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.

Sculpture Studio/ advanced practice — SCU4217.01

Instructor: John Umphlett
Days & Time: TU 8:30am-12:10pm
Credits: 4

This course asks each student to work in a self-directed way among a community of critical thinkers. Finding one’s voice, as a maker, requires research sources of influence and inspiration. Students are expected to undertake a significant amount of work outside of regular class meetings. At this point in your Visual Arts Education you must be able to represent serious attention and dedication to your work, and prove that you can manage your time and energy towards advanced inquiry.

Advanced techniques; welding and metal fabrication. — SCU4229.01

Instructor: John Umphlett
Days & Time: MO 1:40pm-5:20pm
Credits: 2

In this course we will focus on cutting and welding non-ferrous metals. Hand cutting and CNC assisted plasma cutting will be the methods in which stock will be cut. The fabrication processes will begin through brazing methods (acetylene) for connecting non-similar metals. There will also be instruction on pinpoint forging as well as the safe use of the blacksmithing forge in the Sculpture department. We will then advance to learning the skills involved in using the GTAW welders for non-ferrous welding.

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?