Courses in the UL Lafayette Canada Program 2008

Through an exploration of contemporary Canadian novels and short stories, this course offers an introduction to basic methods of literary analysis and a window into a rich, eclectic ‘national’ literature. We will study more established writers like Alice Munro (three time winner of the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s highest literary prize), Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields (winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize), cyberpunk writer William Gibson, Antonine Maillet (regarded as Acadia’s most important writer) and Michael Ondaatje (author of the English Patient) along side talented younger writers like Anne Michaels (winner of the Orange Prize), Dione Brand, Lori Lansens and David Bezmozgis.

The experience of living in a new place—a new city, a new country, or even a different neighborhood—presents the fiction writer and poet with unique opportunities for creative expression. Contemporary Canadian and American writers as such as Alice Munro, Thomas King, Dione Brande, Anne Michaels, Kate Wheeler, Richard Ford, Lorrie Moore, Jhumpa Lahiri, and others all make use of travel and geographical displacement to create vivid, original fiction and non-fiction. In this work-shop style course we’ll work in both genres to explore how writing about Quebec City, and other places to which we’ve traveled, can both help us make meaning of those experiences and serve as evocative starting places for our stories. Writing assignments will be accompanied by readings from Contemporary American, Canadian, and Francophone literature in translation particularly concerned with the power of place and displacement. Students will finish one complete short story and one travel essay by the end of the class.

This course will allow students to explore various genres of writing based on their experience and research in Quebec City. The streets, shops, and sights of Old Quebec will serve as inspiration and information for diary notes, journal entries, travel articles, and formal essays. From the view of the St. Lawrence River on Dufferin Terrance in front of the Chateau Frontenac Hotel (the landmark most closely associated with the City) to the Plains of Abraham to the artists’ booths on Rue Tresor to the Old City Gates we will walk its cobbled streets and alleys with their Old World flair earning for itself the title of a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. At the end of the semester students will collect their writings into a special notebook that will serve as a keepsake of their summer in Canada.

Through a series of exciting movies, we will examine various aspects of Quebec culture and identity. At the end of the session, students will have basic knowledge of Quebecois cinema and a critical perspective on main issues presented in the films. Films will be presented in French with English subtitles. Lectures and class discussions will be conducted in English and French. We will focus on themes such as: love and romance, Quebec humor, Quebec folklore, and contemporary social and political problems. The course will consist of a basic introduction to Quebec cinema and techniques to analyze a movie. A field trip to the ONF (Office National du Film) will complete the introduction to Quebec cinema. No previous film studies experience is necessary.

This course will help students develop their conversational skills with a focus on vocabulary and fluency as well as practice of the French sound system. At the end of this five-week program, students will have a basic knowledge of cultural life in Quebec and will be able to hold a conversation with locals on their traditional and modern culture. This course will be divided into two components: class participation and a field trip in the city museums and/or folklore associations. In groups of two or three, students will compare and contrast Quebec and Louisiana folklore. Each group will interview informants about their cultural traditions. Students will write a report on their field trip experience and interviews, then present it in class. A basic introduction to intercultural communication will be included.

A geographic study of present-day cultural, economic, and human resources with emphasis on borderland regions from New England and Canada’s Atlantic Provinces to the Great Lakes, Rocky Mountains, and Pacific Coast regions. Field trips will include modern-day landscapes related to agriculture, industrial and post-industrial economy, urban and regional planning, as well as the geography of tourism. Local tours of Quebec City’s Upper and Lower towns, La Citadelle, Hotel de Ville and Gouvernement Provincial, Chateau Frontenac, and surrounding region’s social and economic infrastructures. Optional day and weekend excursions will include breath-taking Saguenay Fjord and river cruise departing from Chicoutimi; suburban tour of Charlesbourg, Ile d’Orleans, and Chutes (Falls) Montmorency; motor trip to Canadian Shield and Laurentides (Laurentian Mountains) containing dream-like river valleys and endless forest expanses resembling Germany’s Black Forest.

Humanities 300 (Themes in Humanities – North American Culture and Society)

This course will present a regional survey of the historic linkages between human settlement and the physical environment of Canada and the United States from colonial origins to the closing of the western and northern land frontiers. Particular influence placed on French, British, and Spanish exploration and colonial as well as early national development in both countries. Field studies will emphasize historical artifacts as well as the geography of the past (historical geography). Destinations include Quebec City’s museums, examples of historic architecture, and military sites related to the French and Indian War. Day trips and weekend excursions will include rural landscapes such as line settlements and arpent lots of St. Lawrence valley (closely related to Louisiana’s bayou settlements), Loyalist settlements in Eastern Townships, and semi-wilderness settings along scenic Saguenay river valley and those within Canada’s spectacular boreal forest of nearby Laurentides (Laurentian Mountains).

This course explores the culture of North American Aboriginal Peoples from early historic contact to present. Beginning with an overview of North American culture areas, and the distribution of major linguistic groups, this course will delve more closely into cultural patterns and issues relevant to northeastern First Nation people. Readings, slides and audiovisuals will help provide students with an appreciation for the material culture, spiritual orientations, artistic expressions, and contemporary issues of Native Americans. Field trips to museums and First Nation reserves in the Quebec and Montreal areas will provide a deeper understanding of, and first hand experiences with Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples.

This course emphasizes participant observation as the core of the ethnographic enterprise. From readings and classroom demonstrations, students will learn field documentary techniques and analytical procedures. On the streets of Quebec, students will hone their ethnographic skills while observing a broad range of customary behavior associated with greetings, posture, communicative proxemics, gestures, costume, cultural style, and a wide range of expressive and symbolic display. Students will keep a field journal and augment their observations photographically. Students will learn qualitative techniques applied to the analysis of field notes and photographic images, and will present their findings in class. (Open to non-majors, no prerequisites except for Upper Division status).

Document last revised October 28, 2007
text: ©2007 by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Study Abroad · P.O. Box 43331, Lafayette LA 70504
Griffin Hall, Room 437 · Phone: 337/482-5438
E-Mail: studyabroad@louisiana.edu

Study Abroad in Canada The University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Study Abroad in Canada
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette