FR 1070 - GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN 21ST CENTURY FRANCE

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Long Description French culture has always had much to say about questions of gender and sexuality. In this course, we will consider key cultural products, perspectives, and practices around the concept of gender broadly conceived, including masculinity, feminism, hetero/homosexuality, transgenre, and others. Questions of nation, race, and ethnicity will factor into our discussions as well, and we will think often about the words or language that texts employ to talk about gender. We will also engage in cross-cultural comparison between France and our own cultural context(s) to give us comparative insight into the world we live in. We will treat questions such as: What is the current 'crisis' in French masculinity? What does it mean to be a man today in France? What is the current state of feminism in France, and how does it differ from previous incarnations? How does the discourse of homosexuality and queerness compare to the US context? What does transgenre signify? When and how did transgenre appear as a category in France? How are French constructs of gender inflected with Arab or North African identities? What other recurring forms of intersectionality are there? And how is all this represented in cultural texts? Our focus will be French culture since the turn of the century. Taking an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach, this is not a literature course per se (though we will read some literature). To aid us in our task, we will discuss and analyze a wide variety of recent texts in French from the 21st century: comic books (BD), films, documentaries, YouTube videos, music, webpages, journalistic prose, manifestos, political and government tracts, school textbooks, autofiction, novels, children's literature, pop psychology, etc. As the course is taught entirely in French and all written work is in French, you will increase your linguistic proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. You will also acquire the semantic tools you need to talk and write about gender and sexuality in French. Prerequisite: at least six credits above French 104, or permission of the instructor.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Diversity General Ed. Requirement, DSAS Geographic Region General Ed. Requirement, European and Eurasian Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Women's St, SCI Diversity General Ed. Requirements, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Global&Cross Cul GE. Req., West European Studies

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