French
82–90 Wall Street, 3rd floor, 432.4900
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Chair
Edwin Duval
Director of Graduate Studies
Thomas Kavanagh (82–90 Wall Street, Rm 316, 432.4902, thomas.kavanagh@yale.edu)
Professors
Ora Avni, Howard Bloch, Edwin Duval, Thomas Kavanagh, Christopher L. Miller
Associate Professor
Catherine Labio
Assistant Professors
Mark Burde, Farid Laroussi, Donia Mounsef, Jean-Jacques Poucel, Julia Prest
Fields of Study
Fields include French literature, criticism, theory, and culture from the early Middle Ages to the present, and the French-language literatures of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Maghreb.
Special Admissions Requirements
A thorough command of French is expected, as well as a good preparation in all fields of French literature. A strong background in at least one other foreign language is also expected. Applicants should submit a twenty-page writing sample in French.
Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
(1) Candidates will have to demonstrate a reading knowledge of Latin and a second language by passing department-administered examinations, Yale undergraduate courses, or Yale Summer Language Institute courses with at least a B or High Pass grade. Students must fulfill the Latin requirement before the beginning of their third term of study. The other language requirement must be satisfied before the beginning of the fifth term, and before the oral qualifying examination. (2) During the first two years of study, students normally take sixteen term courses. These must include Old French and at least two graduate-level term courses outside the department. They may include one term of a language course (Latin or other) taken as a means of fulfilling one of the language requirements, and as many as four graduate-level term courses outside the department. A grade of Honors must be obtained in at least four of the sixteen courses, two or more of which must be in courses offered by the department. (3) A qualifying oral examination normally takes place during the fifth term or, in some special cases, no later than the end of the sixth term. The examination is designed to demonstrate students' mastery of the French language, their knowledge and command of selected topics in literature, and their capacity to present and discuss texts and issues. (4) After having successfully passed the qualifying oral examination, students are required to submit a dissertation prospectus for approval, normally no later than the end of the term following the oral examination.
In order to be admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D., students must complete all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus. Students must be admitted to candidacy by the end of the seventh term.
Teaching is considered an integral part of the preparation for the Ph.D. degree and all students are required to teach for at least one year. Opportunities to teach undergraduate courses normally become available to candidates in their third year, after consideration of the needs of the department and of the students' capacity both to teach and to fulfill their final requirements. Prior to teaching, students take a language-teaching methodology course.
Combined Ph.D. Program
The French department also offers two combined Ph.D.s: one in French and African American Studies (in conjunction with the program in African American Studies), and one in French and Film Studies (in conjunction with the program in Film Studies). Students in both of these combined degree programs are subject to all the requirements for a Ph.D. in French. In addition, they must fulfill certain requirements particular to the conjoined program.
The combined Ph.D. in French and African American Studies is most appropriate for students who intend to concentrate in and write a dissertation on the literature of the francophone Caribbean. Students must complete two core courses in African American Studies and a third-year colloquium. For this degree, the French department's requirement for a language in addition to Latin will normally be filled by demonstrating reading competence in a Creole language of the Caribbean or in Spanish. The students' oral examinations normally include two topics of African American content. The dissertation prospectus must be approved by the director of graduate studies both in the French department and in African American Studies, and final approval of the dissertation must come from both departments. For further details see African American Studies.
For students in the combined Ph.D. program in French and Film Studies, the oral examination will normally include one topic on film theory and one on French film. Both the dissertation prospectus and the final dissertation must be approved by the French department and the program in Film Studies. In addition, Film Studies requires a dissertation defense. For further details see Film Studies.
Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements. Additionally, students in French are eligible to pursue a supplemental M.Phil. degree in Medieval Studies. For further details, see Medieval Studies.
M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). Students enrolled in the Ph.D. program may petition for the M.A. degree after a minimum of one year of study in residence, upon completion of the Latin requirement, and of eight courses, of which at least six are in French. Two grades of Honors in French graduate courses are required.
Program materials are available upon request to the Administrative Assistant to the Director of Graduate Studies, French Department, Yale University, PO Box 208251, New Haven CT 06520-8251.
Courses
All classes are taught in French unless otherwise noted.
FREN 610a, Old French. Mark Burde.
W 3.30–5.20
An introduction to the historical grammar of Old French through reading, translation, and discussion of some of its major literary forms, including epic, romance, allegory, fabliau, and drama.
FREN 713b, Mythology and Renewal in French Theater. Donia Mounsef.
W 5.30–7.20
This course looks at modern stage adaptations of classical theatrical myths as a form of renewal, denial, or distortion of a tradition and examines the structural, thematic, and ideological specificity of the adapted text (including parody and pastiche). Readings from Anouilh, Molière, Racine, Césaire, Cixous, Cocteau, Sartre, and Ionesco; theoretical readings from Ricoeur, Domenach, Barthes, Genette, and Lassalle.
FREN 753a, French Film: History, Theory, Pedagogy. Thomas Kavanagh.
M 9.30–11.20
This seminar focuses on three related topics: the history of French cinema, how film theory conceptualizes and inflects that history, and the role of film studies in a French Studies curriculum. Neither strictly historical nor strictly theoretical, this course approaches the films we study through groupings of secondary texts (criticism, theory, literary works) that raise issues concerning the use of film in the broader study of French culture. We look at films by such directors as Lumière, Méliès, Vigo, Buñuel, Carné, Duvivier, Renoir, Resnais, Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Marker, Zonca, and Leconte as well as at critical and theoretical positions taken by Arnheim, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Mitry, Bazin, Barthes, Metz, Baudry, and Deleuze. Also CPLT 931a, FILM 621a.
FREN 824a, 1532 et ses suites. Edwin Duval.
W 10.30–12.20
First works and their sequels, by three major authors of the early French Renaissance, all written at a crucial turning point in French literary and intellectual history: Marot's Adolescence Clémentine (the first printed, composed recueil of poetry in France) and the Suite de l'Adolescence; Rabelais's Pantagruel (the first of his serio-comic mock epics) and its “prequel” Gargantua; Marguerite de Navarre's Le Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (a mystico-allegorical first-person narrative) and her earliest evangelical farces. In all of these watershed works, medieval literary traditions are stretched to the breaking point to serve new Renaissance ideologies.
FREN 858a, Sex and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Theater. Julia Prest.
T 1.30–3.20
Seventeenth-century French theater, for all its association with rules and bienséance, is a remarkably rich site of gender ambiguity and sexual confusion. Benserade's Ovidean comedy, Iphis et Iante (1634), for example, includes a sexually ambiguous relationship between the two eponymous heroines which is all the more intriguing for having been written at a time when modern perceptions of sexual difference were yet to be established and when the notion of female homosexuality was undeveloped. Ovid's Iphis and Iante are of an age when their sexuality (and, by extension, their biological sex) is not yet fully determined, allowing for an uncertain reading of their physical interaction. Benserade, on the other hand, chooses to depict mature adults who marry, and to describe the consummation of their marriage in highly sexual and graphic terms. We shall examine this and other examples from theater texts as well as questions of theater production, notably the effect of male-to-female cross-casting.
FREN 876b, Libertins et philosophes. Thomas Kavanagh.
M 10.30–12.20
This seminar focuses on two major currents within eighteenth-century French literature and culture: libertinage and philosophie. Our concern is with examining how the intersection of these different options—one focusing on the body, the other on the mind; one frivolous, the other serious—represent distinct yet complementary attempts to recast the premises of the cultural and social order. Works by Crébillon, Boyer d'Argens, Fougeret, Jourdan, Rousseau, Diderot, La Morlière, Palissot, La Mettrie, Laclos, Beaumarchais, and Sade as well as paintings by Boucher, Fragonard, and David.
FREN 939b, The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade. Christopher L. Miller.
Th 10.30–12.20
An analysis of the Atlantic world that was created by the slave trade, in its French version, as seen through history, philosophy, and literature from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. Readings from Voltaire, the journal of a slave-trading sailor, Rousseau, Madame de Duras, Baron Roger, Mérimée, Sue, Césaire, Sembene, T. Mandeleau. In English. Also AFAM 854b, AFST 739b, CPLT 723b.
FREN 940a, Introduction to Modern Poetry. Jean-Jacques Poucel.
M 3–4.50
A practical workshop in close reading, this course offers a broad introduction to the poetic movements of the twentieth century. Emphasis on developing strategies for dealing with the shifting conditions of poetics in verse and prose. Critical works by Gleize, Jakobson, Kristeva, Riffaterre. Poets may include G. Apollinaire, T. Tzara, L. Aragon, P. Reverdy, P. Eluard, F. Ponge, R. Char, A. Césaire, R. Queneau, E. Jabès, M. Deguy, M. Leiris, E. Glissant, J. Roubaud, A.-M. Albiach, and Anne Portugal.
FREN 941b, Formes narratives du dix-neuvième siècle. Ora Avni.
Th 1.30–3.20
An examination of (mostly) nineteenth-century French short story and novel. Focus on narrative techniques. Authors may include Gautier, Balzac, Mérimée, Maupassant, Flaubert, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Hugo, Dumas, Nerval, Constant, Daudet.
FREN 946au, Postcolonial Theory and Its Literature. Christopher L. Miller.
Th 10.30–12.20
A survey of theories relevant to colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. The course focuses on theoretical models (Orientalism, hybridity, métissage, créolité, “minor literature”), but also gives attention to the literary texts from which they are derived (francophone and Anglophone). Readings from Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Mbembe, Amselle, Glissant, Deleuze, Guattari. Taught in English. Also AFAM 846a, AFST 746a, CPLT 725au.
FREN 965b, Literature in Migration. Farid Laroussi.
T 1.30–3.20
A seminar in cultural studies, the course provides a venue to explore literature (novels, autobiographies) by French writers of Maghreban stock. We focus on key themes such as identity and identification, writing the self in the face of universalism, or the subversion of the oriental topos. Discussions also tackle cultural issues, which seem to loom large in contemporary France (intégration, citizenship, religion, multiculturalism, and so forth). Readings include Begag, Belghoul, Charef, Kettane, Smail, and Durmelat, Forsdick, Hargreaves, Laroussi. Some material is borrowed from the French media.
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