Female Friendship in Francophone Novels

This course will be taught in French with films and novels in French.

This course will examine depictions of female friendship in French and Francophone novels and films. We will consider the different configurations that female friendship took over the course of the 20th century, in diverse political contexts in the Francophone world, from Algeria, France, Haiti, Mauritius and Cameroon. We will elaborate how female friendship works through the lens of three themes: virtue, desire and utopias. First, we will consider how representations of female bonds engage with or disrupt classical (and male) ideas of virtuous friendships based on equality and reciprocity, and how colonial contexts trouble these ideals. Secondly, we will trace the role of queer and heterosexual desire in making and breaking friendships. Finally, we will explore utopian visions of female friendship which imagine the future of women’s communities. This class will be strongly based on a feminist praxis of close reading, and reading “against the grain” by reading more canonical texts alongside non-canonical ones.