French 225L (Online) – Literature and Film in Translation
3 credit hours
Spring 2015
Instructor: Anne McGovern,
Associate Professor of French
Mary Baldwin College
You can call me either Dr. McG or Dr. McGovern amcgover@mbc.edu
Office : AC 401, Staunton campus
Office hours : Mondays and
Wednesdays, 12-1 pm and by appointment
Phone : 540-887-7238
Communicating with me: I check email frequently and should be able to answer you within 24 hours. I am in my office during office hours and you can telephone at that time. If a telephone call is desirable but my office hours are not convenient, we can make other arrangements with little problem.
Please feel free to contact me at any time if you have any questions about the course.
About me and why this course might interest you: I teach beginning French on campus, but most of the courses I teach now are in translation, that is, literature and culture courses in
English and based on Francophone (French-speaking) areas of the world. What I like about this course is that even though we study people who live in different parts of the French-speaking world, the issue of identity is universal: we see how we come to be who we are by our cultural and familial relations, and we can identify with others in the struggle to live our lives as freely and authentically as possible.
If you like to read novels and watch films, and if the world beyond the U.S. is of interest to you, then the content of this course might attract you. Whether we are discussing a film or a novel, we will engage in the same activity of close “reading.” Close reading is among the first things we do in preparation for judging a work. We want to analyze its parts, and to do so, we need to pay close attention to the content and the style. We collect specific evidence from the text, consider it, analyze it, and then form judgments about how the text as a whole functions. In both Discussion Board conversations and in your essays, you’d be demonstrating analysis based on close reading. Close reading is a valuable skill that is useful far beyond the reading of literature or film. It contributes to critical thinking skills whether we are reading a newspaper article or listening to the news; in fact, it is valuable in processing any kind of information we need to deal with in our complicated lives.
Course Description : We are going to read and analyze a number of novels and study several films from French-speaking areas of the world. All of these works, which represent voices from
North America (Québec). Africa (Algeria, Benin, Cameroon, and Senegal), and the Caribbean
(Guadeloupe and Martinique), have to do at least in part with the making of identity. In our discussion we will examine some of the contexts that contribute to the formation of identity, for example, interactions of colonizer and colonized, male and female, child and adult, and the resulting forces which help or hinder an individual or a people in the definition and expression of self-identity.

Prerequisites : None. No knowledge of the French language is required, since we’ll be reading in English and all the films have sub-titles.
Learning Outcomes: This course satisfies a requirement in the Common Curriculum for
Learning Outcome 1b: Themes of enduring importance (T) because we will be studying identity as it is explored in works of literature and film. Discussions will focus on the thematic development of identity and the aesthetic dimensions of the texts. By aesthetic I mean that we will take a close look not only at what the story is, but how the story is told. If you’ve studied texts (either written or film, for this course) for theme, images, metaphors, characterization, plot, etc., then the kind of things we’ll be talking about will be familiar to you. Students will develop their written communication skills through online discussion and short essays.
Course Resources:
Required Texts*:
Beti, Mongo. The Poor Christ of Bomba (Cameroon, 1956)
Condé, Maryse.
Djebar, Assia.
Hébert, Anne.
Zobel, Joseph.
Crossing the Mangrove (
Kamouraska
Black Shack Alley
Guadeloupe, 1989)
Women of Algiers in their Apartment
(Québec, 1970)
(Algeria, 1980)
(Martinique, 1950)
* All novels are available from Amazon.com. To keep costs even lower, you might try bigwords.com. Very cheap used books. Used books are fine, and you may find some of these in local libraries, particularly university libraries. If you do order books, be sure to get the English version. You won’t find much choice of edition, so get what you can find.
I’ve also put in an order at the MBC Bookstore: http://www.mbc.edu/bookstore/
Films available on You Tube or Netflix*:
Pontecorvo, Gillo, Battle of Algiers (1966) (Netflix)
Palcy, Euzhan , Black Shack Alley ( 1983) (Netflix)
Loreau, Dominique, Divine Carcasse (1998) (You Tube, Netflix)
Mambéty, Djibril Diop, Hyenas (1992) (Netflix)
* Some of these films may be on You Tube but I haven’t indicated it. That’s because you’d have to watch them in 10 minute segments or so, which might be irritating. But if it doesn’t irritate you… go for it.
Blackboard:
I’ll be posting some handouts having to do with grading rubrics, sample papers, tips and guidelines for the course, and visual images that relate to our readings.
In addition, we’ll make frequent use of the Discussion Board.
Course Requirements: In this course we will discuss and write about literature and film based on “close reading”.
1) Participation in Discussion Boards. While you are not required to answer every question I may pose, you should be actively engaged on most of the threads. Some threads will be short and others will allow for more exploration of ideas. It is perfectly ok to ask questions

(something you didn’t understand, for example) on the discussion boards. It is also ok to disagree; it’s part of how we make meaning of the work; it’s also ok to pose a thoughtful question in addition to any that I will have offered;
2) Writing short essays. You will write 4 short (3 pp.), focused papers on a work under study.
It is acceptable to use insights from the discussions when writing your essays. You will want to have an introductory paragraph including a thesis statement (your argument), body paragraphs, and a conclusion;
3) Final comparative paper. This paper is slightly longer, 5-6 pp. in length and in it you will compare two works from the course, at least one of which should be a novel or short story.
Assessment: 35% Thoughtful Participation on Discussion Boards
35% 4 Essays (3 pp. each)
30% Final Essay (5-6 pp.)
The writing you do on discussion boards is informal; do try to be clear, but you are not being graded on your formal expression. You will be graded on how frequently you participate and how thoughtful your comments and questions are. And by the way, some people make wonderfully thoughtful comments in one sentence; others may use 4-5 sentences. That depends entirely on the person. I won’t be counting your words!
Essays for this course are short (3 pp. or the final essay, 5-6 pp.) You will need to focus your paper since you won’t be able to say everything you could say. I’ll be providing some sample essays from a previous class, so that you can see an example of a successful /less successful paper. You have a lot of freedom to choose your topic within the general theme of identity; if this is too much freedom, feel free to explore some ideas with me. I’m happy to offer guidance.
Your writing of the essays should be formal: include a title, page numbers, and use standard
English usage, and standard fonts and margins. Please double space your work.
Please submit your essays to me by email. I’ve indicated a due date for papers that is anytime
Thursday of the second week of our discussion of a particular novel. I can give you a grace period of a few days, so if you need it, please have your papers due no later than the following
Sunday at 12 noon.
Deadlines and grace periods are indicated under the appropriate dates on the syllabus.
ET Policy: As a rule, I do not grant ETs. However, if you have a problem, please don’t hesitate to contact me and we’ll work something out. In any case, students should have completed the work through the first three essay assignments in order to be considered for an ET.
Honor System: The Honor Code is strictly enforced in this class. That said, let me explain what
I expect from you. This is not a research course and I don’t want you using secondary sources of any kind in order to inform your discussions or papers. Research is valuable, don’t get me wrong. But equally valuable is the understanding that comes from a close reading or study of a work. So, I do want you to be literary and film critics. This means that you take a good, close look at the work in front of you and you study what story is being told and, just as importantly, how it is being told. For example, in the novel The Poor Christ of Bomba , a 15-year old African

boy narrates; his perspective shapes the story, and if someone else had narrated, the story would not be quite the same.
Your work should be your own in the discussions and in your essays, with one exception: as mentioned above, it is perfectly acceptable to use insights from the discussions when writing your essay.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the Honor Code and its application in this course.
Plagiarism: You may understand what plagiarism is, but just in case: plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work as your own. This means that if you copy someone else’s work without documenting the source, you have committed plagiarism. It means that if you copy someone else’s idea, but use your own words and fail to document it, you have committed plagiarism.
There should be no reason in this course for you to be consulting other people’s work, since I want your personal analysis in responding to the works under study. Plagiarism is theft and it is a serious offense. It also robs you of the learning experience for which you’ve paid hard earned money.
Class Schedule
January 5-9: Film: Divine Carcasse, You Tube and discussion questions on Blackboard
January 12-16: Film: Hyenas , Netflix, discussion questions on BB
January 19-23: Continued discussion of Hyenas; The Poor Christ of Bomba , novel, discussion questions (close analysis discussion); Essay 1 on the film of your choice, Hyenas or
Divine Carcasse Due Thursday 22 January (grace period through Sunday 25, 12 noon.)
January 26-30: Continued Discussion of The Poor Christ of Bomba
February 2-6: Film: Battle of Algiers, Netflix; start reading the short story collection, Women of
Algiers in Their Apartment ( close analysis discussion); Essay 2 on The Poor
Christ of Bomba Due Thursday 5 February (grace period through Sunday 8, 12 noon.)
February 9-13: Women of Algiers, continued discussions
February 16-20: Women of Algiers continued; Film Black Shack Alley, Netflix; Essay 3 Due,
Thursday 19 February ( grace period through Sunday 22, noon.)
February 23-27: Film discussion and begin reading novel Black Shack Alley
March 2-6: Spring Break
March 9-13: Black Shack Alley ( close analysis discussion ), Essay 4 Due, Thursday 12
March (grace period through Sunday 15 March, 12 noon.)
March 16-20: Crossing the Mangrove, discussions

March 23-27: Crossing the Mangrove (close analysis discussion)
March 30-April 3: Kamouraska , discussions
April 6-10: Kamouraska (close analysis discussion)
April 13-17: Final Paper Due anytime Sunday 19 April or before. No grace period.