French at William & Mary

FRENCH

AT WILLIAM & MARY AND AROUND THE WORLD

Fluency in a second language is a valuable skill in the United States, and is both attained and cultivated by those who choose to take the courses necessary to complete a concentration in it. French was for centuries the language of diplomacy both for its precision of expression and because it was the second language favored by the educated classes. Exploration and colonization brought the language to New France (Quebec and Nova Scotia), the Caribbean, the South Pacific (Tahiti), Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia), West Asia (Lebanon, Syria), and Africa, from the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria) through Senegal and West Central Africa to Madagascar and the Reunion Island. In these regions French is still the first or second language spoken. Clearly, French is one passport to the world!

French is also the language of philosophy, literature and the arts, and in their classes concentrators will focus on important intellectual and historical moments, such as the Middle Ages (Chrétien de Troyes, Christine de Pisan) and the Renaissance (Rabelais, Montaigne, Ronsard), Le Grand Siècle (Molière, Racine, La Fontaine), the Enlightenment and the French Revolution (Montesquieu, Graffigny, Voltaire, Rousseau), Romanticism (Chateaubriand, Hugo), the 19th-century realist novel (Balzac, Flaubert), the existentialists (Sartre, Camus), contemporary literature (Robbe-Grillet, Duras), and the Francophone world (Africa, Quebec, Caribbean). Concentrators may also elect an option which will enable them to pursue further the study of film, civilization, language, or literature.

However, if you are asked to free-associate upon hearing the word "French," you might immediately just think of Paris, the musical, Les Misérables, and a few other details that have become the stereotypes of that culture. Our interest at the College of William & Mary is to push beyond those simple equations and to show that studying French means more than "sounding French" or "Parisian." Our mission is intertwined with our unique role in history as the oldest Modern Languages and Literatures Department in the country. Over the 300 years of its existence, the Modern Languages and Literatures Department has been a national leader in curriculum development and teaching innovation. One distinguishing feature of our program is the careful development and practice of the four different language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). The curriculum has been specifically designed to offer courses at every level for the on-going development of student proficiency in French. Whatever your level of French, we have a course to meet your linguistic needs. Multiple levels of conversation courses (206, 306, 406) and writing courses (210, 305, 408) ensure that you will receive sustained instruction and support for developing your language skills throughout your undergraduate studies.

You will also discover an equally wide range of literature courses to choose from. Each century, from the Middle Ages to contemporary culture, is taught by one or more specialists in the field. Should you choose to focus on the twentieth century, you can foreground the early part of our century (to explore writers like Gide and Proust) or you may want to focus on more recent literary or cultural phenomena, including film studies. Equally important are the courses devoted to the study of Francophone (French-speaking) countries, such as Mali and Senegal in West Africa, Congo in Central Africa, or Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in North Africa or Quebec (to mention just a few examples).

How these diverse texts are taught is as important to us as redefining what we teach. Recently we created small senior seminars [French 450] whose focus changes from one semester to the next. This course allows students to develop an interest in a topic or genre sometimes spanning several centuries. These seminars are designed to help students hone their independent research abilities, perhaps preparing the way for an Honors Thesis project (see below). The French concentration provides a well-rounded set of required core courses (in language, literature, and civilization/culture) for all majors, thereby allowing them the freedom to select an emphasis in either literature, language or culture. In this way, students are able to pursue their particular interests in a more focused manner.