as the market structures in which such artworks were produced and bought. The course will be taught in English, with the option of readings in French for departmental majors.
Same as: ARTHIST 238C

FRENCH 239. The Afterlife of the Middle Ages. 3-5 Units.

Literary works that evoke a medieval past in contrast to a historical present, and critical texts that treat aspects of the medieval or medievalism. How does the concept of medievalism emerge and evolve through the ages? Topics include periodization, philology, critical theory, the study of Gothic architecture, and the use of the term medieval in modern political discourse and postcolonial studies. Authors include Burckhardt, Camille, Chateaubriand, Chrétien de Troyes, Didi-Huberman, Jauss, Michelet, Panofsky, Pound, films by Dreyer and Bergman, and contemporary poetry. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 339

FRENCH 246. Body over Mind. 3-5 Units.

How does modern fiction, aided by modern philosophy, give the lie to Descartes' famous "I think therefore I am"? And how does writing convey the desire for a different, perhaps stronger, integration of mind and body? Does the body speak a particular truth that we must learn to hear, that the mind is not always connected to? How do modern metaphors for the mind-body connection shape our experience? These questions will be explored via the works of major French and Italian writers and thinkers, including Pirandello, Calvino, Camus, Houellebecq, Sartre, and Agamben.
Same as: FRENCH 346, ITALIAN 346

FRENCH 248. Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave. 3-5 Units.

Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Same as: FRENCH 148, ITALIAN 148, ITALIAN 248

FRENCH 249. The Algerian Wars. 3-5 Units.

From Algiers the White to Algiers the Red, Algiers, the Mecca of the Revolutionaries in the words of Amilcar Cabral, this course offers to study the Algerian Wars since the French conquest of Algeria (1830-) to the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. We will revisit the ways in which the war has been narrated in literature and cinema, popular culture, and political discourse. A special focus will be given to the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). The course considers the racial representations of the war in the media, the continuing legacies surrounding the conflict in France, Africa, and the United States, from Che Guevara to the Black Panthers. A key focus will be the transmission of collective memory through transnational lenses, and analyses of commemorative events and movies. nReadings from James Baldwin, Assia Djebar, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Mouloud Feraoun. Movies include "The Battle of Algiers," "Days of Glory," and "Viva Laldjérie." nTaught in English.
Same as: CSRE 249, HISTORY 239G, JEWISHST 249

FRENCH 252. Art and Power: From Royal Spectacle to Revolutionary Ritual. 3-5 Units.

From the Palace of Versailles to grand operas to Jacques-Louis David's portraits of revolutionary martyrs, rarely have the arts been so powerfully mobilized by the State as in early modern France. This course examines how the arts were used from Louis XIV to the Revolution in order to broadcast political authority across Europe. We will also consider the resistance to such attempts to elicit shock-and-awe through artistic patronage. By studying music, architecture, garden design, the visual arts, and theater together, students will gain a new perspective on works of art in their political contexts. But we will also examine the libelous pamphlets and satirical cartoons that turned the monarchy¿s grandeur against itself, ending the course with an examination of the new artistic regime of the French Revolution. The course will be taught in English with the option of French readings for departmental majors.
Same as: ARTHIST 252A

FRENCH 257. Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Adriana Cavarero. 3-5 Units.

What does it mean to say the personal is the political, or, in the case of Arendt, that the personal is not political, especially if you are a woman? This course explores how Weil, De Beauvoir, Arendt, and Caverero contend with the question of personhood, in its variegated social, political, ethical, and gendered dimensions. Particular attention will be given to a philosophy of social change and personal transformation, and to the enduring relevance of these women's thought to issues of our day. Texts include selections from "Gravity and Grace," "The Second Sex," "The Ethics of Ambiguity," "The Human Condition," "Between Past and Future," "Stately Bodies," and "Relating Narratives.".
Same as: COMPLIT 257, COMPLIT 357A, FEMGEN 257X, FEMGEN 357X, FRENCH 357, ITALIAN 257, ITALIAN 357

FRENCH 260A. Transcultural Perspectives of South-East Asian Music and Arts. 2-4 Units.

This course will explore the links between aspects of South-East Asian cultures and their influence on modern and contemporary Western art and literature, particularly in France; examples of this influence include Claude Debussy (Gamelan music), Jacques Charpentier (Karnatak music), Auguste Rodin (Khmer art) and Antonin Artaud (Balinese theater). In the course of these interdisciplinary analyses - focalized on music and dance but not limited to it - we will confront key notions in relation to transculturality: orientalism, appropriation, auto-ethnography, nostalgia, exoticism and cosmopolitanism. We will also consider transculturality interior to contemporary creation, through the work of contemporary composers such as Tran Kim Ngoc, Chinary Ung and Tôn-Thât Tiêt. Viewings of sculptures, marionette theater, ballet, opera and cinema will also play an integral role. To satisfy a Ways requirement, this course must be taken for at least 3 units. In AY 2020-21, a letter grade or `CR¿ grade satisfies the Ways requirement. WIM credit in Music at 4 units and a letter grade.
Same as: COMPLIT 148, COMPLIT 267, MUSIC 146N, MUSIC 246N

FRENCH 261. War and Peace: Writings by and about Veterans in the 20th and 21st Centuries. 2-5 Units.

Since the aftermath of World War One, and with increasing urgency in contemporary America, stories about and by veterans are assigned a double role: that of exposing the horror of war yet also defending the possibility of a just war, and that of healing both veterans themselves and the society they return to. Key questions for this course are: Given the current practice of using writing and the hero¿s journey as a model for healing veterans and making their voices heard in our culture, can we look back to post-World-War-One culture and see if writing fulfills a similar function? And given how many post-World-War-One veterans became famous writers, how do we assess the interplay between literature, poetry, memoir, journalism, personal letters, photo accounts? Is there a connection between artistic innovation and the capacity to heal?.
Same as: FRENCH 361, ITALIAN 261, ITALIAN 361

FRENCH 262. Symbolism in Literature and the Arts. 3-5 Units.

This course will deal with the some of the 19th and 20th century authors and artists associated with Symbolism. We will focus on some key theoretical essays about the symbol, as well as on symbolist poetry, novels, visual arts, cinema, and music. In reading authors such as Coleridge, Blake, Poe, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Valéry, Pascoli, Campana, d¿Annunzio, and Savinio, we will explore the nature and uses of the symbol in art.
Same as: FRENCH 362, ITALIAN 262, ITALIAN 362

FRENCH 264. Crossing the Atlantic: Race and Identity in the African Diaspora. 3-5 Units.

This course interrogates the relationship between literature, culture, race and identity in the African diaspora. We will analyze racial discourses through literature, and various forms of cultural expression while examining the role of class and gender in these configurations. As we follow the historical and geographical trajectories of people of African descent in different parts of the world, students will explore literary and political movements with the objective of examining how race has been constructed and is performed in different regions of the diaspora. Our readings will take us from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyana, France, and Senegal to Cuba, Brazil, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Topics discussed will include: Race, identity, gender, class, memory, oral tradition, Afro-Caribbean religions, Negrismo, Négritude, Antillanité, Créolité, colonialism, modernity and national belonging. Readings will include the works of: Jean Price-Mars, Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, Frantz Fanon, Nicolás Guillén, Nancy Morejon, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edouard Glissant, among others. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 264, CSRE 265

FRENCH 265. The Problem of Evil in Literature, Film, and Philosophy. 3-5 Units.

Conceptions of evil and its nature and source, distinctions between natural and moral evil, and what belongs to God versus to the human race have undergone transformations reflected in literature and film. Sources include Rousseau's response to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake; Hannah Arendt's interpretation of Auschwitz; Günther Anders' reading of Hiroshima; and current reflections on looming climatic and nuclear disasters. Readings from Rousseau, Kant, Dostoevsky, Arendt, Anders, Jonas, Camus, Ricoeur, Houellebeck, Girard. Films by Lang, Bergman, Losey, Hitchcock.
Same as: POLISCI 338E

FRENCH 266. Food, Text, Music: A Multidisciplinary Lab on the Art of Feasting. 3-5 Units.

Students cook a collection of unfamiliar recipes each week while learning about the cultural milieus in which they originated. The course focuses on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a time of great banquets that brought together chefs, visual artists, poets, musicians, and dancers. Students read late-medieval cookbooks under the guidance of professional chefs, learn songs and poetry with the help of visiting performers, and delve into a burgeoning scholarly literature on food history and sensory experience. We will also study trade routes and food networks, the environmental impact of large-scale banquets, the science of food, and the politics of plenty. This course may count towards the Medieval component of the French major, and corresponds to DLCL 121, a course requirement for the Medieval Studies Minor. Students interested in applying for course must email the professor (jrodin@stanford.edu) by 20 September with a statement of up to 350 words that includes: (a) reasons for wanting to take the class; (b) relevant background in cooking/medieval studies/etc.; (c) stated commitment to attend all ten course meetings; and (d) any dietary restrictions/preferences.
Same as: FRENCH 166, FRENCH 366, MUSIC 133, MUSIC 333

FRENCH 272. Body Doubles: From the Fantastic Short Story to Science-Fiction. 2-5 Units.

How do we imagine our bodies through language, at times almost completely refashioning a physical double, be it idealized or abject? How do such body doubles intersect with our sense of self, defining or redefining sexual identity, spiritual aspirations, illness and recovery, and the senses themselves, as our window into reality? This course focuses on short stories from the late 19th- and early 20th-century fantastic genre, and science fiction stories from the following turn of the century, 100 years later: in these revealing instances, body doubles often seem to acquire a will of their own, overwhelming normal physical identity.
Same as: FRENCH 372, ITALIAN 272, ITALIAN 372

FRENCH 279. How the French Reinvented Cinema: The New Wave. 3-5 Units.

Focus on the French New Wave's cinematic revolution of 1959-1962. In a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered landmark works such as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Chabrol's The Cousins or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, and changed forever the way we make and think about movies. Why did these films look so radically fresh? What do they say about France's youth culture in the early 60s? How is the author's theory behind them still influencing us today? Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Graduate and Junior/Senior level. Taught in English. NOTE: Class meets Thursday 1:30-4:20pm; film screenings Monday 6:00-8:50pm in room 540-108.
Same as: FRENCH 379

FRENCH 281. Women in Africa and the Caribbean: Tales of Agency. 3-5 Units.

This course explores forms of women¿s agency in African and Caribbean cultural productions. Drawing on literature, visual art and feminist theory we will grapple with the concept of agency in different socio-historical and economic contexts while examining texts and films at the intersection of race, gender and agency. In addition to considering the acts of subversion, negotiation, resistance and transgression, throughout the semester, our investigations of gendered agency will pay particular attention to creativity as a tool to challenge power relations specific to each context explored. Topics include race, class, nationalism, métissage, oral tradition, Afro-Caribbean religions, sexuality, marriage, food and the body. Taught in English.

FRENCH 285. Texts and Contexts: French-English Translation. 3-5 Units.

This course introduces students to the ways in which translation has shaped the image of France and the Francophone world. What texts and concepts were translated, how, where, and to what effect? Students will work on a translation project throughout the quarter and translate texts from French to English and English to French. Topics may include the role of translation in the development of cultures; the political dimension of translation, translation in the context of migration, and the socio-cultural frameworks that shape translations. Case studies: Camus, Fanon, Glissant, de Beauvoir, Meddeb, Duras. Prior knowledge of French language required.
Same as: COMPLIT 285, CSRE 285, FRENCH 185

FRENCH 286. Poetry and Philosophy. 2-5 Units.

When and why do philosophers resort to poetry?nWhat is the relationship between poetic metaphor and philosophical argumentation?nWhy is the poetic often associated with empathy - recently touted as an essential human characteristic - whereas philosophy is considered more objective?nWhat is poetry's role in the pursuit of wisdom or the good life?nAuthors include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Agamben, Ricoeur, Derrida, Irigaray, Wyschogrod, and Cavarero.
Same as: FRENCH 386, ITALIAN 286, ITALIAN 386

FRENCH 287. Sex, Gender, and Violence: French Women Writers Today. 1-5 Unit.

Long before the 2017 #Metoo campaign, French women writers have explored through powerful fictions and autobiographies the different shades of economic, social, psychological, physical, or sexual violence that is exerted against, but also by and between, women. How does literature - the power of words - address, deconstruct or comfort power dynamics (during sex and between the sexes) that are usually silenced, taboo or unspeakable? Themes explored: sex and gender, sex and power, rape culture, sexual and moral taboos (incest, abortion, pornography, infanticide, lesbianism), the body as social stigma or source of meaning. Special attention given to narrative and descriptive strategies designed to avert, expose, deconstruct or account for specifically feminine experiences (rape, orgasm, pregnancy). Authors include Marie Darrieusecq, Christine Angot, Annie Ernaux, Marie NDiaye, Virginie Despentes, Leila Slimani, Ivan Jablonka along with feminist theory. Taught in French.
Same as: FEMGEN 187X, FEMGEN 287X, FEMGEN 387X, FRENCH 187, FRENCH 387

FRENCH 290. Magic, Science, and Religion. 3-5 Units.

With the rise of the human sciences in the later nineteenth century, "magic," "science," and "religion" came to be understood as entirely separate domains, with different versions of truth and divergent methods of inquiry. But how has this division broken down in the past 150 years? How is it, for example, that other people's religion is "merely magic"? How does science still draw on religious categories, in particular to claim the universe is meaningful? How have new forms of magic shaped new age, global culture? We will examine these questions by pairing literary texts with readings from anthropology, history of science, religious studies, and cultural criticism. This course is taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 290A, COMPLIT 390A, FRENCH 390, ITALIAN 290, ITALIAN 390

FRENCH 292. Romancing the Stone: Crystal Media from Babylon to Superman. 3-5 Units.

This seminar investigates the importance of rock crystal and its imitations as material, medium, and metaphor from antiquity until modernity. The objects examined include rings, reliquaries, lenses, and the Crystal Aesthetic in early twentieth-century architecture and even Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The texts range from Pliny to Arabic Poetry to Romance Literature to modern manifestos.
Same as: ARTHIST 292, ARTHIST 492, FRENCH 392

FRENCH 307A. Proust and His World. 3-5 Units.

This course is a chance to read together Proust's <e>A la recherche du temps perdu</e>. This seven-volume novel is a stylistic tour de force, a brilliant meditation on defining elements of modernity, and an eccentric meander through art, history and the self. We will look closely at Proust's narrative edifice, and its poetic achievements. We will augment our reading of the novel with secondary selections that enable us to explore the many themes and questions raised by the work, ranging from fashion as a serious mode of modern expression to the phenomenology of memory to the decadence of French culture on the eve of the First World War. We'll look at the importance of Proust for structuralist and post-structuralist critics of the 1960s-1980s, whose paradigms continue to resonate today. We'll also consider together the interest and limits of a single-author course, and the value of absorptive, "slow" reading in our multi-tasking era. Supplementary readings might include selections from Charles Baudelaire, John Ruskin, Henri Bergson, Gérard Genette, Gilles Deleuze, Eve Sedgwick, Maurice Samuels, and Caroline Weber. Reading knowledge of French strongly recommended.
Same as: COMPLIT 307

FRENCH 310. French Painting from Watteau to Monet. 3-5 Units.

This course offers a survey of painting in France from 1700 to around 1900. It introduces major artists, artworks, and the concepts used by contemporary observers and later art historians to make sense of this extraordinarily rich period. Overarching themes discussed in the class will include the dueling legacies of coloristic virtuosity and classical formalism, new ways of representing visual perception, the opposing artistic effects of absorption and theatricality, the rise and fall of official arts institutions, and the participation of artists and artworks in political upheaval and social change. The course ends with an interrogation of the concept of modernity and its emergence out of dialogue and conflict with artists of the past. Students will learn and practice formal analysis of paintings, as well as interpretations stressing historical context.
Same as: ARTHIST 110, ARTHIST 310, FRENCH 110

FRENCH 314. Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett. 3-5 Units.

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 281E, COMPLIT 381E, FRENCH 214, ITALIAN 214, ITALIAN 314

FRENCH 319. The Renaissance Body in French Literature and Medicine. 3-5 Units.

If the Renaissance is famous for discovering unknown continents and ancient texts the body too was a new territory of conquest. How did literature respond to the rise of an anatomical gaze in the arts and in medicine and how did it stage the aesthetic religious philosophical and moral issues related to such a promotion or deconstruction of the body? Does literature aim at representing the body or does it use it instead as a ubiquitous signifier for intellectual emotional and political ideas? The locus of desire, pleasure and disease, the body also functioned as a reminder of human mortality and was caught in the web of gender issues, religious controversies and new norms of behavior. Texts from prose fiction (Rabelais) poetry (Scève Ronsard Labé D'Aubigné) essays (Montaigne) and emblem literature. Extra documents include music scores tapestries paintings philosophical and anatomical plates from medical treatises. Taught in French.
Same as: FRENCH 219

FRENCH 320. The Posthumanistic Subject. 3-5 Units.

The course will examine the need to rethink the traditional western idea of the strong subject. Through close readings of works by Agamben, Braidotti, Derrida, Deleuze, Hall, Haraway, Latour, Wolfe, among others, this course will explore posthumanist theories of individual and collective subjectivity that challenge traditional ways of defining the human and the non-human subject/person and promote fundamental reconsideration of issues such as agency, autonomy, essence, freedom, dignity, otherness, substance, personhood, sociality, and life itself. The course would consider, how we can empower the subject and community in order to develop a desired model of participatory democracy. Prerequisite: graduate standing or consent of instructor.

FRENCH 321. Giambattista Vico. 1-5 Unit.

An intensive reading of Vico's New Science. Emphasis will be on Vico's philosophy of history and theories of poetic wisdom, myth, and language. Vico will be put in dialogue with René Descartes, Rousseau, Auguste Compte, Claude Lévi Strauss, and Paul Feyerabend, whose ideas about myth and science converge in striking ways with Vico's.
Same as: ITALIAN 321

FRENCH 322. Decadence and Modernism from Mallarmé to Marinetti. 1-2 Unit.

One hundred years ago, artists feared their work was incompatible with modern economic systems, secular bourgeois values, and materialist science. Accused of being decadent, they took up this term of derision and made it into a program of rebellion that has shaped modern art. This course explores decadent rebellion, with an eye toward how the last turn of the century might be similar to our current one. Writers include Huysmans, Poe, Mallarmé, Nietzsche, Nordau, d'Annunzio, Valéry, Ungaretti, Marinetti, and Breton; we will also consider parallels in the visual arts.

FRENCH 327. Genres of the Novel. 5 Units.

Provides students with an overview of some major genres in the history of the modern novel, along with major theorists in the critical understanding of the form. Novels might include works by Cervantes, Defoe, Lafayette, Radcliffe, Goethe, Scott, Balzac, Melville, and Woolf. Theorists might include Lukacs, Bakhtin, Jameson, Gallagher, Barthes, Kristeva, and Bourdieu. *PLEASE NOTE: Course for graduate students only.*.
Same as: COMPLIT 327, ENGLISH 327

FRENCH 329. Rethinking Francophone Literature in the 21st Century. 3-5 Units.

This course is a critical examination of literature from the Francophone world of the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will travel through time and space with a selection of novels, poems, essays, and short stories. In this historical and cultural journey through Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Vietnam and Mauritius, our objective will be to provide a reassessment of what Francophone studies mean in the 21st century. Topics discussed in the course will include race and representation, national and cultural identity, immigration and nationalism, transnationalism and diaspora, "littérature-monde," the politics of language, postcolonialism and universalism. Readings will include the works of Dani Laferrière, Bessora, Ken Bugul, Alain Mabanckou, Kim Thúy, Ananda Devi, Abdourahman Waberi, Véronique Tadjo and Abdelkebir Khatibi. Taught in French.
Same as: CSRE 329

FRENCH 330. Giambattista Vico & Claude Lévi-Strauss. 3-5 Units.

An intensive reading of Vico's New Science with special emphasis on Vico's theory of anthropogenesis, myth, and the poetic origins of human consciousness. Vico's thought will be placed in relation to Lévi-Strauss's theories of myth and so-called "primitive thought". Readings include Vico's New Science and Lévi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth", and the first chapters of his book The Savage Mind. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 230, ITALIAN 327

FRENCH 331. The Craft of Confession and Its Cultural Contexts. 5 Units.

Course examines medieval treatises and literature relating to the practice of confession as well as modern examples, with a focus on medieval concern with a sincere and authentic confession in theological, ethical, and aesthetic terms. Study includes expressions of subjectivity, institutional frameworks of confession, and the phenomenon as an instrument for political activity such as crusade. Texts: Augustine¿s Confessions, pastoral treatises, Aquinas, Arthurian romances concerning the grail legend, crusade lyric, and Foucault; films such as Dreyer and martyrdom videos. Taught in French.

FRENCH 336. Casablanca - Algiers - Tunis : Cities on the Edge. 3-5 Units.

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial pasts, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race.
Same as: AFRICAAM 236B, COMPLIT 236A, CSRE 140S, FRENCH 236, HISTORY 245C, URBANST 140F

FRENCH 339. The Afterlife of the Middle Ages. 3-5 Units.

Literary works that evoke a medieval past in contrast to a historical present, and critical texts that treat aspects of the medieval or medievalism. How does the concept of medievalism emerge and evolve through the ages? Topics include periodization, philology, critical theory, the study of Gothic architecture, and the use of the term medieval in modern political discourse and postcolonial studies. Authors include Burckhardt, Camille, Chateaubriand, Chrétien de Troyes, Didi-Huberman, Jauss, Michelet, Panofsky, Pound, films by Dreyer and Bergman, and contemporary poetry. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 239

FRENCH 340. Paris: Capital of the Modern World. 4-5 Units.

This course explores how Paris, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, became the political, cultural, and artistic capital of the modern world. It considers how the city has both shaped and been shaped by the tumultuous events of modern history- class conflict, industrialization, imperialism, war, and occupation. It will also explore why Paris became the major world destination for intellectuals, artists and writers. Sources will include films, paintings, architecture, novels, travel journals, and memoirs. Course taught in English with an optional French section.
Same as: FRENCH 140, HISTORY 230C, URBANST 184

FRENCH 343. In Defense of Poetry. 3-5 Units.

Beginning with the account of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato's Republic, we will read definitions and defenses of poetry by authors such as Cicero, Horace, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sidney, Shelley, and Pound, among others. While we will try to historicize these authors' defenses as much as possible, we will also read them from the perspective of contemporary efforts to defend literature and the humanities. Topics of central concern will be the connection between poetry and ethics, the conflict between poetry and the professions of business, law, and medicine, poetry's place in the university, the political role of the poet, questions of poetic language and form, and the relevance of defenses of poetry to literary theory.

FRENCH 346. Body over Mind. 3-5 Units.

How does modern fiction, aided by modern philosophy, give the lie to Descartes' famous "I think therefore I am"? And how does writing convey the desire for a different, perhaps stronger, integration of mind and body? Does the body speak a particular truth that we must learn to hear, that the mind is not always connected to? How do modern metaphors for the mind-body connection shape our experience? These questions will be explored via the works of major French and Italian writers and thinkers, including Pirandello, Calvino, Camus, Houellebecq, Sartre, and Agamben.
Same as: FRENCH 246, ITALIAN 346

FRENCH 349. Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art. 3-5 Units.

Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Same as: ARTHIST 119, ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 149, ITALIAN 149, ITALIAN 349

FRENCH 350. Season and Off-Season of North-African Cinema and Literature. 3-5 Units.

This course explores the emergence of Francophone cinema and literature from North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco) in the post-independence era: aesthetics, language metissage and hybridization, ethnic interactions, gender relations, collective imagination and collective memory, nationalism, popular culture, religion, urbanism, post-colonialism, migration, and the Arab Spring will be covered. Special attention will be given to Moroccan cinema, and to the notions of francophone/maghrebi/"beur"/diasporic cinema and literature. Readings from Franz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Kateb Yacine, Albert Camus, Reda Bensmaia, Assia Djebar, Colette Fellous, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Michel de Certeau, Benjamin Stora, Lucette Valensi, Abdelwahab Meddeb. Movies include Viva Laldjérie, Rome plutot que vous, Les Sabots en or, Les Silence des Palais, Halfaouine, Satin Rouge, Le Chant des Mariées, and Mort à Vendre. Taught in French. Films in French and Arabic with English subtitles.
Same as: FRENCH 150

FRENCH 352. French Painting from the Revolution to Impressionism. 3-5 Units.

This course offers a survey of painting in France from 1700 to around 1900. It introduces major artists, artworks, and the concepts used by contemporary observers and later art historians to make sense of this extraordinarily rich period. Overarching themes discussed in the class will include the dueling legacies of coloristic virtuosity and classical formalism, new ways of representing visual perception, the opposing artistic effects of absorption and theatricality, the rise and fall of official arts institutions, and the participation of artists and artworks in political upheaval and social change. The course ends with an interrogation of the concept of modernity and its emergence out of dialogue and conflict with artists of the past. Students will learn and practice formal analysis of paintings, as well as interpretations stressing historical context.
Same as: FRENCH 152

FRENCH 353. « Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité » : French Political Myths and Concepts. 3-5 Units.

"Liberté, égalité, fraternité," but also "laïcité," "diversité," "parité," "universalisme" : the French have forged over the last two centuries key political concepts that are articulated together in a unique way and shape the political consciousness, modes of engagements, aspirations and current debates of what has been called "the most political nation in the world." Along with mythologies such as the People, the Nation, the providential Leader, or the "enemy from within," they are at the centre of semantic and political battles, tugged over by the Left, the Right, populist movements, activists and counter-cultures. How did they emerge? How do they apply today? How does theory compare to practices, principles to day-to-day realities? An introduction through case-studies, films, paintings, cartoons, and texts from political theory, history, politics and literature. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 153

FRENCH 357. Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Adriana Cavarero. 3-5 Units.

What does it mean to say the personal is the political, or, in the case of Arendt, that the personal is not political, especially if you are a woman? This course explores how Weil, De Beauvoir, Arendt, and Caverero contend with the question of personhood, in its variegated social, political, ethical, and gendered dimensions. Particular attention will be given to a philosophy of social change and personal transformation, and to the enduring relevance of these women's thought to issues of our day. Texts include selections from "Gravity and Grace," "The Second Sex," "The Ethics of Ambiguity," "The Human Condition," "Between Past and Future," "Stately Bodies," and "Relating Narratives.".
Same as: COMPLIT 257, COMPLIT 357A, FEMGEN 257X, FEMGEN 357X, FRENCH 257, ITALIAN 257, ITALIAN 357

FRENCH 36. Dangerous Ideas. 1 Unit.

Ideas matter. Concepts such as revolution, tradition, and hell have inspired social movements, shaped political systems, and dramatically influenced the lives of individuals. Others, like immigration, universal basic income, and youth play an important role in contemporary debates in the United States. All of these ideas are contested, and they have a real power to change lives, for better and for worse. In this one-unit class we will examine these "dangerous" ideas. Each week, a faculty member from a different department in the humanities and arts will explore a concept that has shaped human experience across time and space. Some weeks will have short reading assignments, but you are not required to purchase any materials.
Same as: ARTHIST 36, COMPLIT 36A, EALC 36, ENGLISH 71, ETHICSOC 36X, HISTORY 3D, MUSIC 36H, PHIL 36, POLISCI 70, RELIGST 36X, SLAVIC 36

FRENCH 361. War and Peace: Writings by and about Veterans in the 20th and 21st Centuries. 2-5 Units.

Since the aftermath of World War One, and with increasing urgency in contemporary America, stories about and by veterans are assigned a double role: that of exposing the horror of war yet also defending the possibility of a just war, and that of healing both veterans themselves and the society they return to. Key questions for this course are: Given the current practice of using writing and the hero¿s journey as a model for healing veterans and making their voices heard in our culture, can we look back to post-World-War-One culture and see if writing fulfills a similar function? And given how many post-World-War-One veterans became famous writers, how do we assess the interplay between literature, poetry, memoir, journalism, personal letters, photo accounts? Is there a connection between artistic innovation and the capacity to heal?.
Same as: FRENCH 261, ITALIAN 261, ITALIAN 361

FRENCH 362. Symbolism in Literature and the Arts. 3-5 Units.

This course will deal with the some of the 19th and 20th century authors and artists associated with Symbolism. We will focus on some key theoretical essays about the symbol, as well as on symbolist poetry, novels, visual arts, cinema, and music. In reading authors such as Coleridge, Blake, Poe, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Valéry, Pascoli, Campana, d¿Annunzio, and Savinio, we will explore the nature and uses of the symbol in art.
Same as: FRENCH 262, ITALIAN 262, ITALIAN 362

FRENCH 365. The Problem of Evil in Philosophy, Literature, and Film. 5 Units.

This workshop will explore how the existence of evil in the world has been perceived, felt, analyzed, conceptualized, and dealt with over time, from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami to our post-Auschwitz, post-Hiroshima era. We'll take it for granted that "the problem of evil is the guiding force of modern thought" (Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought.) We'll ask why this is apparently no longer the case. Such philosophers as Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Leibniz, Kant, Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Hans Jonas and Ivan Illich will be our guides. One could argue, however, that theology, metaphysics or moral philosophy are not up to the task of making sense of evil if they are not aided by literature and, today, film. Fiction can often articulate ideas that escape the grasp of philosophy. NOTE: Enrollment is capped and limited to graduate students: To be considered for enrollment in this course, please submit by March 13, 2020 a letter of motivation fleshing out the state of your own research or reflections in this domain. This letter should be sent to the instructor at jpdupuy@stanford.edu.

FRENCH 366. Food, Text, Music: A Multidisciplinary Lab on the Art of Feasting. 3-5 Units.

Students cook a collection of unfamiliar recipes each week while learning about the cultural milieus in which they originated. The course focuses on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a time of great banquets that brought together chefs, visual artists, poets, musicians, and dancers. Students read late-medieval cookbooks under the guidance of professional chefs, learn songs and poetry with the help of visiting performers, and delve into a burgeoning scholarly literature on food history and sensory experience. We will also study trade routes and food networks, the environmental impact of large-scale banquets, the science of food, and the politics of plenty. This course may count towards the Medieval component of the French major, and corresponds to DLCL 121, a course requirement for the Medieval Studies Minor. Students interested in applying for course must email the professor (jrodin@stanford.edu) by 20 September with a statement of up to 350 words that includes: (a) reasons for wanting to take the class; (b) relevant background in cooking/medieval studies/etc.; (c) stated commitment to attend all ten course meetings; and (d) any dietary restrictions/preferences.
Same as: FRENCH 166, FRENCH 266, MUSIC 133, MUSIC 333

FRENCH 368A. Imagining the Oceans. 5 Units.

How has Western culture constructed the world's oceans since the beginning of global ocean exploration? How have imaginative visions of the ocean been shaped by marine science, technology, exploration, commerce and leisure? Primary authors read might include Cook, Banks, Equiano, Ricketts, and Steinbeck; Defoe, Cooper, Verne, Conrad, Woolf and Hemingway; Coleridge, Baudelaire, Moore, Bishop and Walcott. Critical readings include Schmitt, Rediker and Linebaugh, Baucom, Best, Corbin, Auden, Sontag and Heller-Roazen. Films by Sekula, Painlevé and Bigelow. Seminar coordinated with a 2015 Cantor Arts Center public exhibition. Visits to the Cantor; other possible field trips include Hopkins Marine Station and SF Maritime Historical Park. Open to graduate students only.
Same as: COMPLIT 368A, ENGLISH 368A

FRENCH 369. Introduction to the Profession of Literary Studies. 1-2 Unit.

A survey of how literary theory and other methods have been made institutional since the nineteenth century. The readings and conversation are designed for entering Ph.D. students in the national literature departments and comparative literature.
Same as: COMPLIT 369, DLCL 369, GERMAN 369, ITALIAN 369

FRENCH 372. Body Doubles: From the Fantastic Short Story to Science-Fiction. 2-5 Units.

How do we imagine our bodies through language, at times almost completely refashioning a physical double, be it idealized or abject? How do such body doubles intersect with our sense of self, defining or redefining sexual identity, spiritual aspirations, illness and recovery, and the senses themselves, as our window into reality? This course focuses on short stories from the late 19th- and early 20th-century fantastic genre, and science fiction stories from the following turn of the century, 100 years later: in these revealing instances, body doubles often seem to acquire a will of their own, overwhelming normal physical identity.
Same as: FRENCH 272, ITALIAN 272, ITALIAN 372

FRENCH 377. Medieval Lyric: How Lyric Moves. 3-5 Units.

Through the study of various vernacular premodern traditions, this graduate level course examines the qualities that make texts "lyric" and place them into conversation with contemporary theories of lyric. The course will situate medieval lyric within the critical discourse of poetics, the Global South, the archive, and anachrony. We will consider the movement of verse within and among various material contexts (song, manuscript, artworks, objects, tombstones). Poets considered: troubadours, trouvères, Galician-Portugese cantigas d'amigo, Stilnovists, Dante, Petrarchan poetry, Jean Renart, Charles d'Orléans, Villon, Pound, Brazilian Concrete Poetry.
Same as: COMPLIT 377, ITALIAN 377

FRENCH 379. How the French Reinvented Cinema: The New Wave. 3-5 Units.

Focus on the French New Wave's cinematic revolution of 1959-1962. In a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered landmark works such as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Chabrol's The Cousins or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, and changed forever the way we make and think about movies. Why did these films look so radically fresh? What do they say about France's youth culture in the early 60s? How is the author's theory behind them still influencing us today? Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Graduate and Junior/Senior level. Taught in English. NOTE: Class meets Thursday 1:30-4:20pm; film screenings Monday 6:00-8:50pm in room 540-108.
Same as: FRENCH 279

FRENCH 380. Critical Poetics. 3-5 Units.

After recent critiques of "close" methods of literary criticism and reading practices, what claims can we make today about the literary object? Can we ever return to broad and general categories of poetics that were formulated by the major syncretic works of twentieth-century literary criticism by figures such as Auerbach, Curtius, and Frye? This course will discuss recent debates around literariness and concepts of poetics that move past a hermeneutic of suspicion and embrace the productive energies of form and affect produced by literary texts, including new methods of data analysis and concepts of genres in historical time.

FRENCH 386. Poetry and Philosophy. 2-5 Units.

When and why do philosophers resort to poetry?nWhat is the relationship between poetic metaphor and philosophical argumentation?nWhy is the poetic often associated with empathy - recently touted as an essential human characteristic - whereas philosophy is considered more objective?nWhat is poetry's role in the pursuit of wisdom or the good life?nAuthors include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Agamben, Ricoeur, Derrida, Irigaray, Wyschogrod, and Cavarero.
Same as: FRENCH 286, ITALIAN 286, ITALIAN 386

FRENCH 387. Sex, Gender, and Violence: French Women Writers Today. 1-5 Unit.

Long before the 2017 #Metoo campaign, French women writers have explored through powerful fictions and autobiographies the different shades of economic, social, psychological, physical, or sexual violence that is exerted against, but also by and between, women. How does literature - the power of words - address, deconstruct or comfort power dynamics (during sex and between the sexes) that are usually silenced, taboo or unspeakable? Themes explored: sex and gender, sex and power, rape culture, sexual and moral taboos (incest, abortion, pornography, infanticide, lesbianism), the body as social stigma or source of meaning. Special attention given to narrative and descriptive strategies designed to avert, expose, deconstruct or account for specifically feminine experiences (rape, orgasm, pregnancy). Authors include Marie Darrieusecq, Christine Angot, Annie Ernaux, Marie NDiaye, Virginie Despentes, Leila Slimani, Ivan Jablonka along with feminist theory. Taught in French.
Same as: FEMGEN 187X, FEMGEN 287X, FEMGEN 387X, FRENCH 187, FRENCH 287

FRENCH 390. Magic, Science, and Religion. 3-5 Units.

With the rise of the human sciences in the later nineteenth century, "magic," "science," and "religion" came to be understood as entirely separate domains, with different versions of truth and divergent methods of inquiry. But how has this division broken down in the past 150 years? How is it, for example, that other people's religion is "merely magic"? How does science still draw on religious categories, in particular to claim the universe is meaningful? How have new forms of magic shaped new age, global culture? We will examine these questions by pairing literary texts with readings from anthropology, history of science, religious studies, and cultural criticism. This course is taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 290A, COMPLIT 390A, FRENCH 290, ITALIAN 290, ITALIAN 390

FRENCH 392. Romancing the Stone: Crystal Media from Babylon to Superman. 3-5 Units.

This seminar investigates the importance of rock crystal and its imitations as material, medium, and metaphor from antiquity until modernity. The objects examined include rings, reliquaries, lenses, and the Crystal Aesthetic in early twentieth-century architecture and even Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The texts range from Pliny to Arabic Poetry to Romance Literature to modern manifestos.
Same as: ARTHIST 292, ARTHIST 492, FRENCH 292

FRENCH 395. Philosophical Reading Group. 1 Unit.

Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with Professor Robert Harrison is required. May be repeated for credit. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 359A, ITALIAN 395

FRENCH 398. Intensive Reading in French/Italian. 10 Units.

Enrollment is limited to French/Italian Ph.D. students. Course is designed for French/Italian Ph.D. students to prepare for department milestone exams.
Same as: ITALIAN 398

FRENCH 399. Individual Work. 1-12 Unit.

For students in French working on special projects or engaged in predissertation research.

FRENCH 75N. Narrative Medicine and Near-Death Experiences. 3 Units.

Even if many of us don't fully believe in an afterlife, we remain fascinated by visions of it. This course focuses on Near-Death Experiences and the stories around them, investigating them from the many perspectives pertinent to the growing field of narrative medicine: medical, neurological, cognitive, psychological, sociological, literary, and filmic. The goal is not to understand whether the stories are veridical but what they do for us, as individuals, and as a culture, and in particular how they seek to reshape the patient-doctor relationship. Materials will span the 20th century and come into the present. Taught in English.
Same as: ITALIAN 75N

FRENCH 801. TGR Project. 0 Units.

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FRENCH 802. TGR Dissertation. 0 Units.

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FRENCH 87N. The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema. 3-4 Units.

Focus on the French New Wave's cinematic revolution of 1959-1962. In a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered landmark works such as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Chabrol's Les Cousins or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, and changed forever the way we make and think about movies. Why did these films look so radically fresh? What do they say about France's youth culture in the early 60s? How is the author's theory behind them still influencing us today? Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Taught in English. NOTE: Class meets Tuesday/Thursday 12:00-1:20pm; film screenings Monday 6:00-8:50pm in room 540-108.