FREN 1100: elementary and intermediate french I 

Intensive training and practice in all the language skills, with an initial emphasis on listening and speaking. Emphasis on communicative proficiency, self-expression, and cultural insights. Extensive use of audio and video material. 

french 1210: intermediate french 

Designed for initiated beginners, this course develops all the language skills with an emphasis on listening and speaking. Activities include role playing, self-expression, and discussion of cultural and literary texts. Emphasis on grammar review and acquisition of vocabulary. Frequent audio and video exercises.  Offered only in the Fall semester. 

french 1250: intensive elementary french 

An accelerated course that covers in one term the material taught in FREN 1100 and 1200. Practice in all language skills, with emphasis on communicative proficiency. 

french 1300:  intermediate and advanced french I 

The first half of a two-term sequence designed to develop students’ proficiency in the four language skill areas. Prepares students for further work in literary, language, and cultural studies, as well as for nonacademic use of French. Oral communication skills, writing practice, vocabulary expansion, and a comprehensive review of fundamental grammatical structures are integrated with the study of short stories, novels, and films. 

french 1400: intermediate and advanced french II 

The second half of a two-term sequence designed to develop students’ proficiency in the four language skill areas. Introduction of more complex grammatical structures. Films and other authentic media accompany literary readings from throughout the francophone world, culminating with the reading of a longer novel and in-class presentation of student research projects. 

french 1500: advanced language practice 

An advanced language course intended to improve students’ comprehension of spoken and written French as well as their speaking and writing skills. Modern fiction and nonfiction texts familiarize students with idiomatic French. Special attention to grammar review and vocabulary acquisition.
 

fren 1600: advanced conversation through culture, film, and media 

Intensive oral practice designed to further skills in listening comprehension, speaking, and reading through the use of videos, films, fiction, and articles. Emphasis on contemporary French and francophone cultures. Prerequisites: FREN 1500, or a satisfactory placement test score, or with permission of the course director. May be taken concurrently with or after FREN 1700. Conducted in French.

fren 1700:  introduction to the study of literature in french

Introduction to close reading and analysis of literary texts written in French.
Works by authors such as Molière, Diderot, Balzac, Maupassant, Césaire, Ernaux, Ndiaye, and Laferrière 

fren 1830: medical french: conversation and culture (léo tertrain)

An advanced language course emphasizing verbal communication and culture.  Designed to foster the acquisition of the linguistic and cultural skills required to evolve within a Francophone medical environment.  Discussions, in-class activities and group projects in simulated professional situations.  Topics such as the hospital, family physicians and nurse practitioners, medicine in Francophone Africa, humanitarian NGOs are explored through a medical textbook, articles, video clips, radio shows, films, documentaries, and excerpts from essays and literary texts.  Conducted in French.

FREN 2330: 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.

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 3200:  Existentialist Café (alice kaplan)

The Existentialist Café examines a moment (post-war France), a condition (liberation from Nazi occupation), a school of thought (existentialism) and a group of writers in conversation with one another (Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Baldwin, Sagan, Fanon). Sarah Bakewell’s In the Existentialist Café provides a foundation for our exploration of existentialism as a movement. We read novels, plays, diaries, and essays from the postwar era in France, considering existentialism both as a form of critical engagement and a specific intellectual and cultural situation. This course is conducted entirely in French.

Prerequisites: This is a group B course, conducted in French. Must have above 1700 level skills.

FREN 3675: Haiti Writes I (marlene daut & kaiama l. glover)

From nineteenth-century antislavery pamphleteering to accounts of ecological catastrophe in 21st-century fiction, Haitian literature has resounded across the globe since the nation’s revolutionaries declared independence in 1804. Starting with pre-revolutionary writing, including the emergence of Haitian Creole letters, moving through a long, largely francophone nineteenth century, to present-day Haitian writing in the English language, this two-semester exploration of Haitian literature presents the political, cultural, and historical frameworks necessary to comprehend Haiti’s vast literary output. Whether writing in Haiti or its wide-ranging diasporas, Haitian authors have boldly contributed to pressing conversations in global letters while reflecting Haiti’s unique cultural and historical experiences. Considering an expansive array of poets, playwrights, and novelists - such as Baron de Vastey, Juste Chanlatte, Demesvar Delorme, Edwidge Danticat, René Depestre, Kettly Mars, Dany Laferrière, and Évelyne Trouillot – this course engages students in a fresh examination of Haiti’s richly polyglot and transnational literary tradition that spans more than two centuries.

FREN 4160: Social Mobility and Migration (morgane cadieu)

The seminar examines the representation of upward mobility, social demotion, and interclass encounters in contemporary French literature and cinema, with an emphasis on the interaction between social class and literary style. Topics include emancipation and determinism; inequality, precarity, and class struggle; social mobility and migration; the intersectionality of class, race, gender, and sexuality; labor and the workplace; homecomings; mixed couples; and adoption. Works by Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and her peers (Éribon, Gay, Harchi, Linhart, Louis, NDiaye, Taïa). Films by Cantet, Chou, and Diop. Theoretical excerpts by Berlant, Bourdieu, and Rancière. Students will have the option to put the French corpus in dialogue with the literature of other countries. Conducted in French. 

Fren 4980: Fin-de-siècle France (maurice samuels)

The last decades of the nineteenth century were a time of both social turmoil and artistic exuberance in France. This course examines major literary and artistic movements (Naturalism, Decadence, Symbolism, etc.) in their cultural context. Why was this productive period obsessed with its own doom?  Literary texts are paired with recent critical theory as well as nineteenth-century discourses on such topics as sociology, criminology, sexology, and technology. Some attention is paid to the visual arts and to fin-de-siècles in other times and places (particularly Austria, Germany, and England).

Students should have advanced (L5) reading knowledge of French.

These courses are conducted entirely in French.

fren 1200: elementary and intermediate french ii

Continuation of FREN 1100. Open only to students who took FREN 1100 (L1) at Yale.  

Please note: FREN 1100 and FREN 1210 are only offered in the Fall. 

french 1300:  intermediate and advanced french i

The first half of a two-term sequence designed to develop students’ proficiency in the four language skill areas. Prepares students for further work in literary, language, and cultural studies, as well as for nonacademic use of French. Oral communication skills, writing practice, vocabulary expansion, and a comprehensive review of fundamental grammatical structures are integrated with the study of short stories, novels, and films. 

french 1400: intermediate and advanced french ii

The second half of a two-term sequence designed to develop students’ proficiency in the four language skill areas. Introduction of more complex grammatical structures. Films and other authentic media accompany literary readings from throughout the francophone world, culminating with the reading of a longer novel and in-class presentation of student research projects. 

french 1450: intensive intermediate and advanced french

An accelerated course that covers in one term the material taught in FREN 130 and 140. Emphasis on speaking, writing, and the conversion of grammatical knowledge into reading competence. 

french 1500: advanced language practice

An advanced language course intended to improve students’ comprehension of spoken and written French as well as their speaking and writing skills. Modern fiction and nonfiction texts familiarize students with idiomatic French. Special attention to grammar review and vocabulary acquisition.

fren 1600: advanced conversation through culture, film, and media (Constance Sherak)

Intensive oral practice designed to further skills in listening comprehension, speaking, and reading through the use of videos, films, fiction, and articles. Emphasis on contemporary French and francophone cultures. Prerequisites: FREN 1500, or a satisfactory placement test score, or with permission of the course director. May be taken concurrently with or after FREN 1700. Conducted in French.

fren 1700: introduction to the study of literature in french (lauren pinzka)

Introduction to close reading and analysis of literary texts written in French. Works by authors such as Marie de France, Molière, Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Duras, Proust, and Genet. Conducted in French.

fren 1820: Advanced Writing Workshop (ramla bédoui)

An advanced writing course for students who wish to work intensively on perfecting their written French. Frequent compositions of varying lengths, including creative writing, rédactions (compositions on concrete topics), and dissertations (critical essays). Recommended for prospective majors.

Conducted entirely in French. After FREN 1500 or higher, or a satisfactory placement test score. May be taken after courses in the 2000–4999 range.

fren 1840: business french: communication and culture (léo tertrain)

An advanced language course emphasizing verbal communication and culture.  Designed to foster the acquisition of the linguistic and cultural skills required to evolve within a French business environment.  Discussions, in-class activities and group projects in simulated professional situations.  Topics such as the liberalization of the French economy, trading in the European Union, new forms of business organizations, globalization are explored through a business textbook, articles, video clips, radio shows, films, documentaries, and excerpts from essays and literary texts.  Conducted in French.

fren 3001: Home Alone in Contemporary French Literature (morgane cadieu)

How do we inhabit space alone? How do writers portray home-loving protagonists? In this seminar, we read twenty-first-century fictions of confinement that represent various forms of isolation, whether temporary or permanent, constrained or self-imposed, gloomy or gleeful, indoors or outdoors. Novels depict housesitting, house moves, retreats in cabins, suburban hoardings, lockdowns in boats and spaceships, or even the experience of finding yourself accidentally trapped in a workplace restroom over the weekend. We examine our relationship to spaces, objects, bodies, and technologies, as well as the forms of attention generated by seclusion, from daydreaming to tracking. This is not a course on Covid quarantine, although our discussions will resonate with the memory of stay-at-home orders. The seminar doubles as an introduction to contemporary literature. Students learn how to acquire information on authors and novels in the absence of canonical criticism. The corpus includes some books written by established authors and many books from younger, lesser-known, but noteworthy voices. Taught in French. 

fren 3012: intermediate literary translation (nichole Gleisner)

This course will focus on translating contemporary literature by exploring concerns of writers and translators working in the French and Francophone field today. Each week, students will translate an excerpt from a wide variety of texts written in French: prose, poetry, graphic novels, YA, science fiction, long-form journalism. We will also read and craft literary criticism, paying special attention to reviews of books in translation as we seek to understand and define the role of the translator in our current day. How does literary criticism complement the work of translation? In what ways is the current mode of approaching translations in reviews lacking? How can we develop criteria to evaluate works in translation that acknowledge the role of the translator ? How do these activities – both translating and reviewing – enrich scholarly communities, webs of thought, networks of writers, students’ own ways of approaching and understanding a text? Students will translate and workshop selections each week as well as undertake the translation of a significant portion (25-35 pages) of a contemporary text of their own.

fren 3090: Fictions of Consumer Society(morgane cadieu)

The seminar examines literary and cinematic versions of the consumer society—from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century—by discussing: the aesthetics of everyday life; the representation of stores, supermarkets, and malls in rural and urban settings; consumerism and colonization; mythologies, commodities, and gender norms; labor and waste; and the attention to objects (still life, window displays). Works by Danticat, Ernaux, Houellebecq, NDiaye, Perec, Reza, and Zola. Films by Demy, Godard, Tati, and Varda. Short theoretical excerpts by Baudrillard, Barthes, and Moudileno. No knowledge of French required.

fren 3190: 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, imagination. These texts are coupled with short, theoretical excerpts (Sextus Empiricus, Diogène Laërce, Henri Estienne). Readings and discussion in French.

FREN 3525: War and Memory from WWII to the Algerian War: Archive, Fiction, Theory  (alice kaplan)

The War and Memory seminar will be divided into two units, the first focusing on the French memory of WWII and the Nazi occupation (1940-1945); the second focusing on French and the Algerian memories of the Algerian War for Independence (1945/1954-1962).  We’ll read the now canonical works on war and memory generated by each event (Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome,  Benjamin Stora, La gangrène et l’oubli), measuring their arguments against works of fiction and film that take on the problem of war and memory through characters, setting, and narrative structure.  By the end of the seminar, students will be familiar with “a history of memory” that is distinct from social, political or even cultural history.  Throughout the seminar we will ask–who is remembering and who is forgetting?  Who are the memory keepers?  We’ll look for moments when gaps in national memory have been filled–or widened.  Along the way, we’ll study “memory sites” connected to the two events and we’ll read/watch some of the most important authors and filmmakers who have shaped the memory of WWII and the Algerian War.  By the end of the seminar, students will have a working knowledge of: 1) the debates and methods generated by critical memory studies, and 2) novels and films that have played a fundamental role in shaping memory.  Conducted in English

fren 3680: Reasoning with Voltaire (pierre saint-amand)

An investigation of the French Enlightenment through its principal representative philosopher, Voltaire. An examination of Voltaire’s preoccupations, including philosophy, religion, tolerance, freedom, and human rights. Readings include Voltaire’s contes, major plays, entries from the Dictionnaire philosophique, treatises, and pamphlets. Conducted entirely in French.

fren 4180: The Old French Fable and Fabliaux (r. howard bloch)

This seminar is designed to acquaint the student with the Fables of Marie de France and a substantial portion of the 170 fabliaux. We also consider the relevant secondary literature, the historical, cultural, social, religious, and critical background of the animal and the verse comic tales, which lie at the root core of didactic and of humorous and realistic literature in English, Italian, German, and Spanish. Both the Fables and the fabliaux are to be read in English, in the translations of Harriet Spiegel and Nathaniel Dubin. Both books, available at the World Language Center, contain the Old French originals and the translated texts