Cultura Francesa Contemporânea / Contemporary French Culture
2as-feiras, 14.00-15.30 (C212)
4as-feiras, 14.00-15.30 (C246.B)
Prof. Chiara Nifosi
E-mail: nifosi@edu.ulisboa.pt
Hora de atendimento: 4as-feiras, 12:30-13:30, e por marcação.
Course description
This course provides a critical and literary survey of contemporary French culture through the prism of feminist movements and their entanglement with 20th- and 21st-century French political history. During the semester, we will reflect on the following questions: Is gender a valid tool of historical analysis? What are the contradictions inherent to the social progress that we have witnessed in the last decades when it comes to gender-based discrimination? How does literature address these contradictions and promote change?
During the semester, we will consider major critical works in the field of women’s and gender studies to reconstruct contemporary landscapes of feminist activism, also in their intersectionality with other forms of social oppression. Moreover, we will discuss three novels by Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel prize in 2021, Lola Lafon, and Olivia Rosenthal, to assess the contribution of literary texts to the description, validation, and/or reversal of existing cultural paradigms.
Primary texts can be purchased in translation (they are all available in English).
Course Objectives
Some of the course objectives are the following:
To acquire a better understanding of contemporary social and cultural French landscape through the lens of gender and women’s studies.
To build solid knowledge of modern and contemporary evolutions of feminist movements and female activism in France.
To develop personal strategies of reading involving the ability to put in dialogue texts arising from distant fields.
To recognize the high level of interdisciplinarity of literary texts, particularly in relation to the topic of systemic oppression and social discrimination against women.
Grading and assessment
Students will be graded based on the following class components:
Reading, attendance, and participation in class (20%). Students are asked to attend every meeting and to keep up with the readings assigned for each class. This is a discussion-based course and students are required to respectfully and actively participate in the class debate (both in the form of groupwork and plenary discussion).
Midterm exam (30%). A written exam consisting of one close reading question and one open question (1h 30 min).
Final assignment (50%). An argumentative essay on a topic chosen by the student, which will be approved after the submission of an abstract. More detailed guidelines will be provided by the instructor during the semester.
Primary texts (to be purchased by the students or loaned)
Ernaux, Annie. Les Années. Paris: Gallimard (Folio), 2010 [2008] (https://tinyurl.com/3z5p2at7)
Lafon, Lola. Nous sommes les oiseaux de la tempête qui s’annonce. Paris: Flammarion, 2011 (https://tinyurl.com/yckp9j6t).
Rosenthal, Olivia. Que font les rennes après Noël ? Paris: Gallimard (Folio), 2012 (https://tinyurl.com/4vbvhsph)
Secondary texts (short excerpts will be made available by the instructor in a shared Google Drive folder)
Beauvoir, Simone de. Le deuxième sexe. Paris, Gallimard, 1949
Berger, Anne-Emmanuelle. Le grand théâtre du genre. Identités, sexualités et féminisme en « Amérique ». Paris: Belin, 2013
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec. 1988), p. 519-531
Cixous, Hélène. “Le rire de la méduse.” L’Arc, n. 61, 1975, p. 39-54
Derrida, Jacques. L’Animal que donc je suis. Paris: Galilée, 2006
Despentes, Virginie. King Kong théorie. Paris: Grasset, 2006
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983
Pavard, Bibia, et al. Ne vous libérez pas, on s’en charge. Une histoire des féminismes de 1789 à nos jours. Paris: La Découverte, 2020.
Planté, Christine, et al. Le genre comme catégorie d'analyse. Sociologie, histoire, littérature. Paris: L'Harmattan (coll. “Histoire du féminisme”), 2003
Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London, New York: Routledge, 1993
Riot-Sarcey, Michèle. Histoire du féminisme. Paris: La Découverte, 2002
Scott, Joan. Feminism and History. Oxford, New York: OUP, 1996
Simon, Anne. Une bête entre les lignes. Essai de zoopoétique. Marseille: Éditions Wildproject, 2021
Viart, Dominique. “Histoire littéraire et littérature contemporaine.” Tangence, n. 102, 2013, p. 113–130 https://doi.org/10.7202/1022660ar
For a detailed description of the course schedule, please see "Anexos".