Learning Goals in the French Major
1. Majors in French develop and hone analytical and critical skills such that they can interpret and decode the written, cinematic, and media culture that surrounds them. Students having completed the major know how to read a text (whether literary or filmic), i.e., to think analytically about meaning, and about how the experience of time, memory and subjectivity is created. They thus have an enhanced level of cognitive and intellectual function. Students are able to engage in a critical dialog with a broader intellectual practice through their use of secondary sources and exposure to major French thinkers (e.g. Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Ricoeur, Deleuze) of poststructuralist, postcolonial, and postmodern theory.
2. Understanding French models of the Nation, Global Empire, Race, Gender, and Secularity: students acquire an understanding of the basic political history of France, from the 17th century to the present, including the French Revolution and the impact of the 19th- and 20th-century French colonial empire on Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Ongoing issues of race, immigration, and global power are thus illuminated through a study of the French models of race, gender/sexuality/feminism, nationhood, and secularity (laïcité) as they play out in France and in the Francophone world.
3. Literature and film are the privileged imaginaries and vectors through which to study the culture and politics of France and the Francophone world; majors will therefore read poetry, novels, plays, and other representative literary works in addition to seeing major French films. These works are contextualized and problematized (rather than simply being held up for admiration) by a constant engagement with theory, whether general literary and film criticism, philosophy, poststructuralist, feminist, queer or postcolonial theory. The goal of the department, moreover, is not to replicate for students a French university or school (with a variety of offerings in economics, sociology, history, chemistry) but to give them access to a worldview and ideological model both significantly different from that of the English-speaking world and one that historically, politically, and culturally has been hugely influential since the birth of the modern world.
4. Language: Students are expected to reach oral and written proficiency in French at the Advanced level (ACTFL guidelines), that is:
- to speak in fluent French with little hesitation and relatively few grammatical mistakes
- to narrate events in the major time frames (past, present, future)
- and to express ideas in coherent, linked sentences forming units of speech of paragraph length and quality, especially on topics relating to their interests or particular expertise, and about contemporary events of public or personal interest.
Students will be able to speak about a variety of subjects, both those relating to everyday life as well as more general interest topics. They should also be able to speak clearly and cogently on a topic of research they know well (e.g. independent study topic, thesis subject, or CISLA project). They will easily understand and be easily understood by native French speakers, and they will be able to engage in both formal and informal speech, respecting the appropriate linguistic level. Majors will be able to read French from a variety of sources and levels, from simple everyday texts, to newspapers, to literary texts, to specialized or academic prose specific to their field of interest and learning. Students will be capable of writing in clear, well-organized, convincing, and substantially grammatically-correct French, and will be able to write at least twelve pages on a given subject.
5. Preparation for the world after Connecticut College: Consistent with Connecticut College’s international focus, majors are prepared as highly analytical and capable thinkers well-positioned to be global leaders in their chosen professional field, whether politics, economics, the arts (museum-based or creative work), government, law, or education, and whether living abroad or engaging in global leadership from within the United States. Their general preparedness for graduate or professional school or for a profession is complemented with country-specific global knowledge and advanced linguistic abilities in French. French majors understand the strong literary, filmic, and intellectual tradition that comes from the French-speaking world, and will be able to continue to explore independently the literary, cinematic, and artistic production in French. Having spent at least one semester living and studying abroad in a French-speaking environment, they are comfortable traveling to, engaging with, living in, and working with or in France or the Francophone world. Finally, and crucially, students' skills and habits of decoding the symbolic structures of everyday life, film, speech, and literature will greatly enrich their everyday lives in whichever linguistic context they find themselves.