The main items are as follows:
Item 1) Replace the two-track major with a single track, in French Studies, that would consist of two options, Literary (or Textual) Studies and Culture Studies:

Rationale: In recent years, a single track has really become the predominant, de facto practice. Creating one track with two options will allow us: to eliminate inconsistencies (e.g. total credit number) that have existed between the two tracks, to place a strong emphasis on the linguistic component of our program, and to link this component more adequately to both the textual and the cultural components.
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Item 2) Require one additional course for graduation (increase from current 9 courses to 10 courses) with little increase in total credits (to 35 credits).

Rationale: As outlined on the required courses list [attached in the original memo], this increase by one course is warranted in order to emphasize the language core while also developing two revised options for our majors (item 1). Although some colleagues have expressed a preference not to increase the number of courses, the discussion during 1997-98 showed that we cannot accomplish the goals in language skill (particularly, creation of FRE 2110 [an additional intermediate language/reading course] and requirement of FRE 4100 [the conversation course]) without accepting such an increase. Given other details of this proposal (see item 5), the proposed increase by one course entails a minimal increase in credit hours required for the degree. The reduction of credit hours for FRE 2100 [the fourth semester grammar review] will require approval by the Faculty Council as will the creation of FRE 2110 and the revision of FRE 3610 and FRE 3620 (item 5).
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Item 3) Increase emphasis on the language component by replacing previous options with requirements (but reduced hours) in:
FRE 2100 (or proficiency), revised format (see 4 below) 3 cr (reduced from 4)
FRE 2110 (or proficiency), new course (see 4 below) 3 cr
FRE 2600 [Intro to Reading[ (or proficiency) 4 cr
FRE 4100 [Conversation] (see 4 below) 4 cr
FRE 5100 [Advanced Oral and Written Expression] 4 cr
FRE 5200 [Phonetics] 3 cr

Rationale: These language courses constitute the base on which the program builds,
and should therefore be required core courses. In particular, the new FRE 2110 would provide a step toward FRE 4100 or could be taken concurrently with 4100. While both of these courses would provide provides crucial language practice needed to move to the 5000-level language courses, FRE 4100 is frequently by-passed by students under the current requirement structure.

The reduction in credit hours corresponds to discussions held during fall-winter 1997-98. In particular, the reduction of FRE 2100 from 4 credits to 3 and the creation of the 3-credit 2110 corresponds to the need we have noted for an additional intermediate course prior to (or concurrent with) the FRE 4100 and prior to FRE 5100.
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Item 4) Continue emphasis on “four skills” (plus culture) in the revised 3-credit FRE 2100, and introduce greater emphasis on cultural component through readings in francophone texts for the 3-credit FRE 2110 and in francophone and contemporary cultural "texts" in the revised FRE 4100 (remaining at 4-credits).

Rationale: Given the growing emphasis in multicultural studies, a concerted effort to
provide students access to francophone texts at different levels of difficulty seems warranted. The current course description of FRE 4100 already includes the cultural text component; adding francophone texts to both this course and FRE 2110 would be warranted for the sake of continued development of students' access and knowledge. Adding additional sorts of "texts" to FRE 4100 (music, film, online interchange) could help expand its pedagogical scope, but this would be up to each instructor.
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Item 5) Require FRE 3610 AND FRE 3620 to be offered each year with the century-oriented literature survey REPLACED in each course with the following:
-- an advanced introduction (i.e. beyond FRE 2600) to literary textual analyses (FRE 3610) structured according to different genres in different literary periods; and
-- an introduction to sociocultural analysis (FRE 3620) of a wide array of "texts" including the literary, but also beyond the literary with the selection of texts to vary depending on the instructors' interests.

Rationale: Besides reflecting the shift of emphasis in U.S. French Studies in the United
States during the past decades away from obligatory coverage of all genres in all literary periods, this revision would allow us to emphasize different forms of reading strategies as well as reading objects and thereby enhance the cultural emphasis of the major. Given that each course will emphasize textual approaches for developing reading strategies, we feel that requiring either of these courses, but not both, is sufficient to give students the necessary bases for textual analysis. Undergraduate students who might be considering graduate work in French Studies would be encouraged to take both of these courses.

Tentative catalogue descriptions of these courses are:

FRE 3610, Introduction to Literary Textual Analysis (4 cr). Provides an overview of the major genres and periods of French and francophone literatures while focusing on strategies of reading that draw from contemporary critical approaches. Prereq: Any two of FRE 2100, 2110, and 2600.

FRE 3620, Introduction to Sociocultural Analysis (4 cr). Provides an initiation into "reading" a range of different media, verbal and visual, in French and francophone cultural "texts," ranging from poetry to prose (fictional and non-fictional), to painting, photography, architecture, and other. In this course, the instructor could also draw from contemporary approaches to textuality, historicism and cultural studies, and possibly including film and musical selections. Prereq: Any two of FRE 2100, 2110, and 2600.
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Item 6) Option of FRE 5400 [Advanced Grammar] OR FRE 6400 [Structure of French], to be offered each year (winter and fall semesters, respectively).

Rationale: Students completing the new core program will have a stronger language
base than in previous years. They may now have the option of choosing a specialized course in advanced grammar or linguistics to round out their education. Undergraduate students who might be considering graduate work in French Studies would be encouraged to take both of these courses.
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Item 7) Requirement of one four-credit civilization course of the Culture Studies option or one four-credit literature course for the Literary Studies option.

Rationale: This one-course requirement seems minimal for all majors depending on the
option selected. Students intending on pursuing graduate studies will be advised to take at least a second course.
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Item 8) Revise prerequisites in the Undergraduate catalogue [in the original memo, a detailed list of the prerequisite changes followed]

I provide the detailed text of these items both to give a sense of how our process of deliberation proceeded and to point out the two most obvious items that relate to issues of canon revision, items 4 and 5. In item 4, the emphasis is on not limiting a diverse range of texts to specific courses designated as “francophone studies,” but rather to introduce this range of texts throughout the undergraduate curriculum. In item 5, which was one of two “radical” proposals (item 7 being the other one), we wanted to break the cycle of traditional, year-long overview courses not only for the students, but also for the faculty. That is, while the literature overview course can be relatively undemanding in terms of preparation, it can also be fairly unchallenging. Instead, we wanted to make both semesters more dynamic by rotating the faculty course assignments – meaning the selection of different texts in different iterations of the two courses, depending on the instructor – and thus create a greater challenge for the students. This proposal also meant that faculty needed to abandon well-developed course syllabi and create new ones, and our continued discussion helped all faculty members to understand the need to support this particular initiative.
The detailed final proposal is available for review on my Web site (http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/NCFS/RevMajorMinor2003.html). The results of this change have been very satisfactory. Following the departmental program review (2000-2001), we took the additional step of reducing the credit hours for all courses (except the three-course introductory sequence) from 4 hours to 3 and renumbered several courses in order to create consistency across the department. Moreover, in terms of emphasis on creating alternative to the canon, the faculty members have selected texts that provide students with a broad range of approaches and texts. One example is the revised FRE 3620 course offered by Anne Duggan, entitled « Introduction à l’analyse socioculturelle: De l’absolutisme à l’esclavage » (http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/Romance/Romfaculty/ADuggan/FRE3620.html). An excerpt from the course description (see link) is : « Dans ce cours on explorera la culture, la littérature, l’histoire, et l’art français sous l’Ancien Régime à partir de quelques thèmes et institutions socio-culturels, tels que l’absolutisme; le salon et l’académie; le luxe; la colonisation et l’esclavage. Chaque section réunit des textes historiques (en français et en anglais), des extraits de textes littéraires de l’époque, et des tableaux pour étudier les rapports entre la politique, la culture, la littérature, et la peinture.» I will teach this course in Winter 2004 and have developed my own course structure and choice of texts (http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/Courses/FRE4620-2004/ FRE4620W04index.html).
Hence, the process we have followed places a strong emphasis on context, and in possible revisions for our graduate program, context offers a frame for answering a number of questions : who are our grad students, and where are they likely to teach? Are they likely to go into academe, or will they seek some employment locally, related to French? The students who seek Ph.D.s in order to enter academe usually are most successful in applying to small institutions without graduate programs, but with a strong undergraduate teaching mission. Thus, our strategy for revisions to the graduate curriculum may focus on 1) providing them with sufficient critical armature and preparation so that they can participate in the professional academic fora, and 2) providing them with a substantive background in canonical texts to facilitate course preparations for a broad range of undergraduate courses.
In this light, I want to close with reference to a text that has affected me greatly in reflecting on language and literature pedagogy and on issues related to canon revision. In his crucially important Leçon (the inaugural address to the Collège de France in 1977), Roland Barthes spoke for all of us in reflecting on his plans for preparing lessons in the Chaire de Sémiologie: “Ce que je souhaiterais pouvoir renouveler, chacune des années qu’il me sera donné d’enseigner ici, c’est la manière de présenter le cours ou le séminaire, bref de ‘tenir’ un discours sans l’imposer” (3: 813). The importance of this method is fundamental, says Barthes: “Car ce qui peut être oppressif dans un enseignement, ce n’est pas finalement le savoir ou la culture qu’il véhicule, ce sont les formes discursives à travers lesquelles on les propose” (3: 813). And Barthes describes “l’opération fondamentale de cette méthode de déprise [comme], si l’on écrit, la fragmentation, et, si l’on expose, la digression, ou, pour le dire d’un mot précieusement ambigu: l’excursion.” With this term, he designates the incessant movement of a desire, of a phantasm, varying from year to year, or semester to semester, to which “le professeur doit annuellement revenir, au moment de decider du sens de son voyage” (3: 813-814).
What I take from this exquisitely posed insight is that our own precious excursions, that is, outside the cursus (to bend the etymology to the rhetorical context), have less to do with the texts we select than what we do with them, how we re-situate them in relation to “le discours pris dans la fatalité de son pouvoir,” as Barthes describes it, “la méthode ne [pouvant] réellement porter que sur les moyens propres à déjouer, à déprendre, ou tout au moins à alleger ce pouvoir” (3: 813). As teachers, we are ourselves caught to a great extent in this “fatalité” of discourse’s power, institutionally and socio-culturally, but we can also help our students to learn the lessons that we have learned and have been trained to teach, “les moyens propres à déjouer, à déprendre, ou tout au moins à alleger ce pouvoir.” For as Barthes insists, in always accepting to undertake teaching as emanating from desire and from a phantasm, semester to semester, year to year, the professor “dévie de la place où on l’attend, qui est la place du Père, toujours mort, comme on le sait” (3: 814). By opening students to the very existence of discourse and to the possibility of combating its tentacular power by means another power, that of desire, we can fulfill our mission as teachers and might possibly make a difference in our students’ lives, and possibly even in our own
To those who might see this sentiment as going without saying, I would respond, ça va d'autant mieux en le disant. I argue for what ultimately is the only fair approach for our students, specifically, to deploy the canon -- traditional as well as revised -- to unleash their creative critical potential, their comprehension, queries, critiques, and desires, so they can eventually understand the va et vient, the deterritorialization and reterritorialization, within and through new critical textualities. In my view, without the insight of judging curricula and selecting readings in relation to particular demographic and programmatic contexts, canon reformation -- as manifested in choices of course texts, examination reading lists, and critical approaches – ceases to have the revolutionary potential it once had and simply becomes a reactive insistence on textual difference for its own sake. I judge the fervent proponents of canon revision to have rendered the singular service of enabling us henceforth to assign to our students the broadest range of texts, including those chestnuts of the established canon, all of which can assist us in locating these texts as example of “le discours pris dans la fatalité de son pouvoir.”

Work Cited
Barthes, Roland. Leçon . In Oeuvres complètes. III : 1974-1980. Paris : Seuil, 1995. 801-814.