Teaching Experience

Fear pervades contemporary discourse. “Health scares” generate anxiety around the possibility of disease. “FOMO” arouses worry about missing out on exciting events. “Inferiority complexes'' illuminate fears of inadequacy. Although often unfounded, pathological fears known as phobias—from claustrophobia to xenophobia—structure perceptions of reality and inspire fear-driven fictional plots. In this course we will probe representations of fear-based obsessions, neuroses, and manias to understand not only how phobias permeate French and Francophone cultural production, but also to diagnose how they fuel the stories we tell about ourselves and others. This course counts towards the French for Medical Professionals track at Washington University.

Liberté, Égalité, Sororité. Did you know that the inventor of narrative fiction film, and perhaps the only female filmmaker from 1896-1906, was a French woman? This course introduces students to French and Francophone cinema through the lens of the feminine. In this "her"story of French-language film, we will explore works by female directors as well as representations of women and girls on the silver screen from cinema's silent origins to the empowered voices of the #MeToo era. In tandem, we will engage with key ideas from feminist critics like Simone de Beauvoir and Françoise d'Eaubonne. Class discussions will take an intersectional approach, addressing feminism's connections with the following topics: girlhood and adolescence; race and ethnicity; post-colonial cultures; gendered spaces/places and the environment; LGBTQ+ identities; motherhood and domesticity. Our corpus includes classics from the French tradition as well as understudied films, running the spectrum from drama to documentary, to coming-of-age narratives and cult favorites, including works by Chantal Akerman, Yamina Benguigui, Alice Guy, Céline Sciamma, and Agnès Varda, among others.

The Coronavirus, quarantines, and social distancing of 2020 have recently focused our attention on confinement as a remedy for the propagation of disease. Yet throughout the Modern era, France and francophone countries have witnessed waves of dramatic, society-altering epidemics such as cholera and tuberculosis, whose effects range from the bodily to the ideological, confining people and populations in manifold ways. By reshaping domestic life and international currents, disease has served as a medium and catalyst for aesthetic and political revolution, as French-language writers channel wider health concerns and give voice to diverse experiences of affliction. At the convergence of history, literature, medicine, and the visual arts, this interdisciplinary course explores illness—in its scientific and social etiologies—as an earth-shaking or making phenomenon. Through special attention to confinement, students examine the representation of disease as well as its ramifications across psychological, sociological, and philosophical dimensions.

Plunging into the underground and underwater worlds, students explore this cultural imaginary as a series of adventures that involve danger, technological prowess, and experimentation. As depicted by novelists, filmmakers, and explorers, the “world below” is a richly provocative space of crime, captivity, and creativity. It is a subterranean world that often reflects or refracts the world “above,” revealing society’s unseen depths and bringing to light its marginalized figures. Reading excerpted texts by Hugo (Les Misérables and Les Travailleurs de la mer), Verne (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers and Les Indes noires), Zola (Germinal and Le Ventre de Paris), and Leroux (Le Fantôme de l’Opéra), students discover labyrinths and hidden spaces, aquatic wonders and monstrous presences. Films by Painlevé (La pieuvre and Les amours de la pieuvre), Cousteau (Le Monde du silence), and Malle (Zazie dans le métro) unearth mysteries of both the city and the sea. Drawings, photographs, and historical accounts of the Paris Universal Exhibitions bolster our study of how France in the 19th and 20th centuries was inextricably linked to hidden worlds.

From Marie Antoinette and the sans-culottes, to the debonair dandies and chic ladies of Haussmann’s Paris, style and socio-political tensions have long been intertwined in France. This graduate seminar examines how fashion—as well as writing about fashion—expressed, reflected, and marked political upheavals and changing social roles during the 18th and 19th centuries. To elucidate how fashion emerges as a discourse that shapes and is shaped by the immense changes of these two revolutionary centuries, students read Marivaux, Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard; Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro; articles from the Encyclopédie; Mercier, Tableau de Paris; Balzac, Le Traité de la vie élégante; Barbey d’Aurevilly, Du Dandysme et de George Brummell; Baudelaire, excerpts from Le Peintre de la vie moderne and Les Fleurs du Mal; Zola, Au Bonheur des Dames, and Mallarmé, La Dernière Mode. Fashion plates, magazines, paintings, and caricature also bolster our understanding of fashion’s unique place in French literary and cultural history at the dawn of the modern era.

Paris has long been considered one of the world’s centers for fashion. This course examines the development of style, shopping, and consumer culture in the French capital from the nineteenth century to the present through literature, cultural theory, and film. The course will not be concerned so much with clothing itself as much as it will consider how ideals (e.g. elegance, beauty), Parisian types (e.g. the ​grisette​, the dandy), spaces of commerce (e.g. the department store, the arcades), urban development, and consumption trends have contributed to and shaped the image of French fashion and the role of Paris as one of fashion’s landmark cities. Readings from historical and literary texts will lay the groundwork for understanding modern-day consumption and theories of fashion, taste, and social distinction. The course will include the portrayal of the fashion industry in contemporary film and class discussions involve visual and print culture from the era related to Parisian fashion​ ​(e.g.​ ​painting,​ ​magazines).

At the 100 level, I focus on the acquisition of basic skills in the target language through a culture-driven, communicative approach. I utilize the online platform Flipgrid for audio-video recordings so that students can perfect their pronunciation of challenging sounds and receive personalized feedback and encouragement. Students are also introduced to French-language poetry through the “Projet poésie,” a series of recitations performed on Flipgrid culminating with an in-class exposé on poets such as Aimé Césaire, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Victor Hugo, Jacques Prévert, Arthur Rimbaud, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Paul Verlaine.

At the 200 level, students review and expand basic linguistic skills and deepen their understanding of global francophone cultures. As students debate contemporary issues in the francophone world, they learn to critically analyze provocative texts and express original thought in the target language. Written production takes the form of argumentative compositions, while oral production is achieved through a collaborative project, “Projet podcast,” in which students work in small groups to produce a podcast centering on a cultural topic of their choice. Past topics have included: the French education system, friendship in the age of social media, Macron’s France 2030 plan, the #BalanceTonPorc movement, immigration in the Francosphere, la banlieue parisienne, the Islamic scarf debate & la laïcité, French as a global language.

At the 300 level, students sharpen their writing and conversation skills while engaging with diverse media (novels, press articles, songs, films, short stories, etc.) drawn from across the francophone world. I have often taught theme-based courses at this level, challenging students to express with accuracy and nuance complex ideas on topics ranging from technology, tourism, and the environment, to happiness, beauty, and love in the age of social media. At the advanced level, I enjoy teaching texts by contemporary and/or understudied French-language writers and filmmakers alongside classics from the French canon.