French Studies Minor

Discover the world through French! In our program, you will develop linguistic proficiency while engaging with francophone culture, film, literature, and linguistics, and you will develop tools to think critically, communicate confidently, and engage globally. With small classes, study abroad opportunities, and hands-on learning experiences, you’ll gain skills that open doors to careers in education, business, the arts, health, law, public service, and beyond.

Students who join our department will quickly discover that it is a very interdisciplinary place. Our faculty are deeply committed to research in fields such as film and the moving image, genocide studies, representations of the body, disability studies, gender and queer studies, migration, and more. All of our elective courses relate to one or more of our primary themes: language/linguistics; thought/philosophy; gender/sexuality; media/visual/performance studies; contemporary global/intercultural perspectives; historic global/intercultural perspectives. Students can build their language skills while developing knowledge that will easily complement their other fields of study.

Some nuts and bolts: Students must complete 4 core courses and two electives. They can transfer many courses from study abroad. We accept appropriate coursework (agreed upon with a departmental advisor before going abroad) from our Montpellier programs, the Senegal MSID program, and others. The majority of our majors do study abroad, if even just in a shorter-term summer program, and these experiences are almost always a life highlight.