GRADUATE FACULTY AT BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

Professors:

Grace M. Armstrong, Ph.D., Chair, Eunice Morgan Schenck 1907 Professor, Major Adviser
Thomas Hall 150, Bryn Mawr College
garmstro@brynmawr.edu

Associate Professors:

Brigitte Mahuzier, Ph.D., Directrice, Institut d'études françaises d'Avignon
Thomas Hall 146, Bryn Mawr College
bmahuzie@brynmawr.edu

Francis Higginson, Ph.D., Director of Graduate Studies
Thomas Hall 147, Bryn Mawr College
fhiggins@brynmawr.edu

 

 

 

 

 

REQUIREMENTS

General Requirements:

An undergraduate major in French or Comparative Literature, based on study in school and at least four years of college French, including advanced work in literature, with evidence of ability to present reports and carry on discussion in French, is required. Training in Latin corresponding to at least two years' study in school is advisable. Applicants should submit scores in the aptitude test of the Graduate Record Examination taken within two years of the date on which they wish to begin graduate studies at Bryn Mawr. Candidates are required to support their application by two essays written in French for an advanced undergraduate course or graduate seminar previously taken. They are strongly urged to arrange for a personal interview with the Director of Graduate Studies.

Language Requirements:

For the MA degree, one Romance language other than French, or German, or evidence of extensive training in medieval or advanced Latin. Language skills will be tested by reading examinations administered by the department. Entering students may also offer scores of the GSFLT taken within twelve months of the date on which they begin graduate work at Bryn Mawr.

Major and Allied Subjects:

Students specialize in French and Francophone literature from the Middle Ages to the present. In special cases and with the consent of the department, one of the following may be accepted as an allied subject: another literature, ancient or modern; comparative philology; European and colonial history; philosophy; history of art.

Program and Examination for the MA:

Candidates will offer six units of graduate work in French. An MA thesis on a topic usually related to the work in one of the seminars is required. The final examination consists of a four-hour written field examination (covering the wider intelluctual domain of the thesis) and a 60-90 minute oral examination, both in French.

Students are expected, except under exceptional circumstances, to avail themselves of the opportunities offered for summer study in the graduate courses at the Bryn Mawr Institut d'Études Françaises d'Avignon. They thereby fulfill two of the six units required for the Master's degree by studying at the Institut in the summer preceding or in the summer following their graduate coursework at Bryn Mawr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COURSES

Seminars and Graduate Courses:

Two graduate seminars in selected fields of French literature are given each year, so arranged that the same one will not be given in successive years. Students select their four remaining units from the Advanced Undergraduate/Graduate courses offered each year. Below are the course offerings for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009.

Fall 2008 courses

• Voix médiévales et échos modernes
• La Revolution Haitienne: Histoire et Imaginaire
• Proust

Spring 2009 courses

• Le printemps de la parole féminine: femmes écrivains des débuts
• Etudes avancées
• Advanced Topics
• L'Art du ridicule de Rabelais a Voltaire

Fall 2007 courses

• Classiques africains
• Etudes avancées: Algériennes en France
• Camus: Le parcours d'un premier

Spring 2008 courses

• Libertinage et érotisme
• Graduate Seminar
• Etudes avancées: Le mythe du Retour
• Modalité de la narration: l'oral et l'écrit

The seminars and advanced courses offered in the recent past were:

In 2006-07:

• Le printemps de la parole féminine: femmes écrivains des débuts
• Etudes avancées de civilisation: Crimes et criminalité
• L'art du ridicule de Rabelais a Voltaire
• Musique et textes
• Libertinage et érotisme au XVIIIe siècle
• La Revolution haitienne: Histoire et imaginaire
• Graduate Seminar

 

Recent alumnae/i of the Master's program are currently doctoral students at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, Yale or have completed their Ph.D. at one the above or the University of Chicago. Among them, three have won Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities, two have received Jacob Javits Fellowships, one has received a Chateaubriand Fellowship, two are tenured professors, and four occupy tenure-track positions.

Recent Master's theses have included the following subjects:

• Le représentant d'un nouvel heroïsme: étude de Gauvain dans les romans de Chrétien de Troyes (Margaret Jewett)
• Du chevalier au lion à la femme au rossignol (Amy Ogden)
• Procédés de l'ironie voltairienne dans Zadig et l'Ingénu (Cecilia Artacho)
• La correspondance de Voltaire et Dorothée de Meiningen Duchesse de Saxe-Gotha: Une amitié épistolaire 1751-1767 (Katherine Kittleman)
• L'inversion dans l'oeuvre de Michel Tournier (Marie-Pierre Pasquini)
• L'Espace autobiographique chez Marguerite Duras (Carole Netter)
• Mythologie de la terre et idéologie politique: le cas de Jean Giono et d'Aimé Césaire pendant les années trente (Leon Sachs)
• Le Thème du cheval dans la poésie de Jules Supervielle (Vincent Darbellay)
• Sacrificiel dans le temps modernes: Approches girardiennes du texte: Haute surveillance et les Bonnes de Jean Genet (Murielle Jeffroy)
• Perspectives sur l'univers: thèmes et images dansl'oeuvre romanesque de Marguerite Yourcenar (Roxanne Brocksmith)
• La femme et le féminisme dans les oeuvres de fiction de Simone de Beauvoir (Elisa Tractman)
• Nathalie Sarraute et le paradoxe du personnage (Maria Teresa Doud)
• La Démonisation de la femme chez Racine, Michelet, Baudelaire, Hébert et Condé (Grace An)
• Le Monde officiel et non officiel dans l'Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre (Edit Csatorday)
• La rêverie de l'immensité: la mer et le désert dans l'oeuvre de Camus, Chédid, Duras et Hébert (Daniela Wicke)
• La Disparition de Georges Pérec: une étude littéraire de la traduction d'un roman lipogrammatique (Elisa Mader)
• Le Chemin poétique de Jacques Réda (Lynn Anderson)
• L'Arme miraculeuse de l'imaginaire chez Daniel Maximin (Julia Napier)
• Variations sur le thème de la voix: une étude d'oralité,d'écriture et de musicalité dans L'Amour, la fantasia (Sarah Gibson)
• Corps du texte; texte du corps: La femme dans l'oeuvre autofictive de Marguerite Duras (Erin Tremblay)

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