Graduate Program Overview

The Graduate Program in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Connecticut offers M.A. and Ph.D. degrees that prepare students to become both outstanding teachers and original scholars of French and Francophone literature, thought, and culture. The M.A. program can be completed in one or two years; the Ph.D. program can typically be completed in five to six years. All courses of study combine pedagogical training and individualized programs of research, facilitated by an approximately 1:1 faculty to student ratio that enables sustained mentorship.

The program distinguishes itself through rigorous, foundation-based training in continental philosophy, literary theory, and close reading. Faculty members’ fields of specialization cover the full range of periods and genres in French and Francophone literature and culture, from premodern studies to the twenty-first century, from Arthurian romance to the postcolonial literatures of North and sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. They also conduct interdisciplinary research across area studies, philosophy and literature, postcolonial studies, gender and queer studies, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, linguistics, medical humanities, and media and visual studies.

Housed in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the program works closely with Arabic, Chinese, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish, as well as Film Studies and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies. Students in French attend graduate seminars and conduct research across these fields and languages and benefit from a close-knit community of graduate students from all over the world both in and out of the classroom. Students may also obtain Graduate Certificates in Literary Translation, Human Rights, and other fields.

The program trains students to produce innovative scholarship that aligns with the increasing demands in the field of French and Francophone Studies for interdisciplinary and cross-linguistic expertise. Current and past M.A. and Ph.D. theses include surrealism and the interplay of French and Arabic in the francophone novels of Chawki Amari; Baudelaire’s flâneur and the problem of marginality in nineteenth-century Paris; fictions of minoritarianism and the co-implication of French and Hausa in West African fiction and film; French Acadian and Welsh music, festivals, and the problem of national belonging; sexuality and aesthetics in Genet and Barnes; the relation of French and Arabic in the construction of a queer, trans-Mediterranean cultural space in the contemporary novel; and a new reading of the Description de l’Égypte as a rupture from the Enlightenment and indelible mark on French modernity.

Alumni have successfully entered graduate programs in the United States and Europe and obtained positions in universities and in public and private Connecticut schools. Our graduates have taught or are now teaching at colleges and universities that include Brown University, Tulane University, UMass Amherst, Union College, Connecticut College, and Wesleyan University.

Faculty

Mary Beth Allen. Education: Ph.D. University of Virginia. Areas of expertise: Francophone and Maghreb Studies, Early Modern Studies, Women in the French Enlightenment, Gender Studies, Modern French and North African Historiography, Race and Politics, Islam in France, Postcolonial Studies.

Raphaël Koenig. Education: Ph.D. Harvard University. Areas of expertise: 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone Literatures and Visual Cultures, Disability Studies and Medical Humanities, Judaic Studies, Diasporic Literatures, Critical Refugee Studies, Translation Theory.

Ally Ladha : Education: Ph.D. Princeton University, B.A. Yale University. Areas of Expertise: Philosophy and literature; literary theory; postcolonial studies; poetry (19th and 20th century French, francophone African, American, British); Islamic studies (pre-Islamic poetry; Quranic studies; art and aesthetics; Islamic legal and political theory; African Islam).

Florence Marsal : Education: Ph.D. UConn. Areas of expertise: French Contemporary Literature, French Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages and in the 20th and 21st century, Oulipo, Autobiography, Poetry.

Valérie Saugera. Education: Ph.D. French Linguistics. Areas of Expertise: Lexical Borrowing, French Anglicisms, Neology, Lexicography, Argotology, Language Pedagogy.

Jennifer Terni : Education: Ph.D. Duke University. Areas of expertise: 19th Century French Literature and Culture; Realisms; Popular Theatre and Popular Genres; Information and Virtuality; Material and Mass Culture; Media and Visual Culture; Cultural History.

Doctoral degree

Students must complete 48 credits (24 beyond the Master’s) including the 6 credits in literary theory and critical methodology taken and a course in research methods and scholarship and professionalization to be taken in the 3rd or 5th semester. (If a student has already completed the course in theory and methodology, he or she may take additional courses in comparative cultures and literatures). Courses involving cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives, and francophone literature are part of the curriculum. Students must also pass a proficiency exam in a foreign language other than French. The proficiency exam may be replaced by a grade of B or above in a foreign literature. For students specializing in the medieval or early modern period, a grade of B or above in an approved course in Latin is also required. All students must pass general qualifying exams and write a doctoral thesis.

Master’s Degree

Students are expected to complete 30 credits in French. M.A. students must take a 3-credit Literary Theory course and a 3-credit Methods and Approaches to Second Language Acquisition course. The rest of their plan of study must be designed in consultation with M.A. advisory committee, chosen by faculty in consultation with the student.

Master’s degrees may be earned under either of two plans, as laid out by the Graduate School and as determined by the advisory committee. Plan A requires not fewer than 18 credits of advanced coursework and not fewer than 9 additional credits of Master’s Thesis Research (GRAD 5950 or GRAD 5960), the writing of a thesis and a defense. Plan B requires not fewer than 30 credits of advanced coursework and a final examination, but no thesis.

In either case, the advisory committees may require more than the minimum number of credits. Specific characteristics of the thesis or the exam will also be determined by the advisory committee.

For further information, prospective students can reach out to Professor Hassanaly Ladha, Graduate Director, at ally.ladha@uconn.edu.