hello Bonjour et Bienvenue my name is Emma
Campbell and I'm a lecturer in the
French department here at Warwick you
can see me here with some of my
colleagues in the French Department on
the slide this presentation is going to
take you through some of the French
modules that you could study alongside
French language and what we sometimes
refer to as French culture modules so
I'm going to talk first about what a
culture module is and how it fits into
our programs and how many you could take
in any given year depending on which
degree course you are doing and then
I'll give you a flavor of what studying
culture modules in first year might be
like and what you might be able to do in
later years you'll be hearing from some
other tutors in the French department
and there'll also be an interactive
element so make sure you're ready for
that now the difference between French
culture modules and French language
modules is partly one of focus although
you'll be doing French culture to some
extent on your language modules you're
not going to be focusing on those topics
in nearly as much detail as you would be
on a culture module and broadening and
deepening your awareness of French
culture and the context in which French
is spoken and used will make your better
linguist as well as a better cultural
analyst here at Warwick we have a wide
range of specialism that covers most of
French studies so you could be doing
modules in politics or history or
literature visual culture philosophy
translation studies or linguistics and
we also have specialists who cover a
really broad range of things
historically right from the Middle Ages
to the very contemporary we also have
people working on lots of different
areas of the francophone world from
France and Europe through to francophone
Africa and the Caribbean one of the
distinctive features of the French
program at Warwick is its combination of
more established areas of study and
research with innovative approaches and
new ways of thinking so you could find
yourself taking a class on French
cultural perceptions of women's madness
in the nineteenth century or analyzing
the depiction of race and gender in
medical sources or studying the post
truth mass media age in French we have
specialists here who work on traditional
subjects but who do that in innovative
ways and we bring that to the modules
that we teach and to the research that
we share with our students another
distinctive feature of our programs is
that we give you the flexibility to
focus on the things that interest you
most
whether that be language and linguistics
or history politics and literature and
that means that students studying French
here take many different pathways
through their degrees and are able to
shape their studies around their
interests in other subjects
how many culture modules you can take in
a given year will depend on your degree
program French language will constitute
25 percent of your time in every year of
study on campus and if you're taking
other subjects and/or other languages
you'll have compulsory modules for those
too
so whatever credits you have left can be
used to take culture modules and that
number will be higher for single honours
students than for someone combining
French with one or two other subjects so
depending on your degree you could
choose up to five options each year in
addition to French language the idea of
our first year program is that it
prepares you for taking subjects later
on so the first year modules will focus
on essential analytical and linguistic
skills and they also familiarize you
with quite a wide range of different
topics and materials which you might be
able to take further later on in your
studies so for example the story of
modern France is a popular first year
module that familiarizes you with a
range of topics and approaches and that
gives you a really good grounding for
choosing options later on so let's hear
from some of the tutors who've taken
this module and to find out what it's
like all right so I'm Cathy Hampton and
I'm the convener of the story of modern
France module so I'm just gonna take a
couple of minutes out to talk you
through the module so
something that we've redesigned and
updated fairly recently to focus on the
question of how French nationhood and
French identity has defined itself at
key landmark moments across time so
thinking about the foundational ideas of
Frenchness seen in the medieval epic
the chanson de la la you have a picture
of this just here top right hand corner
of your screen you can see those Knights
dying for gentle France
it's an emerging idea of French
nationhood at this time and then just
take you to the other end of the module
representations of French
multiculturalism in the work of the
contemporary rap artists and cultural
commentator Abd al-Malik and you can see
Malik here underneath so we'll be
looking at his album Gibraltar came
out in 2006 but Malik continues to be a
significant cultural commentator within
France particularly on issues of
multiculturalism laïcité so if you were
to look him up you'll find all kinds of
interesting things to see there so the
module then is gives you a taste if you
like a flavour of a variety of text types and
we'll be looking at literature film
music some philosophy some politics and
some history with a series of short
texts we'll introduce you to the critical
tools you need to look at those texts
and to analyze them so we'll be
interested in introducing you to questions
of method as well as giving you a flavor
of different types of material in French
so just to say just to give you an
example we'll be discussing how you
might break apart a text how you might
analyze its language the way it
represents a certain cultural idea the
way in which it's structured the way in
which it uses sound perhaps if we're
talking about music or film all these
kinds of things we'll be doing this in
seminars in English so we'll be doing
just what I'm doing now but is you know
looking at some material in French so
you'll be analyzing French language
you'll be reading the text in French
watching the texts in French but we'll
discuss them in English and the reason
that we want to do that is to really get
to the nitty-gritty the depths of
analysis the complexity of ideas around
these texts, so just to give you an idea about
the way that might operate in the
seminar I'm going to hand you over now
to Jessica who is one of the lecturers
on the module and she's going to take
you through a typical activity from the
story of modern France seminar
I'm Jessica Wardhaugh I'm one of the
lecturers for the story of modern France
and I'm going to tell you a little bit
more about the module one of our aims in
this first year module is to explore
what it means to be French
by looking at some of the important
narratives ideas and experiences that
have shaped French identity including
revolution resistance war and
colonialism we do this by focusing not
only on the grand narratives but also on
how these are reframed in individual
stories and experiences so for example
we look at what resistance might have
meant to Charles de Gaulle but also what it
meant to a young mother fighting against
the Nazi occupiers we look at what
colonialism meant to the
governor-general of French Algeria what
it means today for the French citizens
who are the children and grandchildren
of immigrants to explore and to
understand these stories of modern
France we need to learn the language in
which they're told and by this I don't
just mean the French language but also
the language of imagery and symbolism
that brings these stories to life let's
think for a moment now about how
exploring history and symbolism can help
us understand contemporary French
politics I'd like you know how to take a
look at the slide on the story of modern
France in which we see a piece of
Parisian street art from January 2019
I'd like you to think for a moment about
which French symbols you recognize here
and you might wish to just pause the
video for a moment and jot down some
thoughts
so what did you pick up on you probably
have noticed the Tricolore the national
flag here at the top you'd have noticed
the gilet jaune the yellow vest a symbol
of protest since the riots of autumn
winter 2018 you might perhaps have
picked up on the phrygian bonnet even if
you didn't know its name this was worn
by freed slaves in antiquity and then it
was taken up by the French
revolutionaries in 1789 as a symbol of
freedom
you might also perhaps have noticed the
raised fist not obviously a specifically
French symbol but very often used in
French street protests you might perhaps
have realized that actually the whole
picture is in parallel to a 19th century
French painting which you'll see here on
the next slide this painting was
created by the artist Eugène Delacroix
to celebrate the Revolution of 1830 and
if you look at the two pictures side by
side you'll see that although there are
similarities in composition there are
also some very striking differences in
terms of dress color and background why
do you think a piece of contemporary
street art would borrow from a 19th
century painting what does this tell us
about contemporary French politics and
again you might just want to pause the
video here and jot down a few thoughts
Delacroix's paintings are actually often
reproduced and even parodied in
political imagery even in advertising
it's become part of what we call the
French cultural imaginary so to
understand contemporary French politics
it's very useful if we know how to read
these cultural references and
associations what do you think we learn
here I think we learned something about
the enduring power of certain symbols of
revolt
especially this female figure of
Liberty or Maryann we also learned
something about how revolution is
organized experienced and depicted about
the importance of taking ownership of
the streets of Paris echoing the
revolutions of the past and did those
masks in the piece of street art maybe
strike you as even more contemporary to me
they look as if the protesters are
fighting coronavirus rather than police
tear gas so perhaps we also learn
something about the malleability of
imagery across time and space this image
resonates with the past but also and in
ways that the artist could not possibly
have anticipated with our present and
with the future I'm going to hand back
to Emma Campbell now he's going to talk
to you about the options available
beyond the first year in your
intermediate and final years you'll have
a much wider range of choice in the
kinds of things you can study so you can
see a selection of those here on the
screen what that means is you can really
curate your degree in a way that helps
you to focus in on your own interests
you might want to specialize in a
particular area or subfield or you might
want to broaden the range of things that
you explore it's really up to you
we offer modules in all of the areas you
can see on the slide and if you want to
have a look at some of the current
modules that we're running you can find
those on our webpages one thing to note
though is that regardless of what you
pick in the French department and in
school more generally you'll be taught
by people who are experts in their field
we're known for research excellence both
internationally and nationally and those
people will be in the classroom with you
teaching you and bringing their research
to bear on the sorts of things that
you'll be studying I hope that's given
you a flavor of what our French program
can offer if you haven't done so already
do take a look at our language
presentation as well which is
intended to complement this one and give
you a better sense of what studying
French language here would
be like there's more information on our
website and we'll also be running a
series of live chats where you can come
and speak with staff and students in the
department
we look forward to meeting you there
merci et à bientôt.
