Academic Options

The French language course is mandatory for all students.

Students are placed in an appropriate course based on their proficiency (intermediate or advanced). The language courses provide students the opportunity for in-depth study of French language and culture. Students also receive training in French academic writing and methodology, which prepares them to perform well in their other courses.

Students are required to enroll in at least one SLC seminar at Reid Hall. (Courses are subject to change based on enrollment)

• Art History
• Film Studies 
• French Literature 
• Immigration and Multiculturalism in France

All classes are be taught in French.

The remainder of students’ programs may be chosen from our Reid Hall seminars and/or outside electives, based on students’ French language level and academic interests: 

• SLC seminars (see above)
• Performing Arts: dance, music, theatre (in French)
• Visual Arts: drawing/painting, ceramics/sculpture, photography (in French)
• French University Courses: 
  • Sciences Po (French/English–Students with advanced proficiency in French  will be required to enroll in classes taught exclusively in French)
  • Sorbonne University, (in French, advanced students only)
  • University of Paris,  Diderot (in French, advanced students only)

Intensive Program in the Arts or the Social Sciences 

Intensive programs provide students with the opportunity to concentrate half of their curriculum (8 credits per semester) in their area of specialty. All intensive programs are conducted in French and certain options are open exclusively to advanced full-year students. Intensive programs must be pre-approved by the Program before students’ arrival in France.

• Filmmaking: full-year only, advanced level of French required
• Dance
• Music (classical, electronic, jazz): full-year only, advanced level of French required
• Visual Arts: drawing/painting & sculpture
• Social and Political Science (Sciences Po): advanced level of French required

The Sarah Lawrence College in Paris Program allows students to take courses at several French universities. Options available to students depend on their level of proficiency in the French language and their academic background. Students who wish to register for classes in French at Parisian universities must demonstrate a “B2” (advanced/independent) level before their arrival in Paris. This is a requirement set by the French Universities.

Partner Institutions:

• Sorbonne University (courses in French, open to advanced students only, with the exception of the Anglophone Studies Department): art history & archeology, French language/linguistics, French and comparative literature, history, musicology, philosophy
• Université Paris Cité (courses in French, open to advanced students only): arts and letters, economics, film studies, geography and planning, history, linguistics, literature, sociology, psychology
• Sciences Po (courses in English and in French): economics, international relations, law, political science. Students with advanced proficiency in French  will be required to enroll in classes taught exclusively in French

Our Paris program staff will assist students with registration and course selection at French universities. Each course is complemented by a weekly individual conference organized by the Program.

19th Century French Painting (1^st semester)
Professor: M. BAUDOUIN
This course will focus on a key period fraught with change, more specifically, artists’ assertion of their individuality in the face of institutions as well as major pictorial movements having left their mark in the history of French art during that era. The course will begin by focusing on Neoclassicism and, more specifically, on the work of Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) - official painter for the Revolution and the Empire – and will end with post-Impressionism’s major artists such as Cézanne and Van Gogh who widely contributed to the emergence of modern art at the start of the following century. The sociopolitical context will provide essential data in the understanding and appreciation of the artists and works studied in class.
 
A series of visits to Parisian museums will round off the course.
 

Paris and Modern Art (1905-1960) (2^nd semester)
Professor: M. BAUDOUIN
This course aims to study the succession of avant-garde movements born in Paris and which dominated most of the 20^th century.
 
From Fauvism, which launched the century with its free use of color, to the 1960s New Realism movement defined by artists’ reappropriation of reality, Paris attracted a number of important artists whose diverse backgrounds, origins and unique areas of research fueled an exceptionally prolific artistic activity. Cubism, prewar and postwar abstraction, Dadaism and Surrealism are just some of the artistic movements that will be studied and questioned in the course in hopes of equipping students with analytical tools to better appreciate modern and contemporary art as well as help them shape their thoughts on the different movements of artistic production in Paris over the course of the 20^th century.   
 
A series of visits to Parisian museums will round off the course.

• The Feminine/Feminist Voice in French Cinema
  Professor Broda
  The goal of this course is to determine how French cinema can be studied through a feminist perspective. Students will examine both masculine representations of female characters (predominantly patriarchal) and films directed by women, to see if the point of view is different.

  The course will begin with historical background (the French Revolution and Olympe de Gouges) and subsequently move towards a more sociological approach (the study of the 19^th century and the context of the birth of pre-feminism). The philosophical and poetic dimensions of Simone de Beauvoir’s work will also be examined.

  Focusing on the cultural history of cinema, the course will explore films, texts, manifestos, or simply representations of real-life situations of women all throughout the 20^th century. Students will also study major and/or forgotten women directors who have shaped our perspectives through this “other” cinema.

• A Cultural History of Film Genres in France
  Professor Broda
  

  The aim of this course is to explore French cinema comprehensively, through the lens of film genres. We will discuss approximately ten genres, illustrated with excerpts each week (experimental cinema, documentary, fantasy, crime thrillers, music videos…). We will approach the notion of film genres from a cultural history perspective, analysing their esthetic, economic and sociological dimensions. Studying a wide variety of works will enable students to acquire an excellent general culture and will open up numerous possibilities for personal research.

Parisian Landscapes: Fictional and Material Representations of Paris (1^st semester)
Professor: M. RÖNNBÄCK 
Since the 18^th century Paris has been the undisputed political, intellectual, and cultural center of France. Its history has been recorded in countless works of literature, art, and film and these works have in turn been inscribed in the material reality of the city. Through a combination of texts, films, and site visits around the city, this course traces the history of Paris and its representations in literature and film from the French Revolution to the mid-20^th century. From the romanticism of Victor Hugo to the surrealism of André Breton, from the catacombs to the Parc de la Villette, we will dive deep into the mythology of a city that never ceases to reinvent itself through violent conflicts and playful distortions, and yet has always remained more obsessed with its own history than perhaps any other city. As the French author Alphonse Karr once wrote: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
 
A series of excursions in Paris pertaining to the texts and themes studied in class will round off this course.
 
 
Literary Translation (2^nd semester)
Professor: M. RÖNNBÄCK 
The history of literature cannot be separated from the history of translation, a practice which goes beyond borders and helps spread written word to a wider audience. Thanks to translation, literature takes flight and travels around the world and we, readers, are invited to meet and understand the Other. The world as we know it is constantly being translated and retranslated. Yet, the link between literature and translation has often been rooted in suspicion. As they say in Italy, Traduttore tradittore: to translate is to betray. More so even than literature itself, translation suffers the limitations of time and space, of grammar and structure and there remains something untranslatable at the core of every text. Consequently, the history of translation is also the history of the text’s resistance to being translated as well as the history of how translation frees itself from literature’s constraints.
 
Translation in theory and translation in practice are both distinct and intrinsically linked. This seminar aims to study both sides of this debate as well as the relationship between the two and their link to literature and linguistics. By studying seminal texts in traductology, we will retrace the history of translation theory, which we will then use to translate together various texts from different literary genres. The course will be composed of lectures and class discussions dedicated to the study of translation theory texts, and translation workshops where students will practice translating preselected texts and discuss their choices to better understand the challenges this practice raises.

Multiculturalism in France (1^st semester)
Professor: M. MONGO-MBOUSSA

Today, questions related to immigration and identity regularly resurface in French public debate, sometimes generating considerable political and social tensions. However, multiculturalism as a social phenomenon has long been a reality in France, intrinsically linked to the country's history and its position in the world since the 19^th century. The objective of this course is to enable students to understand this reality from a historical and sociological perspective. Why does France have more diversity than most other European countries? Who are we referring to when we say that one in three French people has "immigrant ancestry"? How can we understand the experiences of the populations concerned, across different periods and origins ? To answer these questions, we will first study the evolution of European, African and Asian migrations to France from the 19^th century until the end of the colonial period. We will subsequently examine immigration since the end of the Algerian War and up to the present day, including the specific case of migrations from overseas departments to metropolitan France (BUMIDOM).

This course adopts an interdisciplinary approach, introducing students to essential academic works in this field, while also exploring literature and cinema. The broad scope of the topic will provide students with solid general knowledge and open numerous possibilities for personal research.

 
Black Paris: A Transatlantic diaspora (2^nd semester)
Professor : M. MONGO-MBOUSSA
The Black Atlantic, an essay written by the British sociologist Paul Gilroy, describes the dynamics of black diasporas stemming from the Atlantic Ocean – a place of cultural and anthropological dissemination – and undertakes a radical reversal regarding the question of origins. By focusing on the journey rather than the destination, Paul Gilroy favors movement and travel over roots and therefore diverse identities and hybridization. At the same time, the Martinican philosopher Edouard Glissant, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s writings on the Rhizome, also tackles the subject of Relation, a direct consequence of the world’s creolization.
 
This course offers an overview of black diasporas’ modernity throughout the 20^th century, using as it’s backdrop the cities of Paris and New York, laboratories for transatlantic identity quests (Africa/France/Americas - USA & the Caribbean). In light of the above, the course will be organized around two separate trends. First, we will study the period of intellectual effervescence that took place during the first decades of the 20^th century, when the question of “roots” or “source” dominated the field and was deemed necessary for the assertion of black identity. Second, we will examine the decades following World War Two, during which an increasingly plural line of thinking emerged and questioned the hybrid and mixed identities resulting from migrations (willing or forced) and transatlantic exchanges. Finally, there remains the question of current events and of 21^st century francophone and anglophone voices, who have tackled these topics with new social urgency.
 
We will carefully consider the notions of rebirth, blackness (négritude), double consciousness, creolization, hybridization, afropolitanism, the Diverse, the detour, etc. We will also study the fate of certain key figures in this movement: Dubois, Garvey, Padmore,  Price Mars, Locke,  Claude Mckay,  Césaire, Damas, Senghor, Frantz Fanon, Alioune Diop, Kwame Nkrumah, les sœurs Nardal, Suzanne Césaire, Josephine Baker, Maryse Condé, James Baldwin, Édouard Glissant, Maboula Soumahoro, Pap Ndiaye etc.

All students are required to take a French language course. The Program offers courses at both the intermediate and advanced levels; students are placed in an appropriate course based on their proficiency. The Program’s French language courses provide students the opportunity for in-depth study of French language and culture, as well as the training needed to and perform well in their other courses.

All students in the Paris Program may choose to enroll in a visual arts course. Offerings include classes in drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture. All visual arts classes are conducted in French and take place at studios in and around Paris:

• Drawing and Painting
• Sculpture
• Photography

For more information about studying the visual arts in Paris, please e-mail John O’Connor, Professor of Visual Arts.

The SLC Paris Dance Program enables students to study European dance history, take technique courses at a variety of studios in Paris, and develop their own choreographic voice.

Students may choose between the regular dance program (4 credits per semester) and the intensive dance program (8 credits per semester).

Regular Dance Program :

• Dance History
• Improvisation/Composition
• Technique classes 3 days a week

Intensive Dance Program :

• Dance History
• Improvisation/Composition
• Daily technique classes
• Special Project (to be elaborated under the guidance of the SLC Paris Dance Professor, according to students’ interests and goals)

• History of Dance in France (Semester 1)
  Professor Hamlin
  This course begins with the first codified and performed technique of French court dancing of the 16^th century. Traversing the centuries, we will study the major dance trends from Russia, Germany and the United States that have influenced dance in France, ranging from classical dancing to Music Hall and modern dance. 
  

• History of Dance in France (Semester 2)
  Professor Hamlin
  This course addresses the development of contemporary dance in France during the second half of the 20th century until the present. We will discuss the importance of transatlantic influences and exchanges, as well as the proliferation of a cross-border dance identity in Europe.Video support and attendance at live performances give students visual references for the choreographic work, and reading material supplements the lectures. 

• Improvisation/Composition 
  Professor Hamlin
  This course is based on the method taught by Alwin Nikolais, inherited from Rudolf Laban, Kurt Joos, Mary Wigman, Hanya Holm and Bessie Schönberg, founder of SLC’s dance department. The class is divided into two phases: directed group improvisation and individual composition work. Students work on specific themes each week and develop solo or group compositions to be shown at the end of each semester.

Technique Courses
Technique courses are chosen based on students’ interests, backgrounds, and schedules, under the guidance of the SLC Paris Program Dance Professor. Dance students typically enroll in classes at the following studios:

• The Studio Harmonic, Micadanses and the Centre de Danse du Marais: These three large studios offer a variety of classes from ballet and contemporary techniques to flamenco, Oriental and African dance, character dance, tai chi, yoga, etc.

For more information about the dance program in Paris, please e-mail our program director, Natalie Allen.

The SLC Paris Program offers qualified students the opportunity to pursue studies in music and musicology.

Students who wish to study music in Paris must:

• Demonstrate proficiency in French (advanced proficiency is required for intensive programs and musicology courses)
• Be proficient in “fixed do” solfege
• Familiarize themselves with basic musical terms in French (students might find the book Abrégé de la Théorie de la Musique by A. Danhauser useful)

Students should plan on enrolling for the full year as this is a requirement for most programs. Semester-only options are extremely limited .

To be eligible for credit, music programs must include several components:

• Individual instruction (instrumental performance, composition, or voice)
• Theory or History
• Performance ensemble

Depending on their level and area of study, students may enroll in courses at the following partner institutions:

• Schola Cantorum: Classical music instruction. Full-year enrollment is strongly recommended as semester-only options are very limited.

• Sorbonne University: advanced academic studies including theory and analysis, history, musicology, and ethnomusicology

• American School of Modern Music : This is an intensive and full-year only program in jazz. Students will need to complete 8 credits each semester (1/2 of the curriculum).

• ATLA: This is an intensive and full-year only program in electronic and computer-assisted music composition. Students will need to complete 8 credits each semester (1/2 of the curriculum).

Each partner institution has its own audition procedures, and prospective students should make their interests known to the SLC Paris Program Director as soon as they are admitted to the Program (if not earlier) in order to meet deadlines. Students are usually required to submit music theory tests and recordings of their work several months before departure. In addition, students should be prepared for an in-person audition in Paris. Instrumentalists and vocalists will usually be asked perform pieces (imposed and/or of their choosing). Students should also be prepared to take diagnostic tests in solfege, theory, and harmony, including sight-reading, sight-singing, dictation...

For more information about study abroad music programs, please contact John Yanelli, Director of the Music Program at Sarah Lawrence College.

Paris’ cultural history and traditions provide an ideal context for the pursuit of theatrical experimentation.

All courses are conducted in French. and open to advanced full-year students only. Options include Acting for the camera, clown techniques, improvisation, masks/Commedia dell’arte, physical training, vocal techniques… students must choose at least 2 different courses in order to earn credit.

Students may enroll in courses at the following partner institutions:

• Le Samovar: specialized in clown acting/burlesque 
• Studio Théâtre: general training in acting for both theatre and cinema 

The Sarah Lawrence Intensive Program at the Ecole Internationale de Cinéma d’Audiovisuel et de Réalisation (EICAR), an International Film and Television School in Paris, allows students to acquire intensive training in the essential aspects of making a movie. The program, open to students with advanced proficiency in French, may be taken for a full year only and carries 8 credits per semester (1/2 of the curriculum).

The study abroad Filmmaking Intensive is composed of two parts:

• Theoretical: Courses in the history of cinema and the major theories of editing. The first course provides students with a general background in the field. The study of the theory of editing offers a review of the evolution of cinematographic language, developing students’ knowledge and awareness of the use of various narrative and stylistic effects. This knowledge is then put into practice through editing software (Adobe Premiere), special effects software (After Effects), sound editing software (Pro Tools), as well as calibration software (Da Vinci Resolve), all of which are essential in the making of a short movie.

• Practical: Composed of workshops including HD camera, light (direct and indirect lighting, blonde, and redhead studio lights), sound editing (voice, noise, sound effects, etc.), scriptwriting (basics of dramaturgy, storytelling), and directing (apprehending acting, finesse of directing).

Sarah Lawrence students take classes with French students and work in groups to create 10-minute films that are completed at the end of the semester. After choosing the topic for a short film, students have weekly meetings with a tutor to progress in each stage of the project: writing the film (title, synopsis, screenplay, and note of intention), preproduction (composition of technical and artistic teams, production of documents for filming), shooting of the film, and post-production (image and sound editing, calibration, and mixing).

Sample Intensive Program

• Preparation for Production
• History of Cinema
• Editing Workshop
• Lighting Workshop
• Screenwriting Workshop

Films by Former Students

• Victoire by Anna Quinlan  
• Déambulations by Matias Sanchez-Sarmiento   
• Ecoute-moi  by Sammi Shack

Advanced students who specialize in the social sciences may apply to the intensive program at Sciences Po, France’s premier institution for the social sciences. Students may enroll in courses in economics, international relations, law, or political science. Intensive program students take one lecture course with an accompanying methodology conference, and one seminar. In addition, they receive individual guidance and support during weekly conferences with an SLC Paris professor. The program is open to students with advanced proficiency in French and may be taken for one semester or a full year and carries 8 credits per semester (1/2 of the curriculum). Due to the rigor of Sciences Po, eligible students must demonstrate advanced proficiency both in speaking and in writing.

Sample (semester) intensive program in Politics/International Relations:

• Lecture: Theory of International Relations
• Methodology Conference: Theory of International Relations
• Seminar : Communications and Politics: From the Advent of Universal Suffrage to Social Media
• Weekly conferences with a Paris Program professor