Nicole Asquith

This course will offer a systematic review of French grammar and is designed to strengthen and deepen students’ mastery of grammatical structures and vocabulary. Students will also develop their French writing skills, with an emphasis on analytical writing. The events of the French Revolution of 1789 to 1799—what the French call “la Grande Révolution”—were so dramatic and foundational that revolution has become a basic paradigm of French thought in politics and culture. In order to understand this legacy, one must first study the “Grande Révolution” itself. Thus, this course will be divided into two parts. In fall, we will study the original French Revolution, beginning with the forming of the Estates-General and the storming of the Bastille in 1789. We will familiarize ourselves with the Revolution’s unusual characters—from Marie Antoinette to Robespierre—and with major events and debates of the time. Students will study a variety of sources: histories, film, and primary materials such as caricatures and revolutionary posters. We will stage debates and act out scenes to better understand what was at stake in this shift from ancien régime to nouveau régime. In spring, we will focus on the relationship between politics and culture, studying five subsequent episodes of revolution: the Haïtian Revolution, Les Trois Glorieuses (otherwise known as the July Revolution), the Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, and the events of May 1968. Course materials in spring will include poems, short stories, excerpts of Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, films, and posters. At the end of spring, we will also look at the use of revolutionary rhetoric and tactics in present-day movements in France, such as the environmental movement, riots in the banlieue, and the #MeToo (or #BalanceTonPorc) movement.

In 1830, the opening of Victor Hugo’s play Hernani caused a tremendous uproar leading to physical altercations among spectators—an event that came to be known as the “battle of Hernani.” Why? Because Hugo had dared to flout the conventions of classical French theater. He even altered the alexandrine—the traditional twelve-syllable line that had come to embody the order and hierarchy of the ancien régime. This famous episode in French literary history illustrates the strong connection that was felt to exist between poetry and politics throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. This course will examine how, in the wake of the French Revolution, poetry came to be understood not merely as a reflection of social and political change, but as a practice capable of producing it. Students will read major poets who reimagined the possibilities of poetic language and form, including Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautréamont, and Rimbaud. We will then turn to the 20th century, examining the experimental practices of the Surrealists, whose approach was influenced by the trauma of World War I and the theories of Sigmund Freud, as well as the revolutionary tactics of the Négritude poets Senghor, Césaire, and Damas, whose poetry was an integral part of their anti-racist and anti-colonial movement.

The founders of the Négritude movement saw a direct line between how we use words and how we shape the world. Like the Black nationalists of the 1960s and ’70s, who championed Black power and informed the world that “Black is beautiful,” these artists and intellectuals from French colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America who met in Paris in the 1930s appropriated the French word nègre and developed a poetics to combat colonialism and racism. They were both poets and politicians: The poet Léopold Senghor became the first president of Senegal, while the Martinician poet and playwright Aimé Césaire became a member of the French National Assembly. In this course, we will study the Négritude movement as a test case for the notion that poetry can serve as a form of social and political action. To better understand where the founders of the Négritude movement were coming from, we will begin our study with an introduction to the history of French colonialism and France’s participation in the triangular slave trade. Using historical documents, we will look at the modern development of the concept of race at a time when cultural support for the slave trade was waning. Some of the themes that we will explore are colonialism and modernism, gender politics, Créolité, and debates around the legacy of Négritude. Readings will include works by Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Léopold Senghor, Léon Damas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paulette Nardal, Jane Nardal, Jean Barnabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Franz Fanon, and Maryse Condé.

Alongside Japan, France and Belgium have one of the strongest traditions of comics in the world. Known as la bande dessinée (BD), this art form was famously designated the “9th Art” by critic Claude Beylie in 1964. This course will introduce students to the history and evolution of the bande dessinée while exploring the unique narrative possibilities of the form. We will read a selection of classic works—such as Tintin by Hergé and Astérix by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo—as well as innovative graphic novels from the late 20th and the 21st centuries, including work by authors such as Joann Sfar, Marjane Satrapi, Riad Sattouf, Catherine Meurisse, and Lewis Trondheim. The course will also introduce key concepts in comics theory, helping students develop a critical vocabulary to analyze how meaning is created through the sequencing and the interactions of image and text. The study of French graphic novels will be integrated into a systematic review of French grammar. Students will develop their French vocabulary and practice their aural comprehension and speaking skills. They will also develop their French writing skills with an emphasis on analytical writing.

This course will cover the normal language content over the course of the year but will have different thematic content each semester. 

Fall: The Writing of Everyday Life
This French course is designed for students who already have a strong understanding of the major aspects of French grammar and language but wish to develop their vocabulary and their grasp of more complex aspects of the language. Students are expected to be able to easily read more complex texts and to express themselves more abstractly. A major part of the fall semester will be devoted to the study and discussion of literary texts in French. In a challenge to his readers,“Question your soupspoons,” Georges Perec summed up, in his unique manner, a particular strain of 20th-century French letters—one that seeks to turn literature’s attention away from the extraordinary, the scandalous, and the strange toward an examination of the ordinary makeup of everyday life. This course will examine some of the aesthetic and theoretical challenges that the representation of the quotidian entails. Does the everyday hide infinite depths of discovery, or does its value lie precisely in its superficiality? How do spaces influence our experience of everyday life? How can (and should) literature give voice to experiences and objects that normally appear undeserving of attention? How does one live one’s gender on an everyday basis? Can one ever escape from everyday life? We will review fundamentals of French grammar and speaking and develop tools for analysis through close readings of literary texts. Students will be encouraged to develop tools for the examination and representation of their own everyday lives in order to take up Perec’s call to interrogate the habitual. Readings will include texts by Proust, Breton, Aragon, Leiris, Perec, Queneau, Barthes, the Situationists, Ernaux, and Calle.

Spring: French Romanticism and Nature 
The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris, a public garden built over a city dump in the 1860s, gives us a visual representation of the change in how people conceived of their relationship to the natural world that coincided with the shift from the French Classicism of the 17th and 18th centuries to the French Romantic movement of the 19th century. With its imitations of a mountain landscape, replete with artificial lake, grotto, rustic bridges and secluded groves, the park expresses a totally different desire with respect to the natural world than the highly formal classical gardens that we associate with the gardens of Versailles, created by André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV. In this semester, we will study French Romanticism as a way to make sense, more broadly, of the ways in which culture expresses and shapes our relationship to the natural world. To this end, we will use a wide range of materials, including photographs of gardens, paintings, music, and literature. We will also consider how Romantic attitudes toward nature inform contemporary thinking on the environment. What are the limitations of the Romantic idealization of nature in the age of the Anthropocene? Conversely, in what ways are environmentalists today interested in recapturing certain ideas of the Romantics? How did Romantics gender nature, and how did they exploit the colonized in their depictions of the natural world? We will consider topics such as the Romantics’ reactions to the Enlightenment, industrialization and urbanization, the ethics of our relationship to the natural world, Orientalism, and the Gothic. Readings will include excerpts and works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, François-René de Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, Victor Hugo, Gérard de Nerval, Alphonse de Lamartine, George Sand, Aimé Césaire and Louise Colet. The Intermediate I and II French courses are specially designed to help prepare students for studying in Paris with Sarah Lawrence College during their junior year. 

This course is designed for students who already have a strong understanding of the major aspects of French grammar and language, but who wish to develop their vocabulary and their grasp of more complex aspects of the language. Students are expected to be able to easily read more complex texts and to express themselves more abstractly. A major part of the fall semester will be devoted to the study and discussion of literary texts in French. In a challenge to his readers, “Question your soupspoons,” Georges Perec summed up, in his unique manner, a particular strain of 20th-century French letters—one that seeks to turn literature’s attention away from the extraordinary, the scandalous, and the strange toward an examination of the ordinary makeup of everyday life. This course will examine some of the aesthetic and theoretical challenges that the representation of the quotidian entails. Does the everyday hide infinite depths of discovery, or does its value lie precisely in its superficiality? How do spaces influence our experience of everyday life? How can (and should) literature give voice to experiences and objects that normally appear undeserving of attention? How does one live one’s gender on an everyday basis? Can one ever escape from everyday life? We will review fundamentals of French grammar and speaking and develop tools for analysis through close readings of literary texts. Students will be encouraged to develop tools for the examination and representation of their own everyday lives in order to take up Perec’s call to interrogate the habitual. Readings will include texts by Proust, Breton, Aragon, Leiris, Perec, Queneau, Barthes, the Situationists, Ernaux, and Calle. The Intermediate French I (FREN 3501) and Intermediate French II (FREN 3750) courses are specially designed to help prepare students to study in the Paris global education program.