Gender Studies 333VR - Viragos Virgins & Visionaries

In this course, we will study the three most celebrated French female saints: Jeanne d'Arc, Thérèse de Lisieux and Bernadette de Lourdes. Their stories are similar: ordinary young women to whom extraordinary things happened, who became symbols of France and inspired a rich verbal and visual iconography. Yet they are profoundly different: Joan was a warrior, Thérèse a memoirist, Bernadette a visionary. We will study the facts of their lives, in their own words and those of others, but also the many fictions, semi-fictions, myths and legends based on those lives. We will analyze a number of films and visual images as well as literary and non-literary texts in our attempt to understand these cases of specifically female, specifically French sainthood.

Prereq: FREN-215 and one of FREN-219, FREN-225, FREN-230.