| Unit name | France during the Second World War: culture, politics and society |
|---|---|
| Unit code | FREN20070 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Faucher |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
n/a |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
n/a |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
n/a |
| School/department | Department of French |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Why is this unit important?
This unit encourages you to engage critically with key concepts and issues in the political, military, social and cultural history of the Second World War and its aftermaths in global France. It considers the diversity and complexity of French experiences in the metropole, the colonies and beyond. It enables you to select, think about, and assess primary sources, in addition to reflecting on how to engage public audiences with complex historical moments. The unit facilitates your acquisition of teamwork skills (culminating in a hypothetical exhibition proposal to a museum) and the development of your communication skills to help you formulate and articulate historical arguments both orally, and in written form. This is a unit that encourages students to use varied skills and approaches to study a fascinating and complicated period of French history.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
This unit engages with important debates in French history, culture and society, some of which you will have already encountered in your first year. Building on this knowledge and adding to your skills as students of French culture, it will encourage you to think about how to articulate complex concepts in public-facing ways. You will work with the latest research on the Second World War as well as adopt important approaches and methods such as transnationalism. Both independently and within a group, you will develop your research and communication skills while gaining an insight into public engagement. At the same time, you should feel confident engaging in discussion with other scholars and learning to make productive, ethical use of critical literature.
An overview of content
This unit introduces you to the history of France during the Second World War and examines the political, military, social and cultural context in which French citizens, and French colonial subjects, lived in the métropole, the Empire and beyond (e.g. in Britain, the Americas and Asia).
From the unit, you will gain a concrete understanding of the multiplicity of French identity, and what Frenchness meant during a time of turmoil. As metropolitan France and some parts of imperial France fell under the control of the Vichy administration and the Nazi regime, some French citizens continued to fight for specific ideas of ‘Free France’ through various means. More so than for any other European resistance movement, the French external resistance had a robust governmental apparatus that operated within and beyond its capital cities (London, Algiers and Brazzaville) and opposed both the Axis powers and the French collaborationist government. Within this context, the unit will encourage you to consider the transnational geography of France during this period. You will also examine the extent to which the Resistance can be understood not only through military activities, but also through literary production, radio broadcasts, and the arts.
How will students, personally, be different as a result of the unit?
The debates considered on this unit are of wide relevance in European and worldwide culture. The analytical and research skills acquired during the unit will help you for the remainder of your degree and beyond, including in the final-year optional dissertation. The unit encourages you to think about transferable concepts and knowledge (between academic research and the museum world in particular) which will enable you to engage critically with related debates in academic and non-academic contexts. You will be able to showcase your independent research orally and in writing, and also through collaborative projects, enhancing your team-working skills as well as your ability to demonstrate the relevance of your studies in professional contexts.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
The unit will be taught through seminars consisting of a combination of lectures (50 % of which will be delivered in French), small-group and plenary discussions of set texts, and online research activities.
Sessions in the classroom will provide you with knowledge and solid theoretical and historical grounding in the topic. This will be complemented by set texts and optional secondary reading.
You will learn by engaging in lectures, seminar discussions, and reading of primary and secondary sources. In addition, you will be able to directly access primary sources through an archive visit; this visit will give you the opportunity to develop, with a small team of other students, your own interests and lines of enquiry. Group discussion and team projects will allow you to further refine your understanding of the unit’s key topics.
We will work regularly on primary source analysis and essay plans to prepare you for the summative tasks. Oral feedback will be given during seminar discussions. We will also dedicate in-class time to developing your collaborative group projects. Following the group work undertaken in the special collection reading room, you will submit a short historical analysis of the sources selected in the archives. You will receive feedback on this formative assessment in class. This will constitute preparatory work for the exhibition proposal (summative) assessment.
There will also be dedicated time to work on key essay writing skills and we will work on formative essays in small groups during the seminars.
Tasks which help you learn and prepare you for summative tasks (formative):
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative)
When assessment does not go to plan
When required by the Board of Examiners, you will normally complete reassessments in the same formats as those outlined above. However, the Board reserves the right to modify the form or number of reassessments required. Details of reassessments are normally confirmed by the School shortly after the notification of your results at the end of the academic year.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. FREN20070).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the University Workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The assessment methods listed in this unit specification are designed to enable students to demonstrate the named learning outcomes (LOs). Where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, schools will make reasonable adjustments to support a student to demonstrate the LO by an alternative method or with additional resources.
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. For appropriate assessments, if you have self-certificated your absence, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (for assessments at the end of TB1 and TB2 this is usually in the next re-assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any exceptional circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
