First-Year Courses in French (Division 371)

Fall Term, 1999 (September 8 - December 22, 1999)

Instructions for students requesting overrides for French or Spanish 101, 103, 231, or 232.

1. Try to find a section that will fit into your schedule, since the Department cannot guarantee every student a space in a section of his/her own choice.

   However, do not register for a class that you cannot attend. You will not be eligible to override into the section of your choice if you are registered for any section of 101-232, even if you cannot attend that section.

2. As it states in the Time Schedule any registered student who misses one of the first four class meetings will be dropped from the course, thereby leaving some open spaces for those students who have been closed out.

   If there is absolutely no section open which will fit your schedule, you should follow this procedure:

   1. Start attending the section you would like to get into on the first day of class. You will receive a Proof of Attendance form which must be signed by your instructor every day. You must attend a class every day, but it does not need to be the same section. All students must take action through T-T Registration to make sure their official schedule of courses matches the courses they are taking.
   2. On Tuesday, September 14 at 7:00 p.m., there will be a meeting in the basement of the MLB, rooms to be announced later, for each of the above courses. At these meetings, students will be assigned to remaining vacated spaces in the most fair and equitable manner possible, using a lottery system. At no time, however, will any class be allowed to exceed 25 students. Students must bring their printout of classes and the Proof of Attendance form to the meeting!

3. Please note that you will not be allowed to change sections at these meetings. Beginning Wednesday, September 15, Elementary French Language Supervisors will hear requests for section changes and fill those requests to whatever degree is possible.
4. Please ensure when adding with the override that you also add modifiers for pass/fail, etc.

Elementary Language Courses

Students who intend to continue a language begun in high school must take the Placement Test to determine the language course in which they should enroll. French 102 is NOT open to students who have begun instruction in high school. It is strongly recommended that students who began French at another college or university also take the placement test. Students must check with the Course Coordinator for any exceptions to the Placement Test level.

Elementary Language Courses

Instructor(s): Lara Mangiafico (lmangia@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

The sequence of French 101/102 presents the essential elements of French grammar, vocabulary, and culture which are needed in everyday life to understand French spoken at a moderate speed and to be understood by sympathetic native speakers. Vocabulary and structures are practiced in class primarily through communicative activities stressing listening and speaking. Authentic documents are used to develop reading skills and culture. Cultural awareness and listening skills are further developed through listening and video materials. Classes meet four hours per week in sections of 20-25 students. Daily homework assignments involve studying vocabulary and grammar, writing exercises or short compositions, and practice in listening comprehension. Students are required to use computer and video materials outside of class. There are several quizzes and tests, as well as one or more speaking tests and a final examination. Class participation is graded. Credit is not granted for more than two courses from French 101, 102 and 103.

Elementary Language Courses

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pascal/French103.html

French 103 is a course for students with some prior language study in French, and covers the same material presented in French 101/102. Entrance into the course is by placement or with the permission of the course coordinator. Because students are expected to be already familiar with some of the material, the course moves at a rapid pace, and students will need to plan on spending at least 8-10 hours each week preparing daily lessons. The objectives and methods of instruction are similar to those of French 101/102. Quizzes (with both oral and written components) are administered to check students’ assimilation of material. There are three hourly exams, a final, compositions, and speaking tests. By the end of the course, students will have a good working vocabulary and strong listening comprehension skills; they should be able to express themselves in French (both in writing and orally) using most of the basic structural patterns in the language. Students will also have a general knowledge of French-speaking cultures. Technology (multi-media, computer-based writing programs, the web) will be used to aid in acquiring listening and writing skills, and cultural competency.

Elementary Language Courses

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Students whose last French course was NOT at U of M Ann Arbor must take the placement test. French 231 builds and expands upon the work done in French 101/102 or French 103. The primary goals of French 231 are to:

• develop and refine your listening, speaking, reading and writing skills;
• provide you with strategies that allow you to communicate and read more effectively;
• help you review previously learned grammatical structures and acquire new structures and uses;
• develop an awareness of French-speaking cultures the world over, and to discover both similarities and differences between the way French-speaking people live, think, and express themselves as compared to the way you live, think, and express yourselves;
• utilize technology to help you in your study of French and to have greater access to Francophone cultural documents.

Elementary Language Courses

Section 004 – Honors Section.

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Students whose last French course was NOT at UM–Ann Arbor must take the placement test. The sequence French 231/232 is built upon the work done in French 101/102. It presents intensive and comprehensive grammar review, study of finer points of French grammar structure, and the reading of journalistic prose, short stories, and literary excerpts. Both courses include the use of French movies and video. The proficiency gained by the end of French 232 should enable students to express themselves in French on subjects of intellectual interest, to understand conversation on such topics. Classes meet four times per week in sections of 20-25 students. Since communicative skills are emphasized daily, regular attendance and active participation are essential. Homework consists of grammar study, writing exercises, and laboratory work, both audio and video. There are comprehensive course-wide tests as well as midterm and final examinations.

Elementary Language Courses

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

In French 232, we will discuss several cultural themes (problems in society, racism, immigration, cooking, health, socialized medicine, and World War II France). You will continue to improve speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills by reviewing vocabulary and grammar related to these themes as well as through discussion of short weekly readings (advertisements, literary excerpts, and short stories). Throughout the course of the term, students will listen to French songs, see several videos (from French television) as well as two French movies.

Classes meet four times per week in sections of 20-25 students. Since communicative skills are emphasized, daily, regular attendance and active participation are essential and will be included in the final grade. There will be two course wide tests, compositions, and a final examination.

Elementary Language Courses

Section 004 – Contextual Communication or: Why the French use the words they do!.

Instructor(s): Rachael Criso (rcriso@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Context dictates our communicative register: situation, interlocutor, and media all require understanding and an ability to adopt the necessary form of written, verbal, or listening communication. For example, when speaking during a job interview, would you use the same vocabulary, body language, tone of voice, or facial expressions that you would use with your best friend in a coffee shop? Definitely not, and neither would the French.

In this course, we will study a wide variety of communicative registers, ensuring that we can both understand and reproduce them in order to communicate efficiently and appropriately. As we will discover, a TV news presenter, for example, employs a precise set of vocabulary and communication techniques very different from a Music Video presenter; students will study the differences and recreate these examples with in-class skits.

During our studies, we will work to improve grammar by using Ensuite, applying our knowledge in presentations and written texts within the registers we have studied. The Internet will an invaluable tool as we study it's unique cyber-French. We will also study, discuss and produce our own versions of video, film, and TV clips.

The format will center around seven 2-week units:

Politics in France: history, current, recordings of speeches – students write and perform.
Business in France: etiquette, vocabulary, resume, job interview skits.
French Literature: short story/poem to study – students write in literary register.
Daily Life: food labels, operating instructions, recipes, schedules, etc.
Media: newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV.
Internet: Surfer le Web, discuss Americanization of French language.
Social Studies: religious language, entertainment industry

Elementary Language Courses

Section 006 – Honors Section.

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

In French 232, we will discuss several cultural themes (problems in society, racism, immigration, cooking, health, socialized medicine, and World War II France). You will continue to improve speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills by reviewing vocabulary and grammar related to these themes as well as through discussion of short weekly readings (advertisements, literary excerpts, and short stories). Throughout the course of the term, students will listen to French songs, see several videos (from French television) as well as two French movies. Classes meet four times per week in sections of 20-25 students. Since communicative skills are emphasized, daily, regular attendance and active participation are essential and will be included in the final grade. There will be two course wide tests, compositions, and a final examination.

Elementary Language Courses

Section 009 – Self Expression and the Arts of the 20^th Century.

Instructor(s): Melinda Waterhouse (melinw@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

How have francophone speakers expressed themselves and their life stories through the arts of the twentieth century? Taking a chronological approach which will divide the twentieth century into three distinct periods (1900-44, 1945-67, and 1968-99), the course will offer a response to this question by concentrating on both visual and audio media such as literature, painting, film, and music. In addition to the actual artistic production of the artists chosen for each time period, we will read selections from autobiographical works (for example, letters, diaries, personal essays, and interviews) that directly address the artist’s pursuit of self in his/her art. Finally, with the coming of the new millennium, the course will conclude with a discussion of the future of self-expression in the twenty-first century.

Beyond providing an introduction to artistic self-expression in the twentieth century, this course will enable students to develop reading, writing, and speaking skills commensurate with the level needed to satisfy completion of the language requirement in French.

Elementary Language Courses

Section 012.

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This topics section of French 232 will focus on social issues in contemporary French society such as marriage, the family, racism, gender relations, AIDS, sexuality, social marginalization, and homelessness. Every two weeks, there will be a film screening which will serve as the starting point for class discussions. Students will also be asked to find articles in French newspapers to complement the screenings. An emphasis will be placed on improving writing skills (including grammar) as well as speaking skills through class discussion.

Requirements: one typed 1.5-page paper per film, regular tests, midterm, and final.

Other Language Courses

Section 001, 002 – Advanced Practice in French Through Contemporary Social Issues.

Instructor(s): Yannick Viers (yannick@umich.edu)

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

In this course we will be dealing with some of the issues and problems facing today's French/Francophone society through readings (press and textbook articles), videos (documentaries, news program exposes, film) and CDs:

• What is the “French Republic?”
• France in the European Union
• France: a changing nation
• Unemployment and exclusions
• The “family” (traditional and new models; le "PACS")
• Young people (suicide, violence, AIDS)
• Women ("Parité?/Egalité; l'excision")
• Colonization and its sequels (the “immigrants”, Islam in France, Rap/Raï)

This cultural approach will offer us a jumping-off point for oral and written communication (respectively 50% and 50% of the final grade): three individual oral presentations (30%), three medium-length essays (30%), and a number of written exercises (20%). Active class participation (20%) and regular attendance are expected. (Coursepack: French 235, 2 vols., Viers) at Dollar Bill [611 Church Street, (734-665-9200).]

Other Language Courses

Section 003.

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

In this course we will be dealing with some of the issues and problems facing today's French/Francophone society through readings (press and textbook articles), videos (documentaries, news program exposes, film) and CDs:

• What is the “French Republic?” (l'Hexagone et les DOM/TOM)
• The European Union (Transparency and opacity of the governing powers)
• France and “the crisis of authority”
• Unemployment and exclusion
• The “family” (traditional and new models)
• Young people (suicide, violence, AIDS)
• Women (Vers la parité?)
• Colonization and its sequels (the “immigrants”, France and Sub-Saharan Africa, Islam in France, the Algeria, Raï music)
• Racism and xenophobia (le FN)
• Fighting racism (“Ras l'front”, hardcore Rap, etc.)

This “cultural” approach will offer us a jumping-off point for oral and written communication (respectively 40% and 60% of the final grade): three individual oral presentations (30%), three medium-length essays (30%), and a number of written exercises (30%). Active class participation (10%) and regular attendance are expected. (Coursepack French 235, 2 vols., Viers) at Dollar Bill [611 Church Street, (734-665-9200)]; French Grammar Usage by Hawkins and Towell and a good bilingual dictionary (bookstores).

Courses Taught in English (without language prerequisite)

Section 001.

Instructor(s): Frieda Ekotto (ekotto@umich.edu)

First-Year Seminar,

Credits: (3).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

In this course we shall study cultural productions and social issues related to race, racism, and ethnicity in French-speaking societies. At one level of the course we shall discuss how discourses on race function within the general ideological state apparatuses that reproduce a given social order. In this connection we will also study the role of cultural diversity in the production and circulation of discourses of existing ideology. At another level we shall analyze how discourses on race, racism, and ethnicity are inscribed in the texts and films selected for the course. At issue here are the implication of cultural diversity in different parts of the Francophone world. Selected specific examples (of texts and films) will help us put in context our questioning on these issues.

Cultural and Literary Studies

Section 001 – L'Art de voyager.

Instructor(s): Melissa Waldman (mwaldman@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Voyagers to the New World, out of this world, and to places around the world tell us about worlds invented and observed, as well as about themselves. We will examine where the travel narratives take us readers mentally and ideologically, as well as consider where we locate the narratives in relation to ethnography, utopian aspirations, history, and cultural critique. Can we identify characteristics that unify and distinguish travel narratives as a genre? What does travel – literally and metaphorically – make possible? Why does it appeal? Where does it go awry? We will use the travel narratives to get to discussions about the discovery of the New World, religious and industrial revolutions, colonization, morality, politics, and philosophy.

Readings and discussion will be in French. Evaluation will be based on class participation, one page reflections on each text, your own travel narrative, and two essays (four pages).

Cultural and Literary Studies

Section 002 – The Computer and the Rainbow.

Instructor(s): Donald Maxwell (maxwelld@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~maxwelld/Fr270-'99.html

In this course, which will encourage open and group discussion, we will move from the infinitesimal world of DNA and genetic replication to the measureless realms of the big bang and the expanding universe and explore some scientific concepts that occur in literature. We will consider some basic differences between the cultures of “science” and “literature”, why there appears to be a “language barrier” in literature but not in science and why it is easier to translate a scientific text than a literary one.

Chance or serendipity plays an important role in scientific discovery and is an important theme in literature. We will explore this theme as well as that of free will and determinism in Voltaire’s Candide, Prévost’s Manon Lescaut, and Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste. We will also discuss and read about chance in discoveries of French science by Louis Pasteur, Henry Becquerel, and Marie Curie as well as read selections from James Watson’s La double hélice and view videos on both Voltaire and Proust. The course will end with audiotapes readings from Marcel Proust’s Combray.

The course will be entirely in French and there are NO SCIENTIFIC PREREQUISITES. Grades based on regular and active class participation, an oral presentation and two short papers that will involve visiting the course Webb page.

Texts:
Prévost. Manon Lescaut.
Voltaire. Candide.
Diderot. Jacques le fataliste.
Proust. Excepts from Combray (Germaine Brée).

Course Pack with short excepts from:

James Watson. La double hélice. (pp. 47-50 & 182-205)
Marie Curie. ‘La découverte du radium’
Stephen W Hawking. Une brève histoire du temps.
Jean d’Alembert. ‘Discours préliminaire’ (pour l’Encyclopédie)
Items relating to the centenary of the discovery of radium downloaded from the Webb.

Cultural and Literary Studies

Section 003 – “Flânerie et Modernité” (Nineteenth-Century Cultural Construction of Paris).

Instructor(s): Yannick Viers (yannick@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

Paris, the “Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” will inspire our reading of a collection of graphic representations (literary and critical writings, caricatures, lithographies, architectural project, fashion prints, etc.) from the French Revolution to the Commune (1789-1871).

Through our “readings” we will investigate the impact of the political and industrial revolutions, the metropolis, the crowds, and other social phenomena on some Nineteenth-century cultural productions.

While “strolling” about these texts and their historical/economical/political contexts, we will also have the opportunity to reflect upon contemporary critical notions such as (post-) modernity, (urban) text, modern subjectivity, space, and power relations.

With the constant presence of twentieth-century critic Walter Benjamin, we will encounter a selection of works by Balzac, Barthes, Baudelaire, Daumier, Flaubert, Freud, Foucault, Hugo, LeBon, Maupassant, Michelet, Marx, Poe, Sand, Zola, etc.

Your grades will be based on two essays, three quizzes, written/oral reports, and active class participation.

Cultural and Literary Studies

Section 001 – Les films criminels, le film noir français, et la nouvelle vague. Required Screenings: Tuesdays 6-8pm.

Instructor(s): Carina Yervasi (cly@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Lab Fee: Laboratory fee ($35) required.

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

American film noir and French gangster films both influenced the French New Wave (nouvelle vague), a gritty new emerging cinema in France in the late 1950s. In the New Wave, figures and icons of the underworld – criminal minds, gangsters, big cars, dark lighting, contraband, guns, even femmes fatales – significantly contribute to enriching the visual imagery and film technique as well as social commentary. Discussions and readings (in English and French) will center on themes from film noir and the development of French New Wave films. The course is offered in French.

Required Screenings: Tuesdays 6-8 pm

French 272. French and Francophone Film, Media, and Culture.

Cultural and Literary Studies

Section 002.

Instructor(s): Gabara

No Description Provided

Check Times, Location, and Availability

French 274. French and Francophone Societies and Culture.

Cultural and Literary Studies

Section 001.

No Description Provided

Check Times, Location, and Availability

Cultural and Literary Studies

Section 002 – The Gargoyle in the Church: Laughter and Literature in the Middle Ages.

Instructor(s): Liz Fackelman (facklelm@umich.edu)

Credits: (4).

Course Homepage: No Homepage Submitted.

This introductory course features a sampling of medieval French literature (in modern French translation), juxtaposing the various themes of "high literature" with their comic and paradoic counterparts and placing both in their historical and cultural context. We will meet the noble kings, brave knights, the saints, beautiful ladies and damsels in distress, but we will also meet their shadow selves: the peasant who would be a knight, the unfaithful ladies, a gambling Saint Peter disguised in a long black beard, a shepherd who outfoxes a lawyer and the Fox himself, Renard who gave his name to the animal with the bushy tail. No prior knowledge of the Middle Ages is assumed, and we will review languge as needed. The course is taguht in French. Prerequisite: French 232.