FREN 3710 - Women’s Stories I

(HB) (LA-AS) Satisfies Option 1.

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: FREN 2310 or CASE Q++ placement, or permission of instructor.

M. C. Vallois.

The class is an introduction to reading and interpreting women’s stories as they are represented, written, and at times erased before being recovered in French and Francophone history and cultures. The course will analyze several figures/icons/images from the Old Regime to our time. The goal of the course is to familiarize students with the analyses of different strategies and techniques of representation (esthetic, historical, scientific, autobiographical and fictional). The corpus of works studied will include fictional and historical writing as well as paintings and films. Examples of such case studies could include: Joan of Arc, Marguerite de Valois, Marie-Antoinette, heroines of fairy tales, Camille Claudel, unknown women workers, or well known contemporary women authors such as Marguerite Duras, Marjane Satrapi, or Condé.