FREN 420 - French Avant-Gardes in the 20th and 21st Centuries

The course will expose students to some of the most important writers, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, visual artists, and thinkers of the twentieth-century. It will serve both as a survey of the most important literary, artistic, and intellectual movements and as a sampling of the most brilliant and innovative prose, poetry, and performance. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with some of the cultural productions that have been strongly influenced by scientific, linguistic, psychoanalytical, colonial, anti-colonial, post-colonial, racial, and gender-based theories of the century. The course will expose students to intersectional readings of texts and images that represent the long lasting effects of the twentieth-century ruptures on writers and artists in France and the Francophone world through the study of various themes. The course functions as a discussion seminar. Student work includes presentations of relevant materials and short papers. Taught in French. Prerequisite(s): Any 300-level course. Offered occasionally. (4 Credits)