Courses

Courses on a wide range of topics

Our department offers a wide variety of courses that will pique your interest regardless of your background. Where else can you learn about bodies and machines in the French baroque theater, how languages in close geographic proximity change each other, and the strategies for carrying on a 36-year tradition of one of the most beloved Italian graphic novels ever? 

Fall 2023 Highlights: Italian

Fall 2022 Highlights: French/Francophone Studies

The Rabelais Seminar

Will study all five books of Rabelais’ novel and their cultural contexts while reading Rabelais criticism as a paradigm of Renaissance studies. Last year saw the publication of the new RSA/Brill Companion to Rabelais while in 2017 a team of French scholars launched the new journal l’Année Rabelaisienne to reinvigorate the field and reorient Rabelais studies toward one of the most prevalent trends in Renaissance studies, the History of the Book.

 

20th and 21st-Century Lyric and Narrative Poetry in French

This course will seek to provide a roughly chronological exploration of 20th- and 21st-Century lyric and narrative poetry in French, in its diverse relations to sites of social, historic and material culture. From Guillaume Apollinaire to Noémi Lefebvre.

 

Fall 2022 Highlights: French Linguistics

Introduction to French Syntax

F577 introduces students to issues in French syntax and to syntactic theory. The aim is to develop an understanding of syntactic categories, the principles governing syntactic representations and syntactic operations.

Old map of France

History of the French Language 1

F603 provides an introduction to the history of the French language, focusing on ‘internal’ developments while setting these against an ‘external’—historical and social—backdrop within Europe and the Mediterranean area.

Individual Readings courses

You must gain permission to register in Individual Readings courses. Please download and complete the Permission for Individual Readings Form for permission to register for the following:

  • F810 Individual Readings in French + Francophone Civilizations
  • F815 Individual Readings in French Literature + Linguistics
  • M815 Individual Readings in Italian

Want to view more French and Italian graduate courses?

View French courses in our Student Portal View Italian courses in our Student Portal