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Acting the Dreyfus Affair: History and Theater in the French Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Julie Fette
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Extract

As a professor of French Studies, I had often wished to develop a course in which students could mount a play in French. Its pedagogical value seemed obvious: performing in a foreign language and managing a theatrical production could help students increase their knowledge of French society while improving pronunciation and vocabulary. However, my lack of expertise in the theory and practice of theater stymied me. I had also often longed to teach a course about the Dreyfus affair. The story of a French officer falsely convicted of selling military secrets to the Germans, which tore apart French society for a decade, it contains plenteous teachable issues about France: nationalism, anti-Semitism, the birth of intellectuals, treason and raison d'état, the rise of the modern press and public opinion, the separation of church and state, Third Republic politics, military justice, Franco-German rivalries, and even handwriting analysis. But I doubted that a French department would welcome a whole course just on the Dreyfus affair.

Type
The Changing Profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 3 , May 2011 , pp. 737 - 745
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

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References

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