About The Program

French and Francophone Studies connects students to communities and ideas from around the world and across time. Students in the department take language, literature, film, and culture courses at all levels and can complete an Earlham degree with a major or minor in French and Francophone Studies. Beginning classes emphasize student interaction, communicative competence, and the link between language and culture. Upper-level courses focus on literature, film, history, and the cultural practices and perceptions of communities that use French, with an emphasis on these communities in France, the Caribbean, and Africa. Key to the curriculum is the exploration of historic and contemporary issues of cultural diversity and identity.

French and Francophone Studies aims to enable students

  • to communicate effectively in speech and in writing, and to grasp the sense of most oral and written texts.
  • to acquire strategies of reading, listening, and conducting research that lead to autonomous learning.
  • to develop strategies for analyzing literature, film, and cultural practices so as to encounter new ideas and to acquire comparative perspectives on their own cultural contexts.
  • to think critically about difference through language and culture, both in the classroom and in exchanges with speakers of French from elsewhere.
  • to consider how language shapes our way of seeing the world and produces and is produced by power relations.

Central to French and Francophone Studies are off-campus programs in France, Martinique, and Senegal offered by Earlham or the GLCA/ACM; the on-campus French House where students live and speak French together; and collaborative faculty-student research projects. Students do not need to major or minor in French and Francophone Studies to take courses in the department or to take advantage of these opportunities. In fact, because French is widely used in international business, in diplomatic contexts such as the United Nations and the European Union, in the world of arts, in the Olympic Games, and as a lingua franca among people whose countries share a colonial history, students pursuing interests that will connect them to people around the world often seek out these opportunities and courses.

“Francophone” means “French-speaking.” Although we often use the shorthand “French,” we title our curriculum “French and Francophone Studies” to underscore our emphasis on the French language as it is used around the world and on the literary, cultural, political, and historical aspects associated with the language and with the network of communities where it is spoken.