As the science that considers the origin and evolution of the earth, Geology provides students with an understanding of what is known about the earth and how we know it, how the earth “works” and why we think it behaves as it does. In particular this course focuses upon the earth as an evolving and dynamic system where change is driven by energy generated within the earth.

The global ocean is one of the defining features of our planet’s surface.  It regulates weather patterns, sculpts the coasts of the continents, and contains records of the past 200 million years of earth's climate in sediment on the seafloor.  In this course we will develop an understanding of the global marine system through study of its interconnected geological, chemical, physical, and biological processes.

Independent Reading Courses. Full course.

Admission with consent of the instructor required. Fall and spring semesters.

The eighteenth century in Europe was the high point of both personal letter-writing and novels presented as correspondence between real people, epistolary novels. At the same time that, thanks to improvements in postal service, a new "Republic of Letters" took shape through the exchange of real letters, readers thrilled to the passions of the heroes and heroines of epistolary novels.

The course provides a forum for seniors for the practice of spoken French at the advanced level with native speakers. Students will prepare and deliver presentations; practice interviewing techniques; and learn and practice using technical vocabulary from a variety of disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The choice of short readings and vocabulary sets will vary each time the course is offered and will reflect the interests of the students enrolled.

Requisite: Senior status.  Open only to French majors.  Spring semester.  The Department.

(Offered as ASLC 338 and FREN 369.)  In 1867, in the waning days of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Japanese authorities dispatched several geisha to the Paris World Exposition to represent a country few Europeans knew anything about. Since these inauspicious beginnings, the culture of each country has come to have a decisive hold on the imagination of the other across a wide array of fields. By the time Jean-Paul Sartre arrived in Tokyo almost a century later, the cultural ties were so extensive that the French philosopher was greeted by a media frenzy normally reserved for celebrities.

(Offered as FAMS 321 and FREN 361) A study of some of the greatest French New Wave (1959-1963) films, as well as earlier French films that influenced the New Wave. From the New Wave we shall view Truffaut’s The 400 Blows; Godard’s Breathless, My Life to Live, and Contempt; Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year at Marienbad by Resnais.

A study of great works of French literature. Readings may include: Prévost's Manon Lescaut, Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Zola's The Beast Within, Huysmans' Against Nature, Proust's Swann's Way, and Camus' The Stranger. Conducted in English. 

Spring semester. Professor de la Carrera.

The twentieth century was a century of migrations. Many writers and poets experienced exile, whether displaced by the furious violence of history, forced out of their country by an unbearable political situation, or simply led by their literary ambition. For many, the host country becomes a problematic permanent residency; for others, it is only a passage before an often painful return to the native land.