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Sample Proposal: Global Cultures

College of Liberal Arts

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FR 329C French through Music

Department of French and Italian

To satisfy the Global Cultures flag, at least one-third of course grade must be based on content dealing with non-U.S communities, countries, or coherent regional groupings of countries, past or present. Please describe which non-U.S. communities will be studied in this course, and how one-third of the course grade is based on study of the group(s).

All 329C courses address non-U.S. communities in France and/or French-speaking groups throughout the world—including in the Caribbean, Africa and North America. All assignments in this course are based on content relating to these cultural groups, including discussion, papers, presentations and creative projects.

The Global Cultures flag requires that an in-depth examination of the broader cultural context and perspectives of these non-U.S. communities. Please describe readings, assignments, and activities that allow students to engage in depth with these non-U.S. communities.

Students in this course will engage with readings and music from France and the French-speaking world. In class, students will be expected to use French to discuss their engagement with these literatures and cultures. More generally, this course also encourages students to interrogate the relationship between culture and language, considering the differences and similarities characterizing various French-speaking groups. We will pay particular attention to films as highly dense expressions of cultural particularity.

The Global Cultures flag indicates that, ideally, a course will challenge students to explore the beliefs and practices of non-U.S. cultural communities in relation to their own cultural experiences so that they engage in an active process of self-reflection. Please describe some assignments or activities that give students an opportunity for this kind of reflection.

This course encourages students to consider how culture and language influence the formation of personal and collective identity. Throughout the course, students will draw on their personal experience to compare and contrast it with those of French-speaking cultures throughout the world. In particular, this course will call on students to reconsider their position as interpreters of music from different communities. How does language change one’s experience of the world? Within one linguistic group, how does geography influence one’s use of language? Having students discuss and write about these cultures in the target language also pushes them to reflect on their own culture, since so much of what they might assume is “normal” cannot be as easily expressed in French as in English.