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French

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Academic Approach Areas of Study Global Education Combined Degree Programs Pre-Professional Programs Faculty Students & Faculty in Conversation Success After Sarah Lawrence

The French program welcomes students at all levels, from beginners to students with several years of French. Our courses in Bronxville are closely associated with Sarah Lawrence’s excellent French program in Paris, and our priority is to give our students the opportunity to study in Paris during their junior or senior year—including students who start at the beginning level in their first year at the College. Every year, several seniors also choose to go back to France after they graduate from Sarah Lawrence in order to work in local schools for the French Department of Education through the selective English Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF). Some students are still in Paris several years later, attending French graduate programs.

Our program in Paris is one of the best available in the nation, with almost all courses taught in French and with the unique opportunity for students to take courses (with conference work) at French universities and other Parisian institutions of higher education (including the arts). Even for students who do not intend to go abroad, the French program in Bronxville provides the opportunity to learn the language in close relation to French culture and literature, starting at the beginning level. At all levels except for beginning, students conduct individual conference projects in French on an array of topics—from medieval literature to Gainsbourg and the culture of the 1960s to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and avant-garde French female filmmakers.

On campus, the French program fosters a francophile atmosphere with the help of two French assistants who come to the College every year from Paris. We encourage sophomores and above to consider taking a French course for three credits per semester instead of five credits, allowing them to add or continue the study of French on top of a regular 15-credit/semester load; however, this is not possible for the beginning level, as Beginning French (FREN 3001) must be taken for five credits.

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French 2026-2027 Courses

Advanced, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits

FREN 4034

Prerequisite: Intermediate French II (FREN 3750), relevant global education experience, or appropriate score on French placement test

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.

Faculty
- Nicole Asquith
Open, Large seminar—Year | 10 credits

FREN 3001

Note: Students who successfully complete a beginning and an intermediate-level French course are eligible to study in the Paris global education program.

This course is designed primarily for students who have not had any exposure to French and will allow them to develop, over the course of the year, an active command of the fundamentals of spoken and written French. We will use grammar lessons to learn how to speak, read, and write in French. In-class dialogue will center on the study of theatre, cinema, and short texts, including poems, newspaper articles, and short stories from French and francophone cultures. During the spring semester, students will be able to conduct a small-scale project in French on a topic of their choice. There are no individual conference meetings for this level, though a weekly conversation session with a French language assistant is required. Attendance at the weekly French lunch table and French film screenings are both highly encouraged.

Faculty
- Jason Earle
Intermediate, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

FREN 3501

Prerequisite: Beginning French (FREN 3001) or appropriate score on French placement test

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.

Faculty
- Nicole Asquith
Intermediate, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

FREN 3750

Prerequisite: Intermediate French I (FREN 3501) or appropriate score on French placement test

Note: This course is conducted in French. This course will cover the normal language content over the course of the year but will have different thematic content each semester. Taught by Jason Earle in fall and Nicole Asquith in spring.

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.

Faculty
- Jason Earle
- Nicole Asquith
Intermediate, Seminar—Year | 10 credits

FREN 3501

Prerequisite: Beginning French (FREN 3001) or at least two years of high-school French

Note: This course is conducted in French.

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 begin to use linguistic concepts as tools for developing their analytic writing. More than other countries, France’s identity was shaped by centuries of what is now perceived by the French as a historically coherent past. In this course, we will explore the complexities of today’s French identity—or, rather, identities—following relevant contemporary controversies that have shaken French society in the past 30 years while simultaneously exploring historical influences and cultural paradigms at play in these débats franco-français. Thus, in addition to newspapers, online resources, recent films, television series, and songs, we will study masterpieces of the past in literature and in the arts. Topics discussed will include, among others, school and separation from faith; cuisine and traditions; immigration and urban ghettos; women and feminism in France; France’s relation to nature and the environment; the heritage of French Enlightenment (les Lumières), duty to remember (devoir de mémoire), and France's relationship with dark episodes of its history (slavery, Régime de Vichy and Nazi occupation, and the Algerian war). Authors studied will include Marie de France, Montaigne, Voltaire, Hugo, Flaubert, Proust, Colette, Duras, Césaire, Djebar, Chamoiseau, and Bouraoui. In addition to conferences, a weekly conversation session with a French language assistant will be required. Attendance at the weekly French lunch table and French film screenings are both highly encouraged. This course is specifically designed to help prepare students to study in the Paris global education program.

Faculty
- Eric Leveau

Related History Courses

Open, Seminar—Fall

Wars of the 19th and 20th centuries shaped Europe’s borders and societies. Ideas of the privileges of citizenship grew in tandem with the responsibilities of military service. Colonial expansion allowed militaries to test out new technologies and forms of rule, while expanding their empires. Armies were used to keep diverse empires together, not only through force, but also by creating a common sense of purpose and co-opting elites. Battles were a legitimate, legal way to decide territorial disputes, until they were not. In the course of the 20th century, wars of unimaginable destruction reshaped societies and expanded the boundaries of what was imaginable, including the destruction of all life on Earth. This course will examine the interplay of military and society from the early 19th century to the present. We will examine the relationship between citizenship and military service, war as politics, Europe’s colonial wars, mobilization and demobilization, the World Wars, Cold War, and the current crises in Europe. We will look at radical attempts to reimagine the place of the military by communists and fascists, the most destructive wars in recorded history, the long period of relative peace in Europe, the end of the Cold War and its aftermath.

Faculty
- Brandon Schechter
Open, Lecture—Spring

The 20th century revealed the potential for humans to destroy each other in new and shocking ways and also a variety of projects to create better people and governments. Europe was ground zero for both these disasters and attempts to mitigate them. It was the primary battlefield of both world wars, the laboratory of both fascism and communism, rebuilt by both capitalists and communists. In the latter half of the century, it formed a Union, moving beyond the nationalism that had defined much of its past. Europe was also a central stage of the Cold War, the point of contact between the capitalist and communist worlds, until—seemingly miraculously—the communist world imploded. Throughout the "short 20th century"—the period between the Great War and the fall of communism in Europe, a term coined by historian Eric Hobsbawm—and to this day, this space is haunted, another subject of this course. This lecture will cover major events and trends in Europe from the eve of the Great War to the fall of the Berlin Wall (with an epilogue). It will examine the major cultural and political events of the bloodiest century in recorded history. Among topics covered will be the World Wars, rise of dictatorships, Cold War, emergence of the European Union, the “end of history” and historical memory. Our readings will be divided between scholarship interpreting these events, primary sources, and films. We will continually ask what defines “Europe,” what its borders are, and think about the future of its past.

Faculty
- Brandon Schechter

Related Literature Courses

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Year

Against the backdrop of the bloodiest half-century in human history, continental European culture produced an astonishingly rich and diverse body of lyric poetry. Robert Frost famously remarked that "poetry is what gets lost in translation," but the unmistakable genius of modern European poetry largely survives its passage into English, thanks to the inspired efforts of its translators. In this course, we will learn to hear the voices they have made available to English-language readers, often comparing multiple translations of a single poem, or referring to the original in bilingual editions. We will read selections from twelve poets translated from seven languages: Cavafy, Valéry, Rilke, Trakl, Pessoa, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Lorca, Cernuda, Montale, and Celan.

Faculty
- Neil Arditi
Intermediate/Advanced, Seminar—Spring

Marcel Proust’s multivolume novel In Search of Lost Time is a towering monument of 20th-century literature, one that continues to fascinate and intimidate readers to this day. At its heart, Proust’s novel traces the intellectual and sentimental development of its narrator as he moves from childhood to adulthood, eventually discovering his vocation as a writer. Through its historical arc, the novel also portrays the nuances of a French society transitioning from the late 19th to the early 20th century. One of the main goals of this course will be to understand Proust’s contributions to the novel in the age of modernism and modernity. We will see how he pushed the limits of the genre by blurring the boundaries between fiction, autobiography, and essay, and we will analyze in detail his singular style characterized by a digressive prose rich in associations. We will also explore how the expansiveness of Proust’s narrative allows for the inclusion of extensive reflections on a vast variety of different topics: time, memory, art, social class, sexuality, jealousy, religion, history, speech, and the writing of life itself. Our primary focus will be on a close reading of the novel in order to better understand Proust’s narrative, voice, and worldview. We will read in English translation the first volume, Swann’s Way, and the final volume, Time Regained, in their entirety, alongside key scenes from other volumes. We will also read a selection of secondary texts that adopt different approaches to reading Proust, including biography, psychology, sociology, gender studies, and philosophy. In conference, students will be able to explore diverse aspects of Proust’s novel in more depth, or pursue projects that help us situate Proust in his literary, historical, and cultural contexts.

Faculty
- Jason Earle

Related Philosophy Courses

Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Year

Are we bodies? Are we souls? Are we some strange mixture of the two? In this seminar, we shall consider this problem by beginning with Plato’s Phaedo, which asks whether there is a soul that can separate from the body and live forever; Aristotle’s On the Soul, which denies that the individual soul can survive the body; Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, which argues that we are just matter and that the soul cannot survive the death of the body. We shall then leap ahead to Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, which seems to hold, first, that we are pure minds, second, that other people may just be machines, third, that we are souls intimately united with bodies—a very confusing combination of views—and ask why he puts forward all these apparently contradictory views. This will involve us in the objections to Descartes’ Meditations and his replies. Students will be expected to bring written questions on the reading to each class, and to present sections of the reading as assigned. Logs of questions and notes for presentations will be presented at the end of each semester. There will be two short papers assigned for the class in addition to the conference paper.

Faculty
- Abraham Anderson

French

Related Disciplines

French 2026-2027 Courses

Advanced French: "Toucher Au Vers": French Poetry As Revolutionary Practice

Beginning French

Intermediate French I: Le 9e Art: The French Graphic Novel

Intermediate French II: The Writing of Everyday Life

Intermediate French I: French Identities

Military and Society in Modern Europe: From Napoleon to NATO

The Short 20th Century in Europe: 1914-1991

Postcards from the Volcano: 20th-Century European Poetry in Translation

Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time

On Human Identity