French & Francophone Studies

Understanding Modern France 
The lectures on this module introduce you to the broad sweep of French history from Louis XIV to Emmanuel Macron. The lectures in English engage critically with the key ideas and expressions of the major movements in French and Francophone culture. A second seminar hour in French enhances the lectures by close readings of diverse French texts and media illustrating significant historical and cultural shifts. You will learn the interpretative methodologies specific to different forms of analysis, giving you a solid grounding for specialisation in Year 2 and onwards.

Understanding Modern France 
The lectures on this module introduce you to the broad sweep of French history from Louis XIV to Emmanuel Macron. The lectures in English engage critically with the key ideas and expressions of the major movements in French and Francophone culture. A second seminar hour in French enhances the lectures by close readings of diverse French texts and media illustrating significant historical and cultural shifts. You will learn the interpretative methodologies specific to different forms of analysis, giving you a solid grounding for specialisation in Year 2 and onwards.

Core (if you are studying one or two languages and cultures)
Optional (if you are studying three languages and cultures)

Intersections: Text, Image, Thought in the French-speaking world

The aim of the module is to introduce students to significant French texts and to illustrate and explore a range of possible critical approaches to them, including cross-media or intermedial reinterpretations. 

This module will focus on two important French texts per semester (with "text" taken in its largest sense of book, film, art work, piece of music, cultural product, etc.). Each text will form the basis for a close reading, followed by analyses using French cultural, historical, literary and critical theory approaches as well as adaptations into other media (such as film, art and music) where appropriate. The module will be taught and assessed in English, but the materials will be made available in both French and English, with French students required to use and cite the French materials. 

Activism and Social Change

This module looks at the different forms that activism can take and how activism can have a significant influence on social policy. The module will explore a number of theories of social movements and social change and will be based around case studies which will examine the success and/or failure of social movements in bringing about social and political change in the countries which historically belonged to the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. The module will also examine the role of academic research in social change and the increasing importance of the internet, new technologies and the phenomenon of fake news.

Comparative Visual Cultures

This is a school-wide module taught by specialists from across the school who have research interests in visual culture. It introduces students to some of the main movements in European cinema and art, and includes a strong Russian and East European element. The module includes seminars and film viewings.

La Francophonie: Langue, Colonie et Civilisation 

Taking as its focus the current institution of francophonie, this course seeks to subvert the standard textbook presentation of francophonie as an addition to French Studies courses through an exploration of the politics and polemics which have followed the idea of francophonie since its inception. Perceptions of the role of the French language is central: while francophonie is presented as an element of globalisation, the fact of using French remains tied to unresolved questions of power, identity and politics. Building upon critical awareness and knowledge of sub-Saharan African perspectives developed in the first semester, students will examine the very different debates over francophonie in North Africa in the second semester.

Understanding Gender and Society in France and the Francophone World

We are aware today more than ever that our gender identity affects how we are able to live our lives. This module gives you the opportunity to understand the complexity of the gendering of society through the example of contemporary France, and a range of other francophone countries of your choice. In the module we question why gender inequalities still exist in the 2020s in the family, in education, the workplace, leisure, politics and even as regards our citizenship. How does the country we live in affect gender relations? What is specific about France, or other francophone regions or nation-states? What can governments do to improve the situation? How do other types of inequalities, such as race and class, intersect with gender? What theories can we apply to understand these issues? How does the questioning of the gender binary and heteronormativity impact on these understandings?

Realities and Falsehoods: The French Occupation in Literature & Film

The course aims to enable students to critically interrogate how historical 'truths' were perpetuated and distorted to serve ideological purposes through censored and clandestine cultural production during the Nazi Occupation of France. Student will critically examine and evaluate the historical reliability of a range of texts written both by the general public and by cultural and political figures over the period. These contemporary testimonies found in diaries, letters, newspapers and newsreels of the time are then set against cultural production distributed both openly (under censorship) and clandestinely in order to assess how these 'realities' were processed and the purposes to which they were set during the conflict. In particular, students will pay close attention to any conspicuous divergence into propaganda and myth. Students will be introduced to specialist critical material in the field of life writing, film and literature and historiography as well as to a range of novels and films produced during the Occupation.

Language and Society in Luxembourg and the French Borderlands

With a focus on the French borderlands, this course explores the status and function of the French language in relation to its speakers and to speakers of other languages. We will apply key theoretical insights to issues concerning linguistic minorities in the officially monolingual country of France, in addition to the bordering multilingual countries of Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. In this way, we will investigate how language becomes the target of struggles and debates that are embedded in broader socio-political issues. More broadly, this module underlines the necessity of questioning the presupposed homogeneity conveyed by the use of labels such as the ‘French language’ and ‘French-speaking countries’, which potentially mask the social and linguistic complexity inherent to the social world.

Language at Work

This course provides the basis for understanding communication and communicating in multilingual (work) settings. After completing this module, students will - know the basic properties of language and communication and their relation to culture; - be able to characterise the relationship between English and their other languages; - be able to describe the difference between everyday language use and institutional language use; - be able to describe the differences between communication in monolingual and multilingual (intercultural) settings; - be able to differentiate between characteristics of communication involving native speakers of a language and communication involving non-native/foreign language speakers of a language; - use systematic methods to carry out simple investigations of language, communication and culture (and their implications for foreign language learning); - use digital technology to communicate academic work to non-specialist audiences.

Haïti : La Tragédie (Histoire, politique et littérature de l'époque coloniale à nos jours)

This course consists of two consecutive 10-credit modules which consider the intricate history of Haiti and France from the colonial period up until the present day. The focus of the course will be to analyse the historical development of the Haitian nation via the prism of Western imperialism and especially French colonial and post-colonial history. Through the analysis of historical works but also of works of political science and works of fiction, this module will review the tragic history of Haiti and the ways in which this tragedy is closely intertwined with French imperialism and the development of global capitalism. The course is taught in French.

Littérature et environnement en France aux 18e-19e siècles

This bilingual module (French/English) explores the discourses and representations of the environment in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French literature. It charts the evolving relationships between the human, non-human, geological and climatic worlds in the period as they are (re)configured in contemporary French works. At the same time, the module opens up a critical/creative space to explore how these texts are read and experienced in the twenty-first century. Methodologically, the course broaches such approaches as deep ecology, environmental history, disaster studies, pastoralism, animal studies, ecofeminism, (post)colonial ecocriticism and the intersections between them. The structure of the course is broadly thematic, starting from pairs of texts across centuries to set up dialogues between them and their twenty-first-century readers. All primary texts are provided in both French and English.

Languages & Cultures Project

Guided by individual supervision and support seminars, you will plan and execute an extended piece of independent research on a topic that complements but does not duplicate work you have done (or will do) in SLC taught modules. Alternatively, you may translate a substantial text into English accompanied by a full commentary to contextualize it. Your project must relate to at least one of the countries or cultures whose languages you are studying. As well as writing an extended piece of work, all students present their work at the end of the year.

Social Approaches to Multilingualism

This module provides students with an overview of key topics in multilingualism, with an emphasis on the ways in which issues of language are linked to broader socio-political practices and debates. It allows students to gain insights into how theories of nationalism and globalisation may be applied to the analysis of texts and images in multilingual settings - with a particular focus on those in which Romance and/or Germanic languages play a central role - and it shows how debates about language are bound up with struggles over social equality and reactions to social transformations.

Comparative Critique of Consumer Culture

Critiques of consumer cultures are as old as capitalism itself. This module takes the long view, starting in the eighteenth century and tracing our conflicted identities as modern consumers into the present day. Especially applying German cultural theory to European cultural history, we shall ask what is meant by economic and social liberalism, and whether even culture owes a debt to consumer society. Consumerism can entail complicity in exploitative modes of production (causing poverty and displacement, and profiting from serfdom and slavery). It has been both celebrated and satirised for enabling hedonism and individual bad taste (or kitsch). And consumption has been nationalist, yet also cosmopolitan; today, it threatens our shared environment. Theory, the visual arts, and literature have all been critical of capitalism - but ironically, they can themselves be packaged as consumer goods. Examining a wide range of primary texts (including film and caricature) and critical reflections, you will translate and write a commentary on a historical source, and submit an essay on a topic of your choice.