What follows is a list of classes that I have taught at Clemson University (2015-present), Wellesley College (2013-15), Bryn Mawr College (2012-13), Gettysburg College (2011-12), aand Brown University (05-11). The list is becoming quite long, so I have chosen to outline more particularly the classes that I created from scratch. For all of the other classes, I have provided the respective departments' course descriptions.
French Intermediate I and II (Clemson University, Fall 2015-present)
I have taught one or several sections of this class every semester since I have arrived at Clemson. Our department uses the textbook Imaginez, along with the online workbook. I did not design the syllabus for this course nor have I chosen the book, but I have created all the activities that I use in class (see sample activities), and I have also designed all kinds of "Lab Work" semester-long projects (the "Lab work" for this class is left at the discretion of its instructor). Depending on the semester, I have either designed writing assignments about the French film festival that I co-organize with my colleague Joe Mai, or proposed a semester-long sequence on French elections (Spring of 2017), or created a semester-long writing assignment on a French T.V. show (I have used Le Bureau and I am currently using Dix pour cent). I have particularly enjoyed working with TV shows because they generally pique the students' interests and we can use them for all sorts of comprehension or communicative activities in class. For instance, students were recently learning the Plus-que-parfait, and the one "exercice à trous" that I gave them narrated sections of Episode 1 of Dix pour cent: students knew the timeline of the actions described, and could focus on picking the right tense without trying to figure out an artificial context cue.
I have taught one or several sections of this class every semester since I have arrived at Clemson. Our department uses the textbook Imaginez, along with the online workbook. I did not design the syllabus for this course nor have I chosen the book, but I have created all the activities that I use in class (see sample activities), and I have also designed all kinds of "Lab Work" semester-long projects (the "Lab work" for this class is left at the discretion of its instructor). Depending on the semester, I have either designed writing assignments about the French film festival that I co-organize with my colleague Joe Mai, or proposed a semester-long sequence on French elections (Spring of 2017), or created a semester-long writing assignment on a French T.V. show (I have used Le Bureau and I am currently using Dix pour cent). I have particularly enjoyed working with TV shows because they generally pique the students' interests and we can use them for all sorts of comprehension or communicative activities in class. For instance, students were recently learning the Plus-que-parfait, and the one "exercice à trous" that I gave them narrated sections of Episode 1 of Dix pour cent: students knew the timeline of the actions described, and could focus on picking the right tense without trying to figure out an artificial context cue.
(Band of Sisters: Feminism in French Literature and Culture (Clemson University, Spring 2019)
This was one of my favorite class to teach at Clemson (thank you Clemson students!). I also loved that I could invite director Mame-Fatou Niang for a campus-wide screening of Mariannes Noires (one of the students in the class interviewed her during the Q and A of that event). Finally, this was the first time that I designed a podcast assignment. Student posted amazing work on our soundcloud page (see middle image below). I cannot share their podcasts here because of copyright laws, but I am happy to provide a sample upon request, and provided they give me permission to do so.
Course description:
In Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud imagined the development of prehistoric society: a “band of brothers” killed their father figure, thus starting the beginnings of society as we know it. In that narrative, women do not have much agency and they matter only in so far as they relate to men. So what happens if we rethink Freud’s narrative? Is a “Band of Sisters” a better model, or is that one that reproduces the oppression of the “band of brothers” construct? Is sisterhood a desirable model to think about women and society, or is that one that restricts voices – such as those of LGBTQ+ people? How do we make sure that Feminism does not reproduce the oppressions that it seeks to fight against? This course will be an exploration of how francophone women writers and filmmakers have represented female relationships – be it kinship, sisterhood, friendship, or love relationships.
This was one of my favorite class to teach at Clemson (thank you Clemson students!). I also loved that I could invite director Mame-Fatou Niang for a campus-wide screening of Mariannes Noires (one of the students in the class interviewed her during the Q and A of that event). Finally, this was the first time that I designed a podcast assignment. Student posted amazing work on our soundcloud page (see middle image below). I cannot share their podcasts here because of copyright laws, but I am happy to provide a sample upon request, and provided they give me permission to do so.
Course description:
In Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud imagined the development of prehistoric society: a “band of brothers” killed their father figure, thus starting the beginnings of society as we know it. In that narrative, women do not have much agency and they matter only in so far as they relate to men. So what happens if we rethink Freud’s narrative? Is a “Band of Sisters” a better model, or is that one that reproduces the oppression of the “band of brothers” construct? Is sisterhood a desirable model to think about women and society, or is that one that restricts voices – such as those of LGBTQ+ people? How do we make sure that Feminism does not reproduce the oppressions that it seeks to fight against? This course will be an exploration of how francophone women writers and filmmakers have represented female relationships – be it kinship, sisterhood, friendship, or love relationships.
Survey of French Literature: L'autre dans la littérature française et francophone (Clemson University, 2015-present)
I have been teaching this class every Fall since I have been at Clemson. I have changed the syllabus quite a lot since my first year (below are screenshots from our current canvas website, which give you an idea of the general class progression). I initially had doubts about teaching a survey. However, since I could decide entirely on the syllabus, I decided to choose a theme (the "other," be it foreigner, outcast, or outsider) and plan my class around that theme. It has worked very well over the years. The suggestion to start the semester with fairy tales came from a student, and I have used those readings with great success over the past few years. We then have a small unit on theater, before looking at several 18th-century texts: Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes and Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (excerpts). We then read L'Ingénu (we skip some chapters but we spend three weeks on the book), which allows us to discuss both "l'étranger" as the "foreigner" and "l'étrangère" as the outcast -- secondary character Melle de Saint-Yves has a tragic fate in the novel, and the text makes powerful claims about sexual violence. This leads us to our 19th-century text, Boule de Suif, which shares that preoccupation -- that novella also allows us to discuss Nationalism and nationalist representations. Our 20th-century text is Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir, on which we also spend three weeks. We conclude work on this text by comparing it with Césaire and Fanon's work. Finally, the semester ends on two contemporary writers, Virginie Despentes and Alice Zéniter, discussing homophobia, misogyny, and racism (Despentes) as well as France's colonial past (Zéniter).
For each session, I prepare a comprehension questionnaire that I post on Canvas, and that students have to download, print, and fill before coming to class. We start class with that questionnaire, which allows me to see if something has been misunderstood or remains unclear. I then design analytic activities for students to complete in groups, before we have a general discussion.
I have been teaching this class every Fall since I have been at Clemson. I have changed the syllabus quite a lot since my first year (below are screenshots from our current canvas website, which give you an idea of the general class progression). I initially had doubts about teaching a survey. However, since I could decide entirely on the syllabus, I decided to choose a theme (the "other," be it foreigner, outcast, or outsider) and plan my class around that theme. It has worked very well over the years. The suggestion to start the semester with fairy tales came from a student, and I have used those readings with great success over the past few years. We then have a small unit on theater, before looking at several 18th-century texts: Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes and Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (excerpts). We then read L'Ingénu (we skip some chapters but we spend three weeks on the book), which allows us to discuss both "l'étranger" as the "foreigner" and "l'étrangère" as the outcast -- secondary character Melle de Saint-Yves has a tragic fate in the novel, and the text makes powerful claims about sexual violence. This leads us to our 19th-century text, Boule de Suif, which shares that preoccupation -- that novella also allows us to discuss Nationalism and nationalist representations. Our 20th-century text is Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir, on which we also spend three weeks. We conclude work on this text by comparing it with Césaire and Fanon's work. Finally, the semester ends on two contemporary writers, Virginie Despentes and Alice Zéniter, discussing homophobia, misogyny, and racism (Despentes) as well as France's colonial past (Zéniter).
For each session, I prepare a comprehension questionnaire that I post on Canvas, and that students have to download, print, and fill before coming to class. We start class with that questionnaire, which allows me to see if something has been misunderstood or remains unclear. I then design analytic activities for students to complete in groups, before we have a general discussion.
French Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism
Description coming soon!
Description coming soon!
Adventure novels in context
Description coming soon!
Description coming soon!
Love Interests: Marriage and Adultery in XIXth-century French Literature (Wellesley College, Spring 2015; taught in French)
This examines major nineteenth-century novels and plays, with a specific focus on the relationship between literary genres and the themes of love, marriage, and adultery. How does literature reflect upon other types of discourses on the subject? How do literary texts and caricatures of the period apprehend questions of class, social order, and transmission of property? And what is desire’s narrative role in representations of marriage and adultery? Readings include texts by Balzac, Maupassant, Musset, Dumas, Stendhal and Flaubert. We will also discuss the caricatures of the period (Daumier, Gavarni).
This examines major nineteenth-century novels and plays, with a specific focus on the relationship between literary genres and the themes of love, marriage, and adultery. How does literature reflect upon other types of discourses on the subject? How do literary texts and caricatures of the period apprehend questions of class, social order, and transmission of property? And what is desire’s narrative role in representations of marriage and adultery? Readings include texts by Balzac, Maupassant, Musset, Dumas, Stendhal and Flaubert. We will also discuss the caricatures of the period (Daumier, Gavarni).
Shipwrecks, Outlaws, and Wonderlands: Reading and Writing the Adventure Story (Wellesley College, Fall 2014; First-year Seminar taught in English).
I was very fortunate to be able to participate in Wellesley's First-year Seminar program. I used all of the resources available to me to make this class a special experience for students, which is why I chose to dedicate one page of this website to it. That section of the website also contains a reflection on how and why I teach writing, and how I adapt my writing prompts to the needs of a specific class. I invite you to look at it here. In short: this class had units that paired an anglophone novel with a francophone one. We also collectively wrote a novel together (students were in pairs and each pair had to write a chapter). We then had a session at the Book Arts Lab, where we bound the novel into a book. We took a trip to Mystic, CT, where we saw ships similar to the one described in Moby Dick and learned how to use a sextant. This was one of the most enriching pedagogical experiences of my career, and I have the Wellesley students to thank for it.
I was very fortunate to be able to participate in Wellesley's First-year Seminar program. I used all of the resources available to me to make this class a special experience for students, which is why I chose to dedicate one page of this website to it. That section of the website also contains a reflection on how and why I teach writing, and how I adapt my writing prompts to the needs of a specific class. I invite you to look at it here. In short: this class had units that paired an anglophone novel with a francophone one. We also collectively wrote a novel together (students were in pairs and each pair had to write a chapter). We then had a session at the Book Arts Lab, where we bound the novel into a book. We took a trip to Mystic, CT, where we saw ships similar to the one described in Moby Dick and learned how to use a sextant. This was one of the most enriching pedagogical experiences of my career, and I have the Wellesley students to thank for it.
Fictions of Childhood in XIXth-century France (Wellesley College, Spring 2014; taught in French. Syllabus available here)
I designed this class in order to have students reflect on childhood and the ontological/educational debates of the period. Students read from philosophical texts (Rousseau’s Emile) and medical reports (Itard’s report on feral child Victor de l’Aveyron) before approaching children’s literature (Mme de Genlis, Comtesse de Ségur, Jules Verne) and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. The class ends on autobiographical texts about childhood (Rousseau, Stendhal, Sand). Because our study is not reduced to texts but also concentrates on books, this class includes research assignments in Special Collections, as well as a semester-long creative project that entails students writing a story, illustrating it (with the use of the library’s ipads), and binding it into a book (see one of the results here). Students use resources in the Book Arts Lab, where they are also introduced to XIXth-century printing and binding techniques.
The outline of the class's calendar is as follows:
Introduction. Thinking Childhood: Philippe Ariès and Michel Foucault
Students read a few pages from historian Ariès' Centuries of Childhood and from Foucault's Discipline and punish.
Unit 1. Teaching and Educating Children: Anthropological perspectives
Excerpts from Rousseau's Emile; Jean Itard's reports on Victor, a feral child found in Aveyron in 1801; excerpts from Jacques Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster, a text on 19th-century revolutionary pedagogue Joseph Jacotot.
Unit 2. Children's Literature and Children in Literature
17th-century French fairy tales and their 19th-century editions/illustrations; realist children's stories from the early 19th-century (Genlis, Berquin); Jules Verne's Voyage to the Center of the Earth (analysis of illustrations); excerpts from Hugo's Les Misérables, with a focus on Cosette, Gavroche, and Eponine. See teaching materials here.
Unit 3. Writers' Childhoods: Rousseau, Sand, Vallès
Excerpts from Rousseau's Confessions, Sand's Histoire de ma vie, and Vallès' The Child.
A few screenshots from our website:
I designed this class in order to have students reflect on childhood and the ontological/educational debates of the period. Students read from philosophical texts (Rousseau’s Emile) and medical reports (Itard’s report on feral child Victor de l’Aveyron) before approaching children’s literature (Mme de Genlis, Comtesse de Ségur, Jules Verne) and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. The class ends on autobiographical texts about childhood (Rousseau, Stendhal, Sand). Because our study is not reduced to texts but also concentrates on books, this class includes research assignments in Special Collections, as well as a semester-long creative project that entails students writing a story, illustrating it (with the use of the library’s ipads), and binding it into a book (see one of the results here). Students use resources in the Book Arts Lab, where they are also introduced to XIXth-century printing and binding techniques.
The outline of the class's calendar is as follows:
Introduction. Thinking Childhood: Philippe Ariès and Michel Foucault
Students read a few pages from historian Ariès' Centuries of Childhood and from Foucault's Discipline and punish.
Unit 1. Teaching and Educating Children: Anthropological perspectives
Excerpts from Rousseau's Emile; Jean Itard's reports on Victor, a feral child found in Aveyron in 1801; excerpts from Jacques Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster, a text on 19th-century revolutionary pedagogue Joseph Jacotot.
Unit 2. Children's Literature and Children in Literature
17th-century French fairy tales and their 19th-century editions/illustrations; realist children's stories from the early 19th-century (Genlis, Berquin); Jules Verne's Voyage to the Center of the Earth (analysis of illustrations); excerpts from Hugo's Les Misérables, with a focus on Cosette, Gavroche, and Eponine. See teaching materials here.
Unit 3. Writers' Childhoods: Rousseau, Sand, Vallès
Excerpts from Rousseau's Confessions, Sand's Histoire de ma vie, and Vallès' The Child.
A few screenshots from our website:
Frontpage of the class's website. On day 1, I ask students if they recognize any characters from the montage here -- students identified Cosette and Gavroche, but not Napoleon, which was a very interesting starting point for our discussion!
Frontpage of section 1 -- in this first weeks of the class, we focus on how thinkers thought of childhood in the light of the many cases of feral children during the period. In this type of webpage, I will post an image representative of the topic (which we briefly discuss together) and a series of preliminary questions for students to reflect upon.
This page's content gives a general idea of the kind of information I include in my website's subsections on each of our readings: I typically post there some powerpoints, pdfs, links to other websites; I also generally include a set of illustrations/various editions of the book, which we spend time discussing in class.
French Language, Literatures and Cultures (Wellesley College, Fall 2013). See the department's description of the class here, sample activities and students' evaluations.
This class is the first class that I taught at Wellesley College; it is a language class organized around the textbook Réseau (Schultz & Tranvouez, Pearson). In this course, students review and improve their grammar while discovering cultural or literary aspects of the French and Francophone world. Both textbook and syllabi allowed me to cover the program while immersing students in French and francophone cultures. For instance, Réseau uses a text from Balzac's Histoire des treize in order to train students to practice close reading analysis. I used the textbook extensively for that session, and then prompted students to write sentences on the model of Balzac's text. I combined their sentences and the result was a poster that I reproduced on the homepage of this website and with pedagogical explanations on the sample activities section of this website. Many thanks go to Marie-Paule Tranvouez for her help and advice during that first semester.
Intensive Elementary French (Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2012 and Spring 2013). See the department's description of the class here.
Introduction à l'analyse culturelle et littéraire (Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2012). See the department's description of the class here.
I did not design the syllabus for this class or the one mentioned above, but can send a copy and a selection of my lesson plans upon request.
Introduction à l'analyse culturelle et littéraire (Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2012). See the department's description of the class here.
I did not design the syllabus for this class or the one mentioned above, but can send a copy and a selection of my lesson plans upon request.
Intouchables? Misfits and Outsiders in French Cinema (Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2012; seminar, taught in English. (See Syllabus and students evaluations).
This class focuses on the representations of outcasts and dissident social groups in French cinema from the 1910s to today. It is organized chronologically, so as to give students an idea of the history of French Cinema in the 20th and 21st centuries; I organized it around a theme (misfits and outsiders) so as to give students a central conceptual landmark to orient themselves with. Most students were unfamiliar with film studies, and the survey-like quality of this class allowed them to get a better idea of what to look for in analyzing films, while refining their arguments and conceptual thinking around the idea of outsiders and their relations to the society that rejects them -- or that they reject. Students watched and discussed both classic French films (Renoir, Carné, Cocteau, Godard) and popular national blockbusters (Besson, popular comedies) in order to examine the role that cinema has given to misfits and outsiders.
Below is an outline of the class's calendar. Students had to watch two additional movies during the semester -- for each week, the syllabus proposed a few recommended films from the same period and on the same topic.
Week 1(sept 4th): Introduction
Week 2 (sept 11th): Crime serials and cinematic paranoïa -- Louis Feuillade, Fantômas, episode 1 (1913); Louis Feuillade, Les Vampires, episodes 1-3 (1916).
Week 3 (Sept 18th ): Isolated Spaces -- Jean Vigo, L’Atalante (1934)
Week 4 (Sept 25th): The Savage and the Civilized -- Jean Renoir, Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932)
Week 5 (October 2nd): The Criminal and the Political -- Jean Renoir, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1935)
Week 6 (October 9th): Doomed heroes (poetic realism) -- Marcel Carné, Le Quai des Brumes (1938)
Week 7 (Oct 23rd): Beasts and Atavism -- Jean Cocteau, La Belle et la bête (1946)
Week 8 (Oct 30th): Misfits and Social Peace: Murderers and Black-mailers -- Henri-Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques (1955)
Week 9 (Nov 6th): The Runaways (New wave) -- François Truffaut, Les 400 coups (1959)
Week 10 (Nov 13th): The Runaways (2) (New wave) -- Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1959)
Week 11 (Nov 20th): Loners and Star System: Belmondo/Delon -- Melville, Le Samouraï (1967)
Week 12 (Nov 27th): Clumsies, loosers and emmerdeurs (popular comedies) -- Francis Veber, La chèvre (1981)
Week 13 (Dec 4th): Female Marginalities (Cinéma du look) -- Luc Besson, Nikita (1990)
Week 14 (Dec 11th): Suburbs and Exclusion (Cinéma de banlieue) -- Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine (1995)
This class focuses on the representations of outcasts and dissident social groups in French cinema from the 1910s to today. It is organized chronologically, so as to give students an idea of the history of French Cinema in the 20th and 21st centuries; I organized it around a theme (misfits and outsiders) so as to give students a central conceptual landmark to orient themselves with. Most students were unfamiliar with film studies, and the survey-like quality of this class allowed them to get a better idea of what to look for in analyzing films, while refining their arguments and conceptual thinking around the idea of outsiders and their relations to the society that rejects them -- or that they reject. Students watched and discussed both classic French films (Renoir, Carné, Cocteau, Godard) and popular national blockbusters (Besson, popular comedies) in order to examine the role that cinema has given to misfits and outsiders.
Below is an outline of the class's calendar. Students had to watch two additional movies during the semester -- for each week, the syllabus proposed a few recommended films from the same period and on the same topic.
Week 1(sept 4th): Introduction
Week 2 (sept 11th): Crime serials and cinematic paranoïa -- Louis Feuillade, Fantômas, episode 1 (1913); Louis Feuillade, Les Vampires, episodes 1-3 (1916).
Week 3 (Sept 18th ): Isolated Spaces -- Jean Vigo, L’Atalante (1934)
Week 4 (Sept 25th): The Savage and the Civilized -- Jean Renoir, Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932)
Week 5 (October 2nd): The Criminal and the Political -- Jean Renoir, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1935)
Week 6 (October 9th): Doomed heroes (poetic realism) -- Marcel Carné, Le Quai des Brumes (1938)
Week 7 (Oct 23rd): Beasts and Atavism -- Jean Cocteau, La Belle et la bête (1946)
Week 8 (Oct 30th): Misfits and Social Peace: Murderers and Black-mailers -- Henri-Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques (1955)
Week 9 (Nov 6th): The Runaways (New wave) -- François Truffaut, Les 400 coups (1959)
Week 10 (Nov 13th): The Runaways (2) (New wave) -- Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1959)
Week 11 (Nov 20th): Loners and Star System: Belmondo/Delon -- Melville, Le Samouraï (1967)
Week 12 (Nov 27th): Clumsies, loosers and emmerdeurs (popular comedies) -- Francis Veber, La chèvre (1981)
Week 13 (Dec 4th): Female Marginalities (Cinéma du look) -- Luc Besson, Nikita (1990)
Week 14 (Dec 11th): Suburbs and Exclusion (Cinéma de banlieue) -- Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine (1995)
Childhood in French and Francophone Cultures, XXth and XXIst Centuries (Bryn Mawr College, Spring 2013; taught in French. Syllabus available here, see also evaluations).
This class explores French and francophone representations of childhood from historical and literary point of views. From Proust's Swann's Way to Sarraute's Childhood, from cinematographic adaptations of fairy tales to Queneau's Zazie dans le métro, and from children's comic books to Laye's L'Enfant noir, childhood is at the center of both personal narrative and collective debates on nationalism and colonialism/post-colonialism. This class gave students the opportunity to reflect on this paradox, and to discover French and Francophone literature and cultural productions on the subject.
Below is an outline of the calendar.
Unit 1. Fairy Tales and their Cinematographic Adaptations
Cocteau's La Belle et la bête, Ocelot's Kirikou et la sorcière/Azur et Asmar
Unit 2. Children's Literature and Nationalism
Hergé, Tintin au Congo; Goscini & Uderzo, Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques; Les Lieux de Mémoire, . "Francs et Gaulois" + articles on the Gauls.
Unit 3. Childhood and Exile: L'Enfant noir, Camara Laye (students read the whole novel)
Unit 4. Marcel Proust: Swann's Way (students read the totality of "Combray")
Unit 5. A Female Perspective on Childhood: Nathalie Sarraute's Childhood (whole novel)
Unit 6. Zazie in the Metro
Raymond Queneau's Zazie dans le Métro and Louis Malle's 1960 film adaptation
Conclusion: Childhood and Adolescence in French Cinema
Etre et Avoir (Philibert 2002) and Entre les murs (Cantet 2008).
Basic French I, Intermediate French I, Practice in Communication (Gettysburg College, Fall 2011: see Gettysburg College French Courses for description).
Practice in Communication (x2) (Gettysburg College, Spring 2012: see Gettysburg College French Courses for description)
French Heroes and Mythologies (Gettysburg College, Fall 2011; see syllabus and sample activities)
This course questions the concept of heroism and its place in the French culture and national ideal. The class explores various French heroic figures that have attained mythical status in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When appropriate, our study of these primary sources is completed by readings and discussions of theoretical texts written by prominent French thinkers and historians who reflected on the question of heroes and nationalism.
Advanced written and oral French: French Heroes and Mythologies (Brown University, Spring 2010 ; see syllabus, sample activities, and departmental evaluations)
This course was the most advanced language class in the Brown University French Studies curriculum. Materials for the class included mainly literary texts and films, but we also read journalistic and historical articles and looked at visual documents (posters, ads) and other types of videos (interviews, TV shows). In addition, we read philosophical, historical and sociological essays on the subject of heroism. I wanted this class to be both an advanced language class in which students would learn to formulate and clearly articulate their ideas, and an introductory class to French culture and French thought. I thought of it as an opportunity for students to get acquainted with major French heroic figures (D’Artagnan, Jean Valjean, Capitaine Némo, Jean Moulin, de Gaulle, etc…) and with what renowned French and Francophone thinkers wrote about them. Ultimately, the goal of the class was to encourage students to think critically about these figures, and to do so in a foreign language by articulating their arguments clearly and logically.
Teaching assistant
Advanced written and oral French II. Brown University, Fall 2008 (see sample activities)
This class was an advanced language course that met three times a week; there were 18 students in the section that I taught (enrollment was limited to that number). The course focused on class conversation and discussions. Materials included a novel (Le colonel Chabert), short stories, newspaper articles, films, and songs. As a teaching assistant, I was responsible for one section; I also participated in the organization of the course during the weekly meetings that I attended with the other instructors. I held weekly office hours, and provided one to one help for the students that needed it.
Basic French (two-semester course). Brown University, Fall 2006-Spring 2007; Fall 2007-Spring 2008 (see sample activities)
I taught this course twice, under the supervision of professors Annie Wiart and Youenn Kervennic. The class enrollment was limited to 18 students, and the group met four times a week. The chair of the course would provide a semester long calendar with an outline of the points to include in each session. Teaching assistants would then plan their class according to that general agenda. I was entirely responsible for my section in terms of teaching, grading, and creating activities for the class. I also participated in weekly meetings with the other instructors and the chair of the course. These meetings were an opportunity to share the activities that we had designed, and to make sure that all of the sections were on the same footing. In addition to this, I also held weekly office hours, and helped to organize movie screenings, visits to the library, or end of the semester events.
Basic Intensive French. Bard College, Spring 2004; Spring 2005.
This class met twice a day every day, and was taught by three instructors: professor Chilton, professor Trudel, and myself. This one semester course was designed for beginners who would wish to learn French in a very short amount of time (it is an equivalent of three semesters of college-level French). I taught this class twice a week, coordinating with the other instructors in order to plan my session according to what they had done beforehand.
French Intermediate II. Bard College, Fall 2003; Fall 2004.
This 25 students class met three times a week, and I co-taught it with Professor van Zuylen. I was in charge of one session per week. The course sought both to improve students’ proficiency and to introduce them to cultural and literary questions related to the French and Francophone worlds. In class, I had students work on both of these aspects through discussions, group work, and grammar reviews.
Invited lectures and discussions
Le théâtre des femmes. Brown University, Fall 2008.
I conducted two sessions of this course, which was taught by Professor Golopentia; the class was a seminar that met twice a week and entailed discussion sessions with students, some of which were majoring in French Studies. The class dealt with French and Francophone female dramaturges from the twentieth century; the sessions that I was responsible for were on Marie Redonnet’s Mobie-Dick. I ran the two sessions as a seminar, providing only a brief introduction at the beginning of class, after which I would have students discuss the text by raising issues and asking them to respond to them. Since the French play had many references to biblical texts and to Moby Dick, I also brought to class very short excerpts of Jonah’s story and of Melville’s text and asked students to comment on them and on the way in which they appear in Redonnet’s play.
The city as modernity, Brown University, Fall 2010
This session was a two hours class that I lead and co-taught with Dominique Coulombe, the French Studies librarian at Brown University. It was part of a semester-long course taught by professor Gluck in the History department. I prepared that session on Paris by selecting the materials that we were going to show students and by compiling a bibliography for them. The main goal of this session was to have students discover and reflect upon original materials from the Brown collections. To that end, I designed a handout with questions about each book and representation on display. I then led the discussions when we put our answers in common.
Other related responsibilities
Perspectives on Everyday Life, Graduate Mellon Workshop coordinator. Brown University, Fall 2009-Spring 2010.
I received a grant from the Graduate School at Brown to organize a graduate workshop during the academic year. There were five PhD candidates in this bi-monthly seminar, from various departments in the Humanities (Sociology, History of Art, and French Studies). My role was to build a syllabus in collaboration with the seminar’s members, and to then organize our sessions around the theoretical texts that we would discuss together. I made sure that each student would be in charge of discussions each time, and in that context I lead the discussions myself on a session on Michel de Certeau. I also invited scholars and professors from other universities, and I organized lectures that were advertised on campus and open to the public. These guest-speakers would also come in our seminar and discuss their own work with us. Finally, I organized sessions entirely dedicated to each graduate student’s work. We read and commented upon each other’s papers, chapters, or articles.
Graduate Resident of the Brown French House. Brown University, Fall 2009-Spring 2011.
From 2009 to 2011 I was the graduate coordinator of the cultural events that took place in the Brown French House. I lived in the French and Spanish building, Machado House, which allowed me to daily interact with the undergraduates who were part of the French House. My role consisted in helping them to coordinate events related to French and Francophone culture. We had a movie club committee, which organized film screenings for the students of the house. We had weekly social events which were open to the students outside of the house (see events here). Students also organized parties, concerts, and we regularly hosted events in coordination with the Alliance Française in Providence.