LEVEL II BOARD OF REGENTS ITEMS
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Curriculum Proposal
1. Overview: The French section of MCLL at UM-Missoula has had a major heavily weighted toward literature for over the last 30 years, despite national trends to offer cultural studies in French and despite the de-emphasis of literature in high school French. We propose to add a Cultural Studies Option to both the major and minor in French without the need for any additional resources. By shifting the emphasis of our core literature survey toward the cultural context in which literature is found, by establishing a general education course on French culture to attract students to our program, and by offering culture courses at the 400 level under our UG FRCH 494 Seminar rubric, we can increase our options without increasing the teaching loads of present faculty or needing new faculty. Our upper-division area studies courses already emphasize cultural phenomena through a thematic approach (changes, say, in the representations of the exotic or erotic over time in French and Francophone societies). The major would be comprised of FRCH 101-202 or its equivalent taken in high school or transferred from another institution, MCLG 113 French Cultural Identity through the Ages, and 27 upper-division credits including FRCH 301, 302, 311, 312, 313, 421, one course in French or African film, One 400 level area studies course and one 400 level culture course.
2. Need:
a) The attrition rate from students taking our language and culture courses to those taking our 400 level literature courses is quite high (along the lines of 50%). Our present curriculum, with its heavy emphasis on literature (we have a linguistics option on the books for those who do not like literature, but we have no linguist to teach those courses), does not serve those interested in French, France and the Francophone world but who have little interest in literature. A cultural studies option would fill that need.
b) Trends on this campus are toward area and regional studies as well as interdisciplinary studies. A Cultural Studies Option in French could serve as a bridge to the social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology) and philosophy in that significant contributions in those areas have been made by the French.
c) We expect that adding such an option would, over time, increase our enrollments by as much as 30%. Since Classics at UM-Missoula instituted a Classical Civilization Option within its major, its enrollments have substantially increased to the extent that there are substantially more students in the Civilization Option than in the language and literature option. The program has attracted students to beginning Latin who otherwise would not take the language. At the University of Iowa which has had a Cultural Studies Option for over 25 years, French has not seen the declines in enrollment there that have appeared nationwide.
3. Institutional and System Fit:
a) A Cultural Studies Option in French would be similar in emphasis to the extent Classical Civilization Option in Classics and the Latin American Studies minor involving Spanish. It will make it easier for students to study abroad in France to complete a major in four years because courses taken in France in language, French history, film, philosophy, art history, anthropology, sociology and psychology would meet most of our upper-division requirements.
b) Adding this program will have no effect on any present programs.
c). This program emphasizes France and the French speaking world.
d.) The institution is moving toward an internationalization of the curriculum. This requires a deep understanding of foreign cultures and of the cultural differences/ conflicts within a language. The French Cultural Studies Options would contribute significantly to interdisciplinary area studies programs, such as a Mediterranean Studies program presently in discussion stages within MCLL.
e) The only other major in French program in Montana emphasizing culture is the major at MSU-Bozeman. Up until now the French faculty at UM-Missoula has had no collaboration with the faculty at MSU-Bozeman because the emphasis of our present programs varies to great extent. With an option in Cultural Studies at UM-Missoula this could change to a more cooperative environment. There is very little duplication in the expertise among faculty at UM-Missoula and MSU-Bozeman, and this could give rise to pooling our intellectual expertise. Very few students (fewer than five in the last fifteen years) have transferred from one institution to another because of programmatic differences. We doubt adding a Cultural Studies Option at UM-Missoula would impact the program at MSU-Bozeman.
4: Program Details:
a) Cultural Studies Option
U FRCH 101-202 or equivalent 18 credits*
U MCLG 113 French Cultural Identity through the Ages 3 credits
U FRCH 301 Advanced Grammar, Composition & Conversation 3 credits
U FRCH 350 French Civilization and Culture 3 credits
U FRCH 311 French Cultural Identity through Literature I 3 credits
U FRCH 312 French Cultural Identity through Literature II 3 credits
U FRCH 313 French Cultural Identity through Literature III 3 credits
One film course, either U FRCH/MCLG 338 French Cinema or
U FRCH/MCLG 395 African Cinema 3 credits
UG FRCH 421 Advanced Composition and Stylistics 3 credits
One UG 400 level area studies course 3 credits
One UG 400 level culture course 3 credits
total credits 48 credits (27 upper-division)
Students must maintain a minimum GPA of 2.5 for all upper-division French courses. The upper-division writing requirement will be met by successfully completing of MCLG/FRCH 338 or an upper-division writing course from the approved list in the Academic Policies and Procedures section of the catalog.
* We assume that for many students in this major option, part or all of the lower-division language credits will have been completed in high school.
For the minor, it would consist of U FRCH 101-202 or equivalent 18 credits**
UMCLG 113 French Cultural Identity through the Ages 3 credits
UFRCH 301 Advanced, Grammar, Composition & Conversation 3 credits
Two courses from U FRCH 311-313 6 credits
One film course, either UFRCH/MCLG 338 or 395 3 credits
One UG 400 level culture course 3 credits
total credits 36 credits
** We assume that for many students in this minor option, that part or all of the lower- division language credits will have been completed in high school.
b) The new major and minor options in Cultural Studies would go into effect fall semester 2010 at which time MCLG 113 (a general education course) would be taught for the first time. If the increased enrollments due to the Classics Civilization Option can be a guide, we can expect our majors and minors in French to increase from approximately 60 (45 majors and 15 minors) to 80 within three to five years. At first we assume that most of the increase will be in minors, but over time the increase will weight more heavily toward majors (this is the past trend).
5. Resources:
NO ADDITIONAL RESOURCES WILL BE REQUIRED TO IMPLEMENT THIS PROGRAM. Our library holdings are adequate to initiate this new option and we can redirect part of our normal yearly allocations toward cultural acquisition in the future. Our faculty is adequate, and we are eliminating some low-enrollment courses to free our present faculty to develop new courses in culture. All of the French faculty is steeped in the cultural context that informs literature. We only need redirect our present expertise.
6. Assessment:
Success of the options will be assessed based on a number of criteria: 1) enrollments 2) linguistic and cultural acquisition based on standard assessment criteria (we envision a capstone course once the major is off the ground) 3) student satisfaction with the option based on evaluations of courses.
7. Process Leading to Submission:
Much of the process is already being developed through changes in emphasis we have made and continue to make in our literature program to make it more palatable to students. The French faculty, as a whole, has been emphasizing cultural elements in our seminars (the seminar on Surrealism, offered fall 2008, for example, studied film, the painterly arts, poetry and Freudian psychology in equal proportions; it was not, strictly, a literature course). This year we will begin emphasizing cultural context in our literature surveys. The textbooks we have been using for this course for the past six years emphasize cultural context rather than the literature itself; for us it is a matter of giving more rather than less emphasis on this context. In the present proposal, we will initiate in fall 2010 a new general education course: French Cultural Identity through the Ages to introduce for a general audience major themes and emphases that will be a large part of the Cultural Studies Option. We will change the titles of courses to reflect their present (evolved) content. We already have courses in French film and African film (experimental course offered for the second time in spring 2010), Francophone African literature using an ethnographic approach (experimental course offered Spring 2008) that will eventually become permanent courses. We have offered courses in Caribbean Studies (494 Seminar and 522 Seminar) and thematic studies (Eroticism as discourse, Travel Literature of the 17th and 18th Centuries) that rely on historical texts, journals, philosophy and critical theory as much as literature): these courses reveal a diverse world within cultural studies and literary studies. We engage the community through the Alliance Française of Missoula which brings in academic speakers (3 to 4 per year) who give talks on campus on cultural topics from French jazz to Picasso's art to the scientific aspects of filming "March of the Penguins" (these are well attended by our students). We think that accrediting agencies will favor a Cultural Studies Option because it coincides with ongoing national trends.