Department of French and Italian

VT: New Approaches to 17th-Century French Drama: Research, Teaching, Performance

This seminar will explore how today’s treatment of drama from the Grand Siècle problematizes, ignores, or respects its “classical” designation. Our main aim will be to analyze new approaches to seventeenth century drama from the perspectives of research (scholarly critique, digital humanities), teaching (pedagogy), and performance (recent productions, remakes, and adaptations). Students will come away from the seminar having reviewed plays from the canon and theories of classical theater, studied the emergence of French opera, surveyed a selection of the most recent pathways in theater research, including efforts in digital humanities, collectively developed a syllabus for an undergraduate course, and analyzed the latest stagings and performances of these classical works in the francophone world.

Readings will focus on plays, opera, and comedy-ballet from Molière, Racine, Corneille, and Lully/Quinault. Seminar grade will be based on an exposé (20%) and a scaffolded term paper (abstract: 10%, outline: 10%, presentation of work-in-progress: 25%, final version 35%).

Seminar language is French. Students outside of French/Francophone Studies who have an excellent level of reading and listening can participate in English.   

FRIT-F 632    #30878      3:00P-4:15P      Tu          BH 219            Prof. Alison Calhoun