Graduate Seminars
For information about courses please refer to Yale Course Search and Canvas :
Fall 2025
FREN 6090 French for Reading (Nichole Gleisner)
Fundamental grammar structures and basic vocabulary are acquired through the reading of texts in various fields (primarily humanities and social sciences, and others as determined by student interest). Intended for students who either need a reading knowledge of French for research purposes or are preparing for French reading examinations and who have had no (or minimal) prior study of French. No preregistration required.
Conducted in English. Does not satisfy the language requirement.
FREN 6100 Old French (r. Howard bloch)
An introduction to the Old French language, medieval book culture, and the prose romance via study of manuscript Yale Beinecke 229, The Death of King Arthur, along with a book of grammar and an Old French dictionary. Primary and secondary materials are available on DVD. Work consists of a weekly in-class translation and a final exam comprised of a sight translation passage, a familiar passage from Yale 229, and a take-home essay.
No previous study of Old French necessary, although a knowledge of French is essential. Conducted in English.
FREN 6900 Contemporary French Literature in the Making (Morgane Cadieu)
A survey of landmark contemporary novels coupled with a workshop. On the one hand, we read important twenty-first-century novels and narratives, discuss literary movements, genres, and trends, and explore contemporary literary life (media, prizes, publishing houses, literary quarrels). On the other hand, students are in charge of selecting and giving a presentation on a novel of their choice from the fall 2025 list of new releases. This way, we practice and compare different types of literary criticism, so as to acquire the tools to examine contemporary literature in the making. Graduate seminar taught in French.
Seminar taught in French open to graduate students and to undergraduate students who completed at least one course in French in the 2000-4000 range
FREN 7000 Readings in Modern European Cultural History(carolyn dean)
This seminar introduces students to the various lines of inquiry informing modern cultural history in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on interdisciplinarity and method. the course asks how historians as well as scholars in other disciplines constitute culture as an object of inquiry and addresses different approaches to historicizing culture. Its two main aims are to explore different themes in modern European cultural history and to investigate the different ways that scholars interpret the relationship between symbolic representation and historical change.
FREN 7610 Caribbean Literary and Cultural Studies (Marlene daut)
This course examines eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writing (in translation, where applicable) by writers from the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone islands that make up the Caribbean. Haitian independence in 1804 ushered in a vibrant and diverse print culture that included poetry, plays, newspapers, and historical writing. From the pages of La Gazette Royale d’Hayti (1811–1820), to the poems of Jean-Baptiste Romane (1807–1858), to the historical writings of Louis-Félix Boisrond-Tonnerre (1776–1806), to the operas of Juste Chanlatte (1766–1828), there arose a distinct nineteenth-century literary culture in Haiti. Beginning with national literary developments in Haiti, this course expands to consider writing from Barbados, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, Antigua, and Bermuda. These writings, both fictional and non-fictional, help us to think about whether and/or how a coherent early Caribbean literary tradition developed across geographical, linguistic, national, and imperial lines.
FREN 8980 Fin-de-siècle France (Maurice samuels)
The course examines major French literary and artistic movements of the last decades of the nineteenth century (Naturalism, Decadence, Symbolism) in their cultural context. Weekly reading assignments pair literary texts with contemporary theoretical/medical/political discourse on such topics as disease, crime, sex, poverty, colonialism, nationalism, and technology. Literary authors include Barbey, Mallarmé, Maupassant, Rachilde, Villiers, and Zola. Theorists include Bergson, Freud, Krafft-Ebing, Le Bon, Nordau, Renan, and Simmel. Some attention also paid to the visual arts.
Prerequisite: reading knowledge of French.
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Spring 2026
FREN : Major Thinker: Aimé Césaire (marlene daut)
Course number and course description to be updated shortly.
fren : Translating the Caribbean (kaiama l. glover)
Course number and course description to be updated shortly.
fren 6700: Methods and Techniques in the Italian and French Language Classroom (Anna Iacovella/candace skorupa)
This course creates a substantial apprenticeship program for second-year graduate students. Rising teaching fellows are exposed to a variety of methodologies and perspectives historically and currently applied in teaching Italian and French with reference to global education. In order to maximize all learning opportunities, students analyze and discuss several methods without dismissing or favoring some over others. The intent is to encourage students to develop their own teaching styles, drawn from a number of important approaches to language pedagogy. At the same time, far from focusing only on methodologies and practices, the course strives to integrate other aspects of language education as well, and students have the chance both to observe classes and to develop and teach several classes of their own during the term.
fren 8120: The Old French Fable and Fabliaux (r. howard bloch)
A study of Marie de France’s 103 animal tales and some of the anonymous “Ysopets” as well as of the 170 comic verse tales whose veins of satire, parody, comedy of language, situation, character, and farce are at the root of the European comic tradition. We read the fables and the fabliaux against the background of twelfth- and thirteenth-century social, religious, and literary culture. Fables to be read in the bilingual (Old French and English) edition of Harriet Speigel and fabliaux in the recently published bilingual edition, with translations by Ned Dubin. Conducted in English.
fren 8190: Montaigne Beyond Skepticism: Learning to Read the Essais(dominique brancher)
Que sais-je? What do I know? This is Montaigne’s motto, engraved on a medal in 1576 at the writer’s request. At the crossroad of disciplines, this seminar explores how Michel de Montaigne develops a philosophy of doubt by literary means. We see that he does not naively or theoretically subscribe to the skeptical tradition, but rather proposes a practical and singular use of a non-judgmental attitude in the writing of Les Essais—the early modern masterpiece of the French literature of the self. We read essays on topics such as: idleness, education, eroticism, and imagination. These texts are coupled with short, theoretical excerpts (Sextus Empiricus, Diogène Laërce, Henri Estienne). Readings and discussion in French.
FREN 9300: War and Memory from WWII to the Algerian War: Archive, Fiction, Theory (alice kaplan)
The seminar moves from WWII to the Algerian War, comparing classic works of fiction and film (both fiction and documentary) that take on the problem of war and memory through characters and narrative structure. Fictions include: Modiano, Dora Bruder; Camus, The First Man; Sebald, Austerlitz; Toumi, L’effacement; Zeniter, L’Art de perdre; and Djaout, Les chercheurs d’os. Films include: Audiard, Un héros très discret; Ophuls, The Sorrow and the Pity; Resnais, Muriel; and Bensmaïl, La Bataille d’Alger, un film dans l’histoire. Theoretical works on war and memory include: Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome; Benjamin Stora, Le gangrène et l’oubli; and YFS, “Noeuds de mémoire” and debates on multidirectional memory. Conducted in French.
fren 9650: On Violence: Politics and Aesthetics across the Maghreb (jill jarvis)
This humanities laboratory investigates North African literary texts and other aesthetic works that document, theorize, and disrupt forms of state violence. How might these works—as well as our practices as humanities scholars, critics, curators, co-creators—run counter to state-sanctioned memory projects or compel rethinking practices of testimony, archiving, and justice in the face of enduring colonial occupation, institutionalized racism, and the state-sponsored violence that continues to take place on scales or in forms that are difficult to frame or fathom? Works by Fanon, Djebar, Kateb, Mechakra, Meddeb, Rahmani, Mouride, Hawad, Binebine, and many others. The seminar is an RITM Humanities Laboratory designed to cultivate new forms of collaborative and experimental humanities scholarship. See Canvas page for a more complete description.
Conducted in English. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of French.