Linguistic Proficiency

FR 4990: French Pandemic Literature

As a freshman, I took a timely french literature course designed to examine the influence of pandemics through the ages. Being deep in the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, and social distancing, this was an online opportunity offered over the summer that I couldn’t pass up. With an interest in infectious disease and the effects of individual health on the society as a whole, I thought this would be a very relevant course. This linguistic artifact is one of the literature reviews I completed, focused on the original version of Albert Camus’s La Peste, written in 1947 about a fictional plague based on the cholera epidemic of Oran in 1849. Tragedy in general often unlocks a deeply rooted sense of universalism and collectivism among those affected, and this rang true in La Peste. This literature review and course allowed me to examine the human condition in relation to widespread health complications and crises.

FR 3020: French Short Story

Theophile Gautier was a 19th century French poet and novelist, best known for his short story La Morte Amoureuse, which tells the scandalous story of a priest falling in love with a vampire. In this short story, and many of the other works of Gautier, there is a strong emphasis on the femme fatale archetype, which reflects the gender biases across Europe at the time. Gautier’s works, and the degradation of the strong female character, were major components of the novellas in the French short story class I took. Through my literary analysis of La Morte Amoureuse in this course, I developed my French language skills in reading comprehension, literary analysis, and writing.