Spring 2026 Course Search

Insider Perspectives on the Francophone World II — FRE4224.01

Instructor: Noëlle Rouxel-Cubberly
Days & Time: MO,WE,TH 8:30am-9:50am
Credits: 5

Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insiderʹs perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and belief systems are surprisingly different from your own.

Cinéma-monde — FRE4154.01

Instructor: Noëlle Rouxel-Cubberly
Days & Time: MO,TH 10:00am-11:50am
Credits: 4

In this course, films are used as textbooks to learn the French language and explore the French-speaking world. In order to hone their language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), students will listen to selected film dialogues to improve their listening comprehension, read and analyze excerpts from scenarios and reviews to strengthen their understanding of syntax and widen their vocabulary, mimic the pronunciation of actors and write on film to improve their spoken and written French.

Mouvements — FRE4610.01

Instructor: Stephen Shapiro
Days & Time: MO,TH 10:00am-11:50am
Credits: 4

This course will examine movement–travel, migration, and transition–in the French-speaking world. We’ll examine the travel tale as philosophical form (Candide), the sonnet, Orientalism, the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi, films of Josephine Baker, queer movement in the work of Abdellah Taïa, the North Atlantic Triangle (Maboula Soumahoro), and the gender transition of Océan. Students will write a variety of critical and creative texts, make individual and group presentations, and develop their reading skills. Conducted in French. Intermediate-high level.

French Comedy — FRE4811.01

Instructor: Stephen Shapiro
Days & Time: MO 3:40pm-5:30pm & WE 4:10pm-6:00pm
Credits: 4

This course will examine the comic in French theatre, literature, politics, and film in order to answer a deceptively simple question: What makes us laugh? In theoretical readings we will consider whether laughter is a universal, cross-cultural function. Additionally, we will look at special, sub-genres of the comic, such as satire and parody, in order to question the relationship between comic genres and the real world. Does comedy seek to change the world or does it merely want to point to its foibles? Is it a progressive or conservative mode?

projects in animation and projections — MA4314.01

Instructor: Sue Rees
Days & Time: TH 8:30am-12:10pm
Credits: 4

The course will be for sustained work on an animation or design project, and should be a space for both experimentation, ambition and a consistent endeavor.  Students will be expected to create a complete animation, a series of experiments, projection or interactive project.  The expectation is that students will be fully engaged in all aspects of the class from critiques, to experimenting with ideas, undertaking research and being present.