Fall 2022

French 3303 – French Composition and Conversation
Professor: Dr. Gyongyi Pisak, g_p55@txstate.edu

Description:
The focus of this course is to give you ample practice in speaking and writing in French through analyzing, making, and responding to arguments in a wide range of topics in current French society and culture. You will improve your written style, deepen your understanding of authentic French texts, and increase your ability to understand spoken French. You will also improve your grammatical accuracy, enlarge your vocabulary, and acquire more ease and confidence speaking French, in a friendly environment. The topics we will discuss are certain to trigger ideas and interest, and you will acquire the skills to express your own opinion on them in French.

French 3305 – Acting French
Professor: Dr. Jennifer Forrest, jf05@txstate.edu

Description: In this course students will read, abridge, rewrite, stage, and perform Alfred Jarry's farce Ubu roi (1896) with the objective that they . . .

• overcome inhibitions and find joy in the oral use of French;
• improve pronunciation, intonation, comprehension, and oral expression;
• add extensively to their vocabulary and repertoire of idiomatic expressions.

Students will produce the play, working on set design, costume design, props, lighting, sound, acting, and directing.
 

French 4341 – French Composition and Stylistics
Professor: Dr. Peter Golato, pgolato@txstate.edu 

Description:
Students will incorporate their more advanced grammatical and syntactical skills with the study of style in the writing of compositions in French. Writing exercises will explore a variety of expository techniques from description, narration, dialogue, portraits, to the writing of letters.

French 4370 – Civilization
Professor: Dr. Carole Martin, cm11@txstate.edu

Description:
Rather than a survey of the cultural institutions of France, we will focus on how the French colonial empire and colonization doctrine impacted what would become Francophone Africa.   Four different angles will structure the course:

• history--we will set the stage by reading a 1792 play by Revolutionary writer, Olympe de Gouges, L'Esclavage des noirs, ou l'heureux naufrage;
• theory--we will study the notion of cognitive dissonance by Frantz Fanon and read two of his texts, Peau Noire Masques Blancs and The Wretched of the Earth.   We will also analyze the same notion in two films, Melvin Van Peebles's La Permission and Med Hondo's Soleil Ô;
• media--we will look at two journals, Présence Africaine and Souffles: Revue Culturelle Arabe du Maghreb, to discuss the creative revolution that preceded and accompanied the African wars of independence;
• ecology--we will end the course with a discussion of the ecological impact of colonization as first underlined by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques, the reading (in English) of which we will supplement by watching Djibril Diop Mambéty's Hyènes.

French Civilization is repeatable for credit with different emphasis. (MULT) (WI).