The Department of French & Italian Studies is offering a variety of exciting classes this Spring!
Read below to check out some of our classes and their descriptions! If you have any questions regarding our courses, please reach out to frenital@uw.edu.
TXTDS 220: Making Manuscripts: Manuscript & Handwriting Technologies from the Antiquity to Today (SSc, A&H)
Professor Beatrice Arduini |MW 1:30pm - 3:20pm | SMI 107
While we are experiencing a rapidly evolving digital tools market, the most enduring writing technology has been the pen/quill and paper/parchment, which dominated writing from late antiquity and is still used today. In this course we will explore how writing styles have changed over more than a thousand years, with a focus on medieval handwritten manuscripts. We will also reflect on modern-age applications of handwriting technologies, on the evolution of different styles and methods in the age of print and digital, and on the interaction between form and function over time. In pursuing these questions, we will study some of the most significant fragments and books held by the university libraries at the UW Special Collections.
ITAL 352: Framing Mafia: Spectacle vs. Politics in Cinema (SSc, A&H)
Professor Claudio Mazzola | TTh 2:30pm - 4:20 pm | CLK 316
Come and join us for a trip through the way Mafia has been portrayed in Italian and American cinema from the thirties to the present day. We will juxtapose American classics like Little Caesar, Scarface and Goodfellas to Italian classics like Salvatore Giuliano and Mafia Kills Only in Summer. We will explore how, in the US, the narrative formula made Mafia a part of Hollywood entertaining spectacle while Italian directors focus more on the sociopolitical implication of Mafia. Taught in English.
FRENCH 228/LIT 228: The Water Crisis in Literature and Cinema (SSc, A&H)
Professor Richard Watts | TTh 1:30pm - 3:20pm | THO 134
Through an engagement with the arts understood broadly—from literature and cinema to sculpture, landscape design, and other forms of material culture—this course aims to surface the factors across time and in a variety of cultures that have led to the contemporary water crisis. The course asks how certain spiritual, philosophical, racial, and political logics allow us to prefer, for instance, economic benefit to the few in the form of lax pollution controls to the health of a waterway that serves the many and functions as a bearer of stories and traditions. Texts from a range of linguistic traditions and places (N. and S. America, West Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia) will inform discussions. Taught in English.
FRENCH 302 A: Cultures of the Francophone World (A&H)
Professor Matthew Skrzypczyk | MW 10"30am - 12:20pm | THO 331 |Prerequisite: FRENCH 203
Qu’est-ce que c’est, la F/francophonie?! In this iteration of French 302 we will encounter texts that will interrogate what it means to be a member of the francophone world. Crossing borders and seas, our texts will allow us to navigate how movement across the francophone world influences cultural production in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will begin with the open letter signed by a group of contemporary authors who demand a cultural shift in the literary world (Pour une littérature monde...) before moving into some short stories that illustrate Guadeloupe’s changing landscape (Le Coeur à rire et à pleurer). Then we will look at cultural theory with Aimé Césaire and interrogate the role of national and world borders with a modern play (Ton beau capitaine). To finish this semester, we will watch a film that explores contemporary Franco-Haitian identity (Zombi Child)while interrogating the complex histories that inform our global geopolitical realities. Ultimately, this course and our selection of literary and cultural works will prepare you for continuation in the French learning trajectory while exploring the cultural elements that construct Francophone identities.
FRENCH 303 A: Digesting French Gastronomy (A&H)
Professor Matthew Skrzypczyk | TTh 10:30am - 12:20pm | THO 331 | Prerequisite: FRENCH 301/302
In this course we will explore the various ways in which gastronomy, the culture of food and wine as well as terroir, inform the construction of French and Francophone identity. This will include studying cultural objects, foodways, events and organizations that will aid in our interrogation of who has the right to determine the degree of authenticity or Frenchness. With our readings, films and videos as well as cultural objects we will develop our minds while discussing how food and drink inform culture and personal history. Our graded tasks of writing, listening, speaking and audio recording will allow students to develop French language and cultural skills. These tasks and projects will also allow students to develop skills that can be used later in personal and professional opportunities. Overall, the course both solidifies and diversifies B2 proficiency on the CEFR scale, and prepares students for rigorous academic work in the French major and minor. Conducted in French.
FRENCH 320 A: French Language and Cultural Identity (SSc, A&H)
Professor Lamia Mezzour-Hodson | MW 11:30am - 1:20pm | LOW 115 | Prerequisite: FRENCH 103
How does language shape one’s identity? How does language reflect power dynamics in a society? To what extent does a language influence national identity? This course explores many questions about language, culture, and identity in French and Francophone regions. We examine topics including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class and investigate how they influence individual and collective identity. Considering the linguistic and cultural diversity in the francophone sphere, this course analyzes the dynamic relationship between language and identity and how language becomes an instrument that contributes to one’s belonging or otherness. This course is taught in English and includes materials from different fields: linguistics, philosophy, literature, and cinema.
FRENCH 420 A: Bodies and Borders in Francophone Literature (A&H)
Professor Lamia Mezzour-Hodson | TTh 11:30am - 1:20pm | MEB 235 | Prerequisite: FRENCH 303
In the course of our daily lives, we confront various physical or metaphorical borders resulting from many social factors. These borders can be geographical, social, cultural, political, or religious. In this course, throughout a variety of Francophone works, we will address questions related to physical bodies and how diverse boundaries influence their identities. The aim will be to develop an analytical engagement with both the primary sources and their cultural contexts, exploring the intersection of literature with other disciplines (such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, etc.). We will explore novels, memoirs, films, music, paintings, and photography from the Caribbean, West African, and North African spheres, as well as their diasporas in France.
FRENCH 554: Translation: Practice, Identity, Power
Professor Richard Watts | W 2:30pm - 5:20pm | THO 217
A multilingual graduate seminar that explores theories of translation practice, the articulation of identity in translation, and translation and its relation to fields of power. Each of these three areas is treated in a separate module, but the overlap between them animates discussions that present translation as a set of practices and heuristics that operates across disciplines. Conducted in English, but students work with the source languages of their research area.