Spring 2015

EXPANDED COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Please click here to see the Spring Schedule as a PDF

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LOWER DIVISION COURSES 
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FRENCH 1. Elementary French (5 units)
Supervisor: Elisabeth Griffart-Meissner, egmeissner@ucdavis.edu

Description: Presentation of the basic grammar and vocabulary of French as well as cultural information about the French-speaking world (textbook chapters 1 to 6); in-class interactive exercises and out-of-class assignments for practice in using the language for listening and reading comprehension, writing, and speaking. French is the exclusive means of communication in class. The course meets five hours per week, with 20-25 students per section. Course materials (other than the textbook and workbook) and daily homework assignments are available through SmartSite.

Prerequisite: No previous study of French is assumed. Students who have never studied French (or who have had fewer than two years of French in high school and do not place into French 2) should enroll in French 1. Students with two or more years of French in high school may only take this course for a Pass/ No Pass grade.

Course Grade: The final grade for the course will be determined by daily preparation and participation (14%), homework (12%), three quizzes (15%), one major composition (10%), three in-class exams (30%), and a final exam (19%).

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): World Cultures.

Format: Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.

Textbook:

• A. Valdman, C. Pons, and M.E. Scullen, Chez Nous Media Enhanced Package [4th Edition] (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014)
   

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FRENCH 2. Elementary French (5 units)
Supervisor:  Elisabeth Griffart-Meissner, egmeissner@ucdavis.edu

Description: Presentation of the basic grammar and vocabulary of French as well as cultural information about the French-speaking world (textbook chapters 7 to 11); in-class interactive exercises and out-of-class assignments for practice in using the language for listening and reading comprehension, writing, and speaking. French is the exclusive means of communication in class. The course meets five hours per week, with 20-25 students per section. Course materials (other than the textbook and workbook) and daily homework assignments are available through SmartSite.

Course Grade: The final grade for the course will be determined by daily preparation and participation (14%), homework (10%), three quizzes (15%), one major composition (10%), two in-class exams (25%), a final oral exam (6%), and a final written exam (20%).

Prerequisite: French 1 or Language Placement Exam (Any student, regardless of previous experience studying French, may take this course for a letter or Pass/ No Pass grade.)

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): World Cultures.

Format: Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.

Textbook:

• A. Valdman, C. Pons, and M.E. Scullen, Chez Nous Media Enhanced Package [4th Edition] (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014)
   

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FRENCH 3. Elementary French (5 units)
Supervisor:  Elisabeth Griffart-Meissner, egmeissner@ucdavis.edu

Description: Presentation of the basic grammar and vocabulary of French as well as cultural information about the French-speaking world (textbook chapters 12 to 16); in-class interactive exercises and out-of-class assignments for practice in using the language for listening and reading comprehension, writing, and speaking. French is the exclusive means of communication in class. The course meets five hours per week, with 20-25 students per section. Course materials (other than the textbook and workbook) and daily homework assignments are available through SmartSite.

Course Grade: The final grade for the course will be determined by daily preparation and participation (14%), homework (10%), three quizzes (15%), one major composition (10%), two in-class exams (25%), a final oral exam (6%), and a final written exam (20%).

Prerequisite: French 2 or Language Placement Exam (Any student, regardless of previous experience studying French, may take this course for a letter or Pass/ No Pass grade.)

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): World Cultures.

Format: Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.

Textbook:

• A. Valdman, C. Pons, and M.E. Scullen, Chez Nous Media Enhanced Package [4th Edition] (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014)
   

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FRENCH 21. Intermediate French (5 units)
Supervisor: Prof. Julia Simon, jsimon@ucdavis.edu

Claude Mabudu

M-R 10:00-10:50A
235 Wellman Hall
CRN 34861

Description: Presentation and analysis of the cultures of the French-speaking world (Paris, Quebec, Tahiti, Lyon, Northern Africa) and comparison to home culture; review of the basic grammar presented in first-year French; expansion of vocabulary related to city living, history/geography, the arts, food/cooking, and family life (textbook chapters 1 to 5). In-class presentations and activities, as well as out-of-class assignments, are conducted solely in French and focus on the development of listening and reading comprehension, writing, and speaking skills. The course meets four hours per week, plus an additional hour of independent web-based work, with 20-25 students per section. Course materials (other than the textbook and workbook) and daily homework assignments are available through SmartSite.

Course Grade: The final grade for the course will be determined by daily preparation and participation, homework, and one in-class composition per chapter (5 x 13% = 85%), an oral final exam (5%), and a written final exam (10%).

Prerequisite: French 3 or Language Placement Exam (Any student, regardless of previous experience studying French, may take this course for a letter or Pass/ No Pass grade.)

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 5 hours.

Textbook:

• Jean Marie Schultz and Marie-Paul Tranvouez, Réseau: Communication, Intégration, Intersections [2nd Edition] Package (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014)
   

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FRENCH 22. Intermediate French (5 units)
Supervisor: Prof. Julia Simon, jsimon@ucdavis.edu

Melanie Barbier

M-R 11:00-11:50A
235 Wellman Hall
CRN 34862

Description: Presentation and analysis of the cultures of the French-speaking world (Senegal, Martinique, Geneva, Strasbourg, Brussels) and comparison to home culture; review of the basic grammar presented in first-year French; expansion of vocabulary related to commerce, tourism, sports and leisure, politics, and modern technology (textbook chapters 6 to 10). In-class presentations and activities, as well as out-of-class assignments, are conducted solely in French and focus on the development of listening and reading comprehension, writing, and speaking skills. The course meets four hours per week, plus an additional hour of independent web-based work, with 25 students per section. Course materials (other than the textbook and workbook) and daily homework assignments are available through SmartSite.

Course Grade: The final grade for the course will be determined by daily preparation and participation, homework, and one in-class composition per chapter (5 x 13% = 85%), an oral final exam (5%), and a written final exam (10%).

Prerequisite: French 21 or Language Placement Exam (Any student, regardless of previous experience studying French, may take this course for a letter or Pass/ No Pass grade.)

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 5 hours.

Textbook:

• Jean Marie Schultz and Marie-Paul Tranvouez, Réseau: Communication, Intégration, Intersections [2nd Edition] Package (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014)
   

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FRENCH 23. Intermediate French (5 units)
Supervisor: Prof. Julia Simon, jsimon@ucdavis.edu

Description: The goals in this course are to advance your comprehension and use of the French language, with a particular focus on writing skills. Structured reading, analysis, discussion and writing assignments will enable you to increase your vocabulary, improve your oral and aural proficiency, solidify your mastery of grammatical structures, and develop greater ease and sophistication in written and spoken expression.

Prerequisite: French 22 or Language Placement Exam (Any student, regardless of previous experience studying French, may take this course for a letter or Pass/ No Pass grade.)

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 5 hours.

Textbook:

• Jean Marie Schultz and Marie-Paul Tranvouez, Réseau: Communication, Intégration, Intersections [2nd Edition] Package (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014)
   

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 UPPER DIVISION COURSES
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FRENCH 100. Composition in French (4 units)
Megan McMullan

MWF 10:00-10:50A
108 Hoagland Hall
CRN 34889

Course Description: This quarter we will explore the theme of masks and prosthetics through a variety of works written in French from different genres, time periods, and locations within the French-speaking world. Students will develop critical reading strategies and hone their ability to develop and present ideas in French, both orally and in writing.

Prerequisite: French 23.

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbook:

• Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme  (Larousse Editions, 2007)
   

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FRENCH 106. French in Business and the Professions (4 units)
Elizabeth Griffart-Meissner

TR 1:40-3:00P
1128 Hart Hall
CRN 53603

Course Description: TBA

Prerequisite: French 100 or consent of instructor (egmeissner@ucdavis.edu).

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 1 hour; Discussion - 2 hours.

Textbooks:

• TBA
   

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FRENCH 108. Modern French Culture (4 units)
Jeff Fort

TR 3:10-4:30P
141 Olson Hall
CRN 34892

Course Description: This course will provide a survey of modern French culture from the late nineteenth century (esp. the Dreyfus affair) to the present day, with an emphasis on the cultural crises and socio-political shifts that marked the twentieth century. We will examine salient periods and issues such as World War I and the inter-war period, World War II and the Occupation, post-war consumerism and ambivalence toward the U.S., the Algerian War and decolonization, the student and worker uprisings of May ’68, and immigration. Course material will include historical documents, journalism, essays, photography, painting and films. Course work will include multiple writing assignments, including a research paper, in-class presentations, quizzes and exams.

Prerequisite: French 100 or consent of instructor (jpfort@ucdavis.edu).

GE credit (Old): None.
GE credit (New): Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture - 3 hours; Extensive Writing.

Textbooks:

• All material will be put up on SmartSite
   

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FRENCH 117A. Baroque and Preclassicism: Swashbucklers and Scoundrels of 17thCentury France (4 units)
Claire Goldstein

TR 10:30-11:50A
1020 Wickson Hall
CRN 52759

Description: This quarter will follow the adventures of swashbuckling heroes and infamous scoundrels of the French Baroque era. Readings will include two important seventeenth-century plays (Pierre Corneille’s Illusion Comique and Molière’s Tartuffe) as well as a variety of short texts, including some original political pamphlets from the library’s Special Collections. We will also trace the way seventeenth-century heroes are represented in contemporary films and in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, a nineteenth-century re-imagining of a seventeenth-century poet and romantic hero. 

Prerequisite: French 100.

GE credit (Old): Arts & Humanities.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, World Cultures and Writing Experience.

Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• Jean-Baptiste de Molière, Tartuffe  (Larousse, 2011)
• Pierre Corneille, L'Illusion comique  (Larousse, 2012)
• Edmond Rostand and Mathilde Levesque, Cyrano de Bergerac: suivi de lettres de Cyrano de Bergerac  (Hatier, 2012)
   

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 GRADUATE COURSES
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FRENCH 202. Topics in French Civilization: "The Social Network in 17th Century France" (4 units)
Claire Goldstein

T 1:10-4:00P
522 Sproul Hall
CRN 52760

Course Description:

“Je songe donc à vous, et je souhaite toujours de vos lettres; quand je viens d’en recevoir, j’en voudrais bien encore. J’en attends présentement, et reprendrai ma lettre, quand j’en aurai reçu”  – Madame de Sévigné to her daughter Madame de Grignan

The radical expansion of the “poste aux lettres” in 1668, a year before her beloved daughter married and moved away, allowed Madame de Sévigné to establish an intimate correspondence widely seen as representing a new kind of writing in French that conjures emotional immediacy and expresses new modes of affective connection.

Living in the early 21st Century, we understand very implicitly how social media can transform our experience – connecting us to people, ideas and markets, creating communities of discourse and cultural and personal relationships. The seventeenth century witnessed a comparable revolution in services, institutions and technologies that likewise transfigured social relationships and formed new networks of communication, affiliation, knowledge and exchange.

This quarter we will study the networks that traversed and shaped France in the seventeenth century, from the burgeoning trade in print and consumer goods; to the cultural obsession with news and gossip; to the proliferation of salons and Academies that gave rise to new forms of knowledge and expression, including the modern psychological novel and the official French dictionary. We will examine how contemporary network theory might illuminate the French seventeenth century, and also inquire into the way the seventeenth century understood the dynamics of network circulation, from Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628) to treatises on the circulation of planets, rights, fashions, illnesses, and demonic possession.

Students will gain archival research experience using the library’s collection of incendiary political pamphlets dating from Louis XIV’s minority.  An exciting range of digital projects (France’s Gallica, the Netherlands’s ePistolarium, a virtual edition of Donneau de Visé’s Nouvelles nouvelles based in Switzerland, as well as international collaborations such as ARTFL and Stanford’s “Mapping the Republic of Letters”) provide access to – and new ways of scrutinizing – correspondence networks and a burgeoning periodical press. Readings available in French or English.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

Format: Seminar - 3 hours; Term Paper.

Textbooks:

• Michel de Certeau, La possession de Loudun  (Folio, 2005)
• Pierre Corneille, La Place Royale  (Folio, 2006)
• Madame de La Fayette, Zayde  (Flammarion, 2006)
• Jean-Baptiste de Molière, Tartuffe  (Larousse, 2011)
• Madame de Sévigné, Lettres  (Larousse, 2014)
• Charles Sorel, Histoire Comique de Francion  (Flammarion, 2000) 
   

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FRENCH 214. Women on Top and Bossy Bottoms (4 units)
Noah Guynn

R 2:10-5:00P
512B Sproul Hall
CRN 52820

Course Description: Since 1975, when Natalie Zemon Davis published her landmark essay “Women on Top,” feminists have focused a great deal of attention on the many abrasive, defiant, self-assertive female characters to be found in outwardly sexist forms of literary, theatrical, visual, and ritual culture. There has been good reason for them to do so, as these Women on Top offer a privileged vantage point from which we may observe the contested, dynamic nature of patriarchy.  While aesthetic depictions of shrews, scolds, gossips, and fishwives were clearly used to legitimize the subjection of real women, they also alert us to the fact that patriarchy isn’t an absolute, inflexible, or unchanging system of hegemonic control but is instead a moving equilibrium structured around a variety of negotiated, oppositional relations. Unfortunately, in our rush to revalue these Women on Top and bring to light the cultural and political tensions surrounding them, we have tended to neglect their more obedient but equally provocative sisters: Bossy Bottoms who manage to unsettle patriarchal ideologies by deliberately and ostentatiously choosing to subordinate themselves to a masculinist agenda. This seminar will focus on both of these character types, perceiving them as manifestations of the transactional and unstable nature of late medieval and early modern marriage.  Readings for the course will include historical studies by Natalie Zemon Davis and Mary Hartman; short fiction, plays, and conduct books; Les quinze joies du marriage; two Shakespeare comedies (Taming of the Shrew and All’s Well That Ends Well); and a number of key texts in criticism (Fran Dolan, Kathryn Schwarz, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Glenn Burger) and theory (Gilles Deleuze, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler).  All Middle French materials will be available in English and modern French translations.  Seminar discussions will be conducted exclusively in English.

Format: Seminar - 3 hours.

Textbooks:

• Mary S. Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past  (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
• Anonymous, Le mesnagier de Paris, edited and translated by Karin Veltschi  (Livre de Poche, 1994)
• William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts, edited by Frances Dolan  (Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996)
• William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine  (Simon & Schuster, 2006)
   

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FRENCH 396. Teaching Assistant Training Practicum (various units)

Elisabeth Griffart-Meissner (Sec. --, CRN ***)

(Note: Contact Falicia Savala at fsavala@ucdavis.edu for the CRN.)