FFS 355 - Cross-Currents in French Culture

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2018/19b: Récits criminels: Crime Fictions in French. The popularity of gangster films, police procedurals, legal dramas, film noir and detective stories attests to our collective fascination with fictional narratives that concern criminality and the law. This course examines French-language literature and cinema’s longstanding obsession with crime. Through the study of texts, films, and documents inspired by true crime cases, students have the opportunity to consider major 20th and 21st-century literary movements and genres such as existentialism, surrealism, postcolonial literature and detective fiction. All the while, we analyze questions of gender, race and class in relation to crime to begin to understand how dominant ideas about criminality can help shape cultural identity. Authors may include André Gide, Albert Camus, Kamel Daoud, Marguerite Duras and Céline Sciamma. Anne Brancky.

One 2-hour period.