Syllabus - Pauline Goul

Waste and Pollution in French and Francophone Literature
Pauline Goul
300-level, conducted in French
Today, popular culture overflows with images of waste and pollution, in the
globalized world. In the English context, one can think of London’s smog in the
industrial revolution, of the soot covering New York in the Great Gatsby. In France,
one has to go back to the Renaissance with Rabelais’s giants, or even to the poems of
the troubadours in old occitan. After that, waste disappeared from literature until,
arguably, the nineteenth century of Baudelaire, Emile Zola, culminating in the work
of Antonin Artaud and Aimé Césaire. How can a reading of waste in literature
illuminate the way we think about pollution now? What does literature say about the
leftover, the excess? Through written analysis of these texts, students will compare
early modern waste with modern pollution, exploring the prefigurations of
environmental discourses in these authors. Ultimately, students will learn to consider
the status of waste in their own writing.
INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
This class requires that in your writing and in your contributions to class discussion
you develop and demonstrate competency in the following areas:
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comprehension of French, written and spoken
engaging in class discussion, formulate arguments and opinions
entering into an intellectual conversation, and advancing knowledge or
understanding
identifying an author’s audience, purpose, argument, and assumptions (i.e.,
critical reading)
pratice of the “commentaire composé” or “commentaire de texte”
WORKLOAD
You can expect to do about 10 hours of work per week in addition to the time you
spend in class.
REQUIREMENTS
In this course, you will do some in-class writing, some personal essays, some creative
exercises, some shorter writing assignments (approximately 3 pages each), and one
longer paper (approximately 5-7 pages). Assignments will be aimed at helping you
think about specific problems in analyzing texts and arguments.
Preparation of writing assignments:
•
Do not throw out any writing that you do for this class. You should put all of
your writing (not only copies of the finished, graded pieces but also your inclass writing and notes) into a portfolio.
•
All assignments except the in-class writing must be written on a word processor.
Assignments should be printed double-space and have ample margins
(preferably 1 1/4 inches on all sides). The print should be dark enough to
reproduce well. You must insert page numbers into your digital documents.
•
All assignments except the in-class writing must be posted on Blackboard
before the indicated deadline.
•
Keep computer disk copies and hard copies of all your assignments. It wouldn't
be a bad idea to get into the habit of backing up at 10-minute intervals any work
you do on the computer. Every semester, students lose work to faulty hard
disks—now you don’t want that to be you, do you?
•
I expect your assignments to be handed in on time, but over the course of the
semester, you may have two “reprieves” (occasions on which you hand in an
assignment late, no questions asked).
GRADES & COMMENTS
As the focus of this course is the improvement of your writing, I will not grade
individual papers, unless it amounts to less than a B, in which case I would tell you;
while I will not tell you what grade an individual paper would have received, I will be
happy to tell you more or less what your overall performance merits, during office
hours.
If you fulfil all the requirements of the course and do good work, you will receive
some form of B. If you fulfil the requirements and do excellent work, you will receive
some form of A. If you fall short in any aspect of the course, your grade will suffer
accordingly.
However, another very important tool in my assessing your work will be your oral
participation – you will assess your own performance in the course mid-semester,
grade to which I will either agree or not, and you will have the opportunity to improve
that grade for the rest of the semester.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
All the work you submit in this course must have been written for this course and not
another and must originate with you in form and content with all contributory sources
fully and specifically acknowledged. If you rely on or reproduce ideas from other
people (whether their ideas are written or spoken) you must give them credit. It is
customary to use footnotes to do this, even when you cite conversations. If you are
confused about how to cite someone else’s ideas, please contact me.
SPECIAL ACCOMODATIONS
Students who have learning disabilities and therefore require special adjustments in the
classroom or to their course requirements must first register with Student Disability
Services. Following registration and within the first days of class, Student Disability
Services contacts instructors to discuss appropriate accommodations. I will make every
effort to ensure equal access and evaluation in this course.
If you have other reasons to request special accommodations (including objections to
reading and writing about any of the assigned material), please contact me directly and
we can discuss appropriate accommodations.
COURSE PLAN
I. 1
1. 2
Introductory class,
Serres, Le Mal propre
Futurama episode, “A Big
Piece of Garbage”
Labor Day
II. 1
No class
Gargantua: pp. 36-57
Introducing Rabelais, the
French Renaissance.
II. 2
Serres, Le Mal propre
III. 1
Gargantua: The invention
of the arse-wipe
Bakthin, L’oeuvre de
François Rabelais et la
culture populaire au
Moyen-Age et sous la
Renaissance
Gargantua
Gargantua’s Humanist
Education.
Reader’s Response: What
is the place for excess in
such an education?
III. 2
III. 3
IV. 1
Gargantua: Thélème and
the Utopist Writing
IV. 2
Montaigne on waste “De
l’expérience”
Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold,
Zorach
IV. 3
V. 1
V. 2
V. 3
Zola, Emile, Germinal
(extrait)
Germinal
Zola, Au Bonheur des
Dames (extrait)
Paper #1 Analyze the role
of waste in Futurama
Questions to guide. Close
analysis. 2-3 pages
Paper #2 . Analyze the use
of waste in Rabelais. 2-3
pages.
Paper #2
In-class writing:
preparatory creative
writing work on the list.
VI. 1
VI. 2
Punctuation, Flashfiction
and Twitterature
Baudelaire, Charles
“Charogne” and other
poems from Le Spleen de
Paris
VI. 3
VII. 1
VII. 2
VII. 3
VIII. 1
VIII. 2
IX. 1
IX. 2
IX. 3
Activity: sum up
Gargantua in three tweets.
Student-led discussion.
Sade and “pollution”, La
Philosophie dans le
boudoir (extrait)
Serres, Le mal propre
Bataille, L’érotisme
(extrait)
Bataille, La part maudite
(extrait)
Montaigne, “des
cannibales”
Serres, Le mal propre
Céline, Voyage au bout de
la nuit (extrait)
Céline
Week X
Césaire, Aimé, Cahier
d’un retour au pays natal
Week XI
Césaire, Aimé, Cahier
d’un retour au pays natal
Corps perdu
Week XII
Film: Agnès Varda, Les
Glaneurs et la glaneuse
Week XIII
Baudrillard, Amérique
(extrait)
student-led discussion
In-class writing: How do
you consume?
Essay: analyze the
representation of waste in
Césaire’s Cahier.
Final Paper