Fall 2025 Courses

For meeting times and locations please consult Yale Course Search
 

GROUP A:  LANGUAGE COURSES (L1-L5)

Conducted entirely in French

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.
 

GROUP B & C:  ADVANCED AND LITERATURE COURSES IN FRENCH

Group B courses (FREN 1600–4999, not including Group C courses) This group contains more advanced courses that are taught in French and count toward the major.

Group C courses This group comprises courses taught in English; readings may be in French or English. Two courses from this group may be counted for credit toward the major.

Gateway Courses

Courses that prepare students for courses numbered FREN 2000 and above. 

fren 1600: advanced conversation through culture, film, and media (instructors tba)

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 (instructors tba)

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 

Advanced Language Courses

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.

General Fields Courses

Special Topics Courses

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.