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Why is a Mayan food, chocolate, such a high-stake product in French-speaking countries ?

French literature and film have always reciprocally inspired one another – as early as 1897, Lumière represented the main characters of Hugo’s Les Misérables. This course will offer students the opportunity to analyze literary representations of women and their film adaptations in terms of intermediality and intertextuality. Adaptations will include: La Princesse de Clèves (La Fayette/Sauder), La Religieuse (Diderot/Rivette), La Noire de… (Sembène/Sembène), La Prisonnière/La Captive (Proust/Akerman). Students will focus on various adaptation strategies and approaches.

Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insider’s perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and belief systems are surprisingly different from your own.

“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are” –Brillat-Savarin