This volume investigates how teaching practices can address the changing status of literature in the French classroom. Focusing on how women writing in French are changing the face of French Studies, opening the canon to not only new approaches to gender but to genre, expanding interdisciplinary studies and aiding scholars to rethink the teaching of literature, each chapter provides concrete strategies useful to a wide variety of classrooms and institutional contexts. Essays address how to bring French Studies and women’s and gender studies into the twenty-first century through intersections of autobiography, gender issues and technology; ways to introduce beginning and intermediate students to the rich diversity of women writing in French; strategies for teaching postcolonial writing and literary theory; and interdisciplinary approaches to expand our student audiences in the United States, Canada, or abroad. In short, revisiting how we teach, why we teach, and what we teach through the prism of women’s texts and lives while raising issues that affect cisgender women of the Hexagon, queer and other-gendered women, immigrants and residents of the postcolony attracts more openly diverse students. Whether new to the profession or seasoned educators, faculty will find new ideas to invigorate and diversify their pedagogical approaches.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction E. NICOLE MEYER AND JOYCE JOHNSTON PART I Exploring Identities/Exploring the Self: French Literature and Women’s Studies in the Twenty-First Century 1 Why Teach (French) (Women’s) Literature? EILENE HOFT-MARCH 2 Fractured Families: Program Growth through Innovative Teaching of French and Francophone Women's Autobiographies E. NICOLE MEYER 3 Worldwide Women Writers and the Web: Diversity and Digital Pedagogy ALISON RICE 4 "Representing the Self": Contemporary French Lit meets the Twenty-First-Century Student DAWN M. CORNELIO PART II New Beginnings, New Horizons: Women Writers in Beginning and Intermediate French Classes 5 Teaching French and Francophone Women Authors Online SAGE GOELLNER 6 Integrating Women’s Voices and Contemporary Cultural Materials through E-journaling ELIZABETH BERGLUND HALL 7 Linking Beginning and Advanced Language Learners through Images of Women JOYCE JOHNSTON 8 Building Bridges from Language to Civilization through Gisèle Pineau’s Un Papillon dans la cité NATALIE EDWARDS AND CHRISTOPHER HOGARTH PART III Colonial and Postcolonial French Women Writers: Teaching Diversity on Shifting Ground 9 Peoples, Authors, Protagonists: Teaching Francophone Women Authors through Gender Identity Themes LAURENCE M. PORTER 10 Incorporating Oceanian Women Writers into the Francophone Literature Classroom JULIA L. FRENGS 11 Making the Case for French Studies: Strategies for Teaching Gendered Multiculturalism in Contemporary French Literature REBECCA E. LÉAL 12 Teaching Algeria through the Lens of Feminism FLORINA MATU 13 Teaching Hélé Béji, Post-Colonialism, and the Arab Spring: Perspectives from Baudrillard, McClintock, Giroux ERIC TOUYA DE MARENNE PART IV Interdisciplinary Approaches to French Studies 14 Breaking Down Jail and Cross-Divisional Walls: Teaching Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialist Writers in the 21st Century French & Criminal Justice Classroom ARACELI HERNÁNDEZ-LAROCHE 15 Francophone Women Writers outside the French Classroom: An Integrated Approach to Exploring Women’s Voices SHIRA WEIDENBAUM 16 Pushing Boundaries: A Feminist Interdisciplinary Approach to Team-Teaching French and American Women's Lives during World War II COURTNEY SULLIVAN AND KERRY WYNN 17 Women Novelists and the Music of Paris ARLINE CRAVENS 18 Introducing or Expanding Queer Content in the Contemporary Francophone Classroom CJ GOMOLKA Index