Course Description:
This course, which follows the required language sequence at Colby, FR125-FR127, builds reading skills and broadens cultural background through a wide variety of readings in French. Emphasis is on the texts and contexts of culture, whether in France, Quebec, or other francophone areas such as Africa and the Caribbean. Continuing work in improving oral and written skills.

Reading in Cultural Context:
FR 128 enables students to develop stronger reading skills in French yet, like other 100-level courses across the curriculum currently designated as “I,” thematically and methodologically, FR128 is centrally concerned with issues of diversity in an international context, specifically “progress in overcoming prejudice, privilege, oppression, inequality and injustice” (p. 30 of the Catalogue). As reflected by the title of one of the principal books in the course, Diversité [Diversity], we treat these issues by engaging with a French and Francophone corpus produced by men and women of different races on both sides of the post-colonial divide.  A broad range of texts selected for the course spans the geography of the French-speaking world, including French Canada (Jean Arceneaux, Gabrielle Roy) continental France (Nathalie Sarraute, Robert Desnos, Paul Eluard, Emile Zola, Marguerite Duras, J.M.G. Le Clézio, Annie Ernaux, Colette), Vietnam (Pham duy Khiêm), Egypt (Andrée Chedid), the Ivory Coast (Bernard Dadié), Guadeloupe (Maryse Condé, Myriam Warner-Vieyra), Algeria (Albert Camus, Emmanuel Roblès, Assia Djebar), Haiti (Marie Chauvet), the Congo (Kama Kamanda, Jean Baptiste Tati-Loutard), Martinique (Suzanne Dracius), and Senegal (Ousmane Sembène). Selected texts collectively follow the cycle of human life, from birth to death, through the stages of development linking childhood, adolescence and adulthood. Students quickly discover that French culture is not monolithic. Fundamental issues of identity cross boundaries of gender, class and race. As students learn in FR 128, core values of family and love, friendship and loyalty, and, above all, individual freedom, traverse time and space to unite the “races” of the French-speaking world in a similar pursuit of happiness, a pursuit grounded at once in hope and revolt, and in the need to understand the meaning of human existence in a world rife with oppression, discrimination and violence against women and people of color.

Learning Assessment:

• The quality of your preparation of course material will be assessed each class through your participation and contribution to class discussion. It is expected that you will speak only French in class to demonstrate not only your overall comprehension of the text assigned, but also your ability to situate the text in cultural context.
• Your comprehension will be also assessed by writing assignments, both short answers to a series of questions and unit tests. ALL WRITTEN WORK PREPARED OUTSIDE OF CLASS MUST BE TYPED AND SUBMITTED ON TIME.
• Your textual literacy or ability to situate a text, either printed or visual in context, will be also assessed by an oral presentation or exposé.
• A comprehensive final exam will allow you to synthesize the course material, and thus make informed comparisons between various texts and contexts of Francophone culture.