French and Francophone Studies
Prerequisite(s): Open to students who have completed the language requirement. Students who are continuing from French 0340 or 0400 should take French 1000 before moving on to more advanced French courses.
In FREN 1000, we will take our cue from a famous line by the revolutionary 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud (“On n’est pas sérieux, quand on a dix-sept ans”) as we immerse ourselves in dreams of youth and ask what it means to be young. Is youth a number? a phase? a mindset? And is it really true that no-one’s serious when they’re seventeen? Our investigations will lead us through a wide array of French and Francophone materials, from films, images, songs and literary texts to sociological studies, that imagine youth in all its various guises. We will be attentive to individual experiences and representations of youth in France – school and family, desire and professional ambition, class divisions and social (im)mobility – but we will also study youth as a collective phenomenon, one that is culturally and historically determined, as we ask what makes a generation and how a new generation inherits from those that have gone before. In considering the commonalities and differences between Penn students and their French and Francophone counterparts, the course will be a process of self-reflection. Likewise, it will be one of linguistic exploration, embracing the parallel between discovering a language and (re)discovering one's youth. FREN 1000 is both a springboard to the advanced-level curriculum and an excellent preparation for study abroad in a French-speaking region.