Fall 2023 Courses
- For day, time, room, and TA information, see our PDF SCHEDULE or the class search tool https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm.
- For all courses not described here, please refer to the General Catalog course descriptions: https://catalog.ucdavis.edu/courses-subject-code/fre/
Language Courses
FRE 001-003: Elementary French
FRE 021-02: Intermediate French
See Placement Guide or Catalog Descriptions
Undergraduate Courses
FRE 100: Composition in French
TBD
FRE 107B: Making of Modern France
Prof. Claire Goldstein
Course Description: Read real historical documents, analyze painting and architecture, and re-enact philosophical debates about important social issues in this quarter’s exploration of the political and cultural history of France from the beginning of the seventeenth century through the middle of the nineteenth century. Highlights of our survey will include: Henri IV’s edict of Nantes, which ended the French Religious Wars; Versailles and Louis XIV’s cultural and political project of French absolutism; Enlightenment polemics about economic inequality and religious toleration; the revolution of 1789; the rise of Napoleon; and the industrial transformation of Paris in the nineteenth century. We will engage topics such as the role of women and minorities in society and France’s relationship with the broader world as students hone reading, writing, and speaking skills in French.
General Education: Arts & Humanities (AH); World Cultures (WC); Writing Experience (WE)
Prerequisite: French 23 or consent of the instructor
Course Meetings: Tues + Thurs 10:30-11:50 (Olson 227)
Professor Contact: cbgoldstein@ucdavis.edu
All course materials on Canvas
FRE 160: French Language in Context
Prof. Eric Russell
Graduate Courses
FRE 200: Intro to Graduate Studies
Prof. Jeff Fort
FRE 214
Prof. Noah Guynn
The Marriage Plot in Early Modern France
The marriage plot, ubiquitous in Western literature since the Greeks, may seem absurdly formulaic. It centers on the courtship rituals of a young heterosexual couple and achieves fictional closure only by removing all obstacles to marriage. The typical “happily ever after” ending is ideological in the extreme, construing happiness as compulsory heterosexuality, submissive femininity, reproductive futurity, and class determinism. And yet as we will discover in this seminar, early modern French authors working in genres like comedy and fairy tale often manage to adhere to the marriage plot while challenging its ideological underpinnings. Some texts arrive at their happy ending in the expected way, by establishing a conventional household formation; yet they leave us to wonder whether happiness will be truly enduring and shared or whether domestic bliss will be threatened from within. Other texts embrace an oppositional politics, whether by establishing an unconventional (femdom, queer, trans) household and happiness or by embracing an anti-matrimonial polemic (happiness as the avoidance of marriage). The syllabus includes works by Corneille, Molière, Mme. de Villedieu, Mme. d’Aulnoy, Perrault, l’Abbé de Choisy, and la Duchesse de Montpensier. All texts will be available as PDFs in both French and English, and seminar sessions will be conducted in English; however, students in French must do all assignments (reading and writing) in the target language. There will be no research paper, rather a set of weekly two-page reaction papers and a final five-page essay that expands on one of the reaction papers. No screens will be allowed in the seminar room, and students should bring paper and pen with them, along with a printout of the assigned text.
FRE 390A: Teaching French
TBD