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  • Modern French Literary Studies in the Classroom: Pedagogical Strategies
  • Catherine O’Brien
Modern French Literary Studies in the Classroom: Pedagogical Strategies. Edited by Charles J. Stivale . New York, Modern Language Association of America, 2004. xi + 270 pp. Hb $40.00 Pb $22.00.

At the centre of this publication is the statement that 'teaching matters'. On the assumption that his readership will concur with this view, Charles J. Stivale has brought together a collection of twenty essays that offer practical ideas for ensuring that the study of French literature is a fruitful exchange between staff and students. Originating from papers given at conferences in the United States (beginning at the Nineteenth-Century French Studies Colloquium in 1998), the volume addresses some problems that are local rather than international, but concentrates none the less on issues that are pertinent to French departments on both sides of the Atlantic: decreasing enrolment numbers; tensions between institutional constraints and curriculum changes; and a student cohort with diverse needs and expectations. Faced with these challenges, the contributors employ various tactics to awaken students' creative engagement, including technological advances and simulation techniques. The first articles reject the traditional split between language proficiency and literature courses and propose suitable texts to bridge the gap: Verne's Le Tour du monde en 80 jours serves as an inspiration for communicative activities focusing on travel, and the study of linguistics sheds light on the use of accent and dialect in novels by Balzac and Zola. There are concrete suggestions for how to read Mallarmé's Un coup de dés 'dans tous les sens', and more playful twists on standard assignments (re-read the text in five different locations, for example) and free-association exercises are intended to spark students' imagination. Attention then turns to innovative methods for offering literature courses to French specialists and Cultural Studies undergraduates, often in the same classroom and with a shift away from the target language. There are reports on the function of group-centred research projects that allow participants to capitalize on their strengths and find new points of comparison; advice on ways to teach Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris to students with different [End Page 560] levels of linguistic ability; and proposals for exploring Bruno's Le Tour de la France par deux enfants alongside current web materials, leading to discussions on racism as well as geography. In the third section, canonicity is called into question in chapters that deal with literary theory, the 'queer nineteenth century', the impact of francophone and postcolonial studies on the nineteenth-century literary syllabus, and interdisciplinary approaches that read literary and visual texts together. The final contributions focus on ways to cope with institutional demands such as the obligation to teach undergraduate and graduate students in the same seminar or the marginalization of language teaching in an era of globalization. Although some of the proposals are common sense, the book is born of a desire to disseminate those pedagogical strategies that colleagues do not always have the time to share with each other. Despite occasions when openness (sometimes highlighting failure as well as success) turns into overly detailed anecdote, it is the generosity of spirit with which this volume was undertaken that is particularly heartening.

Catherine O’Brien
Kingston University
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