FREN 5301 is also offered in Spring 2025
FREN 5301 is also offered in Spring 2023
Spring 2025 | FREN 5301 Section 001: Critical Issues in French Studies (65431)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Discussion
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Graduate Student
- Times and Locations:
- Enrollment Status:
Open (0 of 15 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Introduces the methods of interpretation and critical debates that have shaped and continue to define the discipline of French studies. Provides a practical introduction to graduate-level literary research. prereq: Grad or instr consent
- Class Description:
- One reads for leisure, on the beach or in a public park, when it is not too hot. One also reads in bed, as a prelude to sleep. Reading, indeed, like resting or even sleeping, requires a minimum of physical comfort, an appropriate position of the body. What is reading for, "in a destitute time," as Heidegger once asked about poetry? In a secular, disenchanted culture, where reading is no longer a religious activity or ritual, one can decide to become a "professional reader"-what we do in graduate school. Reading, then, becomes a craft, a savoir faire. It is also a personal commitment, even a calling, as though texts were begging readers to read them. Does reading consist of gathering a text into an ultimate meaning, as the hermeneutic tradition assumes? Does "legere" mean to link, to bind, to gather? Or, on the contrary, should the act of reading disseminate, scatter and fragment a text, thus making it unlikely to reach an ultimate meaning? What does a reader do when he/she reads a text? Are there ethical ways of reading? irresponsible ones? Does reading a text compare with the art of interpreting, for instance, dreams? We will explore these questions by reading reflections on reading and by studying performances of reading. The latter will require that we read texts (poems, short stories, essays, autobiographical topoi) read by "professional" readers.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/65431/1253
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 21 May 2007
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2025 French Classes