how can the reading of fiction help to improve our own writing, especially in a foreign language?
The emphasis on writing in these questions is deliberate, and will include multiple and varied writing assignments, some of them involving processes of editing and rewriting. Readings (still subject to change as of this writing) will include works by Voltaire, Balzac, George Sand, Albert Camus, Christiane Rochefort, Milan Kundera, Daniel Pennac, and Michel Houellebecq.
This course will be taught in French.
FRENCH 651. Studies in Medieval Literature.
Section 001 — Mimesis, love, and death.
Prerequisites: Graduate standing. (3). May not be repeated for credit.
Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).
Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
In this course we will attempt to think about mimesis, love, and death as related concepts that in their interrelatedness may elucidate the ways in which medieval texts make meaning. Moving between medieval narratives and modern critical texts, we will explore how relationships among death, love, and representation are articulated in medieval literature, and how medieval and modern texts may speak to and elucidate, revise, or critique each other.
The course then has two primary goals: first, to offer an introduction to medieval literature and an opportunity for sustained thinking about this literature; and second, to take medieval literature as a context for reading a variety of modern critical texts.
The course will be taught in English; reading assignments will also be available in English and in modern French translation.
Primary texts:
La chanson de Roland
Marie de France, Lais
Chrétien de Troyes, Le conte du graal
La queste del saint graal
La mort le roi Artu
Les miracles de Notre Dame
selected saints' lives
Theoretical reading (selections) from Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Michael Taussig, Elaine Scarry, Slavoj Zizek, and others.
FRENCH 660. Topics and Themes in French Literature.
Section 001 — Walter Benjamin. Taught in English.
Prerequisites: Graduate standing. (3). May not be repeated for credit.
Credits: (3; 2 in the half-term).
Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
The work of Walter Benjamin constitutes one of the most diverse, imaginative and idiosyncratic bodies of criticism of the twentieth century. As historian, philosopher and critic of culture, Benjamin covered an astounding intellectual range, from German baroque drama to photography and film, from Dürer to Klee, Baudelaire to Brecht, translation to mass culture, the Second Empire to Surrealism, culminating in his massive, unfinished project on nineteenth-century Paris and the origins of modernity, the Arcades Project. This seminar will consider the range of Benjamin's thought and interests, identifying key concepts through a study of selected major works: allegory, symbol, myth, the ruin (The Origin of German Tragic Drama); technology, mass culture, the aura (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction; A Short History of Photography); fantasmagoria, commodity fetishism, the culture of display, the flâneur and urban shock, the critique of capitalism (the Arcades Project, the essays on Baudelaire); translation and language ("The Task of the Translator," "The Storyteller"); the notion of a "catastrophic" history (Theses on the Philosophy of History).
In particular, we will confront these theories with the texts and images which gave rise to them, the better to understand — and assess — Benjamin's method. We will pay special attention to his peculiar brand of historical materialism — his concentration on concrete material forms in which historical truth can be glimpsed, from fashion to architecture, bibelots to advertising, gaslight to gambling –, and his fascination with the possibilities of art for both representing and exposing the ideological structures of history. We will examine his own writing in the context of his theories. Finally, we will consider the place of his work within the new technologies of the "digital" age.
The seminar will be conducted in English and all works discussed from English translations. However, as Benjamin wrote in French and German, and his sources were largely in those languages, students with a knowledge of them are strongly encouraged to read in the original.
Primary texts:
The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne. New York: Schocken, 1977, paperback.
Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969, paperback (contains The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Theses on the Philosophy of History, The Storyteller, The Task of the Translator, etc. ).
One Way Street and Other Writings. London, Verso, 1985, paperback (contains "A Short History of Photography", "On Language as such and on the Language of Man:, "Surrealism", etc. ) OR Reflections. New York: Schocken (lacks "A Short History of Photography")
The Arcades Project. trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge Mass., Belknap, 1999, paperback (contains both versions of "Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century" and all dossiers).
Charles Baudelaire. London: Verso, 1983, paperback (contains The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire; On Some Motifs in Baudelaire.
Secondary reading:
A good introduction is Terry Eagleton, Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism, 1981.
Useful preparation for the seminar:
Buck-Morss, Susan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Gilloch, Graeme. Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City. . Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996.
Jennings, Michael. Dialectical Image: Walter Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism : Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. (Excellent exposé of some of Benjamin's main concepts.)
Biographies:
Brodersen, Momme. Walter Benjamin: A Biography, trans. Malcolm R. Green and Ingrida Ligers; edited by Martina Dervis. London, Verso, 1996.
Witte, Bernd. Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography. trans. James Rolleston. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.
FRENCH 855. Special Topics Seminar.
Section 001 — Reading Race in the French-Speaking Space. Taught in French.
Prerequisites: Graduate standing. (3). May not be repeated for credit.
Credits: (3).
Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
Reading Race in the French Speaking Space, revisits the French Revolution promise of racial equality; a promise that, it could be argued still goes unfulfilled for many within the empire. Bringing together theater, literary criticism, history, philosophy and cultural studies, this seminar re-examines the significance of race and potential contributions to critical race theory in light of several political figures associated with Négritude. Initially a reaction to French colonialism and its "civilizing mission", Négritude has been constantly revised and re-invented since its inception. African and Caribbean writers from French colonies began to challenge and protest colonization and the status of "blackness" in the 30s. The first use of the word "Négritude" was by Aimé Césaire in the journal L'Etudiant noir in order to protest against assimilation in 1935. Thus an influential and highly criticized Francophone African literary and political movement, Négritude was founded in Paris by Léopold Sédar Senghor from Senegal, Aimé Césaire from Martinique and Léon Damas from French Guyana in the 1930s.
In this seminar we will study cultural productions and social issues related to race, using the problematic trope of Négritude as a base. On one level we shall discuss how discourses on race function within the general ideological state apparatuses that reproduce a given social order. On another level we shall analyze how discourses on race are inscribed in the texts and films selected for the course. We shall also examine the implications of cultural diversity due to the trope of race in different parts of the French speaking space. Selected examples of specific texts and films will be used to put in context our examination of these issues.
The seminar will be concentrated on reading and discussions. The writing requirement is a final seminar paper on a topic pertaining to the student's own project, which should address an aspect of the aesthetic of race within French-speaking space.
Seminars will be conducted mostly in French, although discussions may be in English according to students' needs. Papers may be written in French or English.
FRENCH 899. Independent Study.
Instructor(s):
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor required (Prerequisites enforced at registration). Graduate standing and permission of instructor. (1-3). (INDEPENDENT). May not be repeated for credit.
Credits: (1-3).
Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
Directed readings or research in consultation with a member of the department faculty.
FRENCH 990. Dissertation/Precandidate.
Instructor(s):
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor required (Prerequisites enforced at registration). Election for dissertation work by doctoral student not yet admitted as a Candidate. Graduate standing. Permission of instructor required. (1-8). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit. This course has a grading basis of "S" or "U."
Credits: (1-8; 1-4 in the half-term).
Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
Election for dissertation work by doctoral student not yet admitted as a Candidate.
FRENCH 993 / ROMLING 993 / SPANISH 993 / ITALIAN 993. Graduate Student Instructor Training Program.
Prerequisites: Graduate standing. (1). May not be repeated for credit. This course has a grading basis of "S" or "U."
Credits: (1).
Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
See ROMLING 993.
FRENCH 995. Dissertation/Candidate.
Instructor(s):
Prerequisites: Graduate School authorization for admission as a doctoral Candidate; Consent of instructor required (Prerequisites enforced at registration). Permission of instructor required. (8). (INDEPENDENT). May be repeated for credit. This course has a grading basis of "S" or "U."
Credits: (8; 4 in the half-term).
Course Homepage: No homepage submitted.
Graduate School authorization for admission as a doctoral Candidate. N.B. The defense of the dissertation (the final oral examination) must be held under a full term Candidacy enrollment period.
Consult the new Course Guide at: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/cg_subjectlist/0,2030,8,00.html?show=20&termArray=f_04_1510&cgtype=gr
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