Sports and the Body in Modern France

We are very excited to be offering a brand-new undergraduate French course this spring. Please consider enrolling today!

French 3650, Section 002: "Sports and the Body in Modern France"
MW: 8:15 A.M.-9:30 A.M.
3 credits

Description: Prerequisite: FREN 3015. In the lead-up to the Rio Olympics and the Moscow World Cup, this course will examine the cultural and political uses of sport in the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries, as well as some of the many ways sports have been imagined to make or unmake bodies. Through encounters with literary texts, criticism, film and other cultural materials, we will parse attempts to define what sport is and is not, to understand sport’s ethical, aesthetic, and political implications in the era of mass spectacle, and to describe how sports have participated in shaping bodies in modernity. From the athletic young girls in Proust’s À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs to the sinister games in Perec’s W, from the mythologized footballer in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s “La Mélancolie de Zidane” to Barthes’ sport “mythologies,” this course will pay close attention to how athletic gestures have been imagined to express aspects of ethnicity, gender, and class identity in motion.

Instructor: T. Wilds

Upcoming Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Conference

 

The Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Conference will be held April 6-8, 2016. The UIC is in its fourth year and provides an opportunity for students with majors or minors in French Studies, Italian Studies, Spanish/Portuguese Studies, ALL, GSD, or GLOS to to showcase their work.

In addition to traditional conference panels and presentations, this year they will be asking students to propose collaborative and discussion-based sessions. The application and abstract deadline is February 24th. More information will be made available on the UIC website z.umn.edu/2016uic. Questions may be directed to Maryanne Williams at will2381@umn.edu.

Mulhollem Cravens Leadership Scholarship

$5,000 Internship Award for CLA Students

CLA Career Services introduces the Mulhollem Cravens Leadership Scholarship. This scholarship opportunity will combine the hands-on experience of a summer internship with an internship reflection course, enhanced career coaching and alumni mentoring opportunities.

Application deadline is December 15. No need to have an internship secured by the time of application. For more information and to apply, visit cla.umn.edu/leadership-scholarship.