Exploring French Language in North America through Text, Image, and Culture
FRENCH 64
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
Enrollment in French 64 is based on placement. This course is for students who have completed French 50 or placed at the advanced level; students with strong prior experience in French (reading, listening, heritage, or immersion) may be admitted with the Course Head's permission. Per department policy, students may take only one 60-level course. French 64 reads Francophone North America by following its waterways, and it is the last course in the language sequence before literature courses. The semester starts on the Mississippi (misi-ziibi) with maps and poetry, travels to the Franco-American communities of New England along the Charles (Quinobequin), turns to Indigenous literature and Turtle Island, and ends on the St. Lawrence (Magtogoek, Kahnawáˀkye) with debates over language rights. Each unit adds a step of the close reading that literature courses expect, from situating a text and interpreting a word or tense choice to naming how a passage produces meaning and defending a reading with textual evidence. Students work with poetry, fiction, film, music, historical maps, and archival documents, and hear from guest speakers from Francophone communities across the continent. They also hold recorded conversations in French with partners at Université Laval. Writing runs as a multi-stage research project: three papers, each begun in supervised class sessions, are consolidated into a final research paper and presented in a five-minute podcast episode. Grammar work targets advanced structures for nuanced argument, including the sequence of tenses, modal hedging, and cohesion across longer texts.
Course Notes
Conducted in French. Students must complete an online information survey on Canvas before registering for the course. May not be taken Pass/Fail, but may be taken Sat/Unsat by GSAS students.
Recommended Prep
French 50; 751–780 on the Harvard Placement Exam or the SAT II French exam; or permission of Course Head. Students may take only one 60-level course.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
