Content Objectives
This curriculum unit will build upon what French I students have previously learned about French nouns and using vocabulary to talk about oneself, daily life, and negotiating meaning in the L2. More concisely, further description will be provided in this thematic unit on how to address the questions (1) Who is part of la francophonie? What patterns do we notice in the demographics of people around the world who are native French speakers? (2) Is there a body of Francophone art that truly represents this demographic? (3) What themes may exist in these Francophone paintings that are relevant to us? (4) How do we apply the target language to discuss and describe Francophone art? (5) How can we transfer the skill of describing objects and images in the target language to describing them in our everyday lives? It will be broken into three parts which focus on different aspects of language production.
Part I: Le colonialisme au monde francophone
To open the unit, I would like students to first discuss the idea of colonialism’s impact on art in the Francophone world. While the concept of colonialism has been part of the state’s social studies curriculum for a long time, the effect former on former colonies’ traditional textiles and art has not. I would begin with a 2019 New York Times article titled France Vowed to Returned Looted Treasures. But Few Are Heading Back, which examines the restitution of indigenous art and artifacts by France to West Africa (specifically Benin, Senegal, Mali, Martinique, etc.). Any time you can generate classroom discussions based on personal opinion, middle schoolers are usually inspired to chime in, particularly if the topic at hand is some kind of injustice. In Beth C. Rubin’s article, “There’s Still Not Justice”: Youth Civic Identity Development Amid Distinct School and Community Contexts, she states, “As youth develop, they create meaning, identity, and a sense of themselves by using a variety of sources, including existing constructions of ethnicity, race, gender, and social class”.
Starting the unit with this discussion will allow for not only a short review of the geography of former French colonies, but also a chance for students to see the subject of Francophone art through the lens of the “wokeness” they are so fond of making Tik Toks and SnapChats about. Although the article is in English, it would introduce the question of how they as students of French conceptualize the idea of la francophonie, as well as offer a more holistic view of how the art of the formerly colonized parts of the Francophone world was and is often displayed and represented by mainland French museums for public consumption rather than remaining with the actual cultures that created it.
Having provided students some background on Afro-Francophone art history, I thought a good first introduction to color vocabulary in French would be the poem Poème á mon frère blanc (Poem to My White Brother)5 by Senegal’s first black president, Leopold Sedar Senghor. This poem is one I first began using during Black History Month, as its theme and authorship emphasize a French-speaking person of color. In trying to diversify the French I curriculum, it now seems counterintuitive to relegate this piece to the month of February.
The poem specifies how color is used more liberally to describe whites versus blacks (“Quand je suis ne, j’étais noir… Quand tu es ne, tu étais rose…”). Using a rainbow of example descriptions, it stresses how the defining aspect of a person of color, no matter the situation, is always their blackness, while whites in contrast can move through various shades depending on their emotional or physical state. By ending with the question, (“Alors, de nous deux, Qui est l’homme de couleur ?” ) Senghor makes a powerful statement to the reader about labeling. This idea is certainly relatable to my students and will hopefully convey a parallel to their own feelings about living in a society that still defaults to whiteness.
Written as a comparison of the lives of black people versus white people, the poem also fits the criteria for selecting materials for the World Language classroom. In the article Main Features of Choosing Authentic Materials in Foreign Language Classes, BM Barotovna specifies several principles for choosing appropriate texts, among them, “what may be difficult for students (language, content, assessment)”. Poème á mon frère blanc does utilize the imperfect and future verb tenses, which students in their first level of study would have not yet learned, but this is easily overcome by pre-teaching which verbs represent which tenses. The overall level is comprehensible with some support from a bilingual dictionary. The poem is otherwise a strong example of an authentic L2 text that can be used as a task to introduce the new color vocabulary through interpretive reading while also discussing the work’s underlying message about race relations in the Francophone world.
Part II: Comment on décrit ça en français?
Though there is a large grammatical component to this unit, it is important to be mindful of maintaining strong language acquisition pedagogy by teaching the grammar through comprehensible input. The basis of any strong curriculum unit in the World Language classroom is Stephen Krashen’s (1982) statement that, “Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language…” For that reason, the students will learn the concept of noun/adjective agreement through tasks and activities which mirror real world language use as much as possible.
Students will observe the market painting Combat de coqs6 by Haitian artist Laurent Casimir, and briefly share their observations (in English) about its archetypes and how they may relate to aspects of the country’s culture. Common themes found in Haitian market paintings that students may notice and teachers may want to emphasize include dense population, traditional dancing and celebrations, and cockfighting, all depicted in vivid hues. While the style of painting necessitates the language function of naming the color words in French and then applying them by labeling the examples by Casmir, it also presents a snapshot of a previously unknown part of la francophonie. Fairly quickly, students can use the new vocabulary to choose their favorites from a selection of the artist’s work. While the color vocabulary words themselves (which were introduced through the Senghor poem) are generally a matter of memorization, different works by Laurent Casimir or in his style can be utilized as warm-ups in subsequent classes to get students excited about describing the images and completing a realistic task in the target language.
The next stage of the unit will involve the concept noun/adjective agreement, first with colors and then moving on to other common adjectives. Besides verb conjugation, mastering noun/adjective agreement is perhaps the most important grammatical objective for not only students of French I, but for the remainder of their journey to proficiency. French teacher Marie Surridge (1995) attests that, “If you look closely at the reaction of Francophones to such mistakes [in noun/adjective agreement], you will realize that the result is often total incomprehension.” The only way to prevent this is to get students flexing their agreement muscles early, before they become fossilized in ignoring it as part of the second language’s system.
To teach the concept of changing the gender and number of the adjective (in this case, a color) to match the noun, without resorting to rote memorization of rules, I will return to Laurent Casmir’s paintings in order for students inductively identify the rules for agreement using color-coding7. He has a wealth of work well-suited to this purpose, Sans-Titre8 and Carnaval Haiti9 are both specific examples that reiterate the cultural themes discussed above.
Once students have become familiar with the rules of agreement, I will then present a painting by Senegalese modernist artist Iba N'Diaye10 titled Le Sacrifice du Mouton. As an artist trained in France and an adherent to the negritude movement, N’Diaye’s work is indicative of a need for the self-identification of blackness and a removal of European influence and perceptions in literature, art, and music. Leopold Sedar Senghor promoted the movement as “a construction of black identity based on essentialized notions of race”. His viewpoint that “L’émotion est negre, comme la raison est hellene11” asserted that black Francophone art was influenced solely by the binary of European technology and colonization versus African nature and “primitiveness”.
N’Diaye’s work felt by some members of the black Francophone to be a celebration of Africanness, and by others an example of hybridity resulting from his training in Europe combined with his biological predispositions as a black man. His painting Le Sacrifice can be interpreted by students as a depiction of native African peoples’ relationship with nature, or rather a metaphor for how the colonizer bled le mouton (the colonized population) for its beneficial resources.
Since N’Diaye typically uses people as the subjects of his paintings, students can create their own descriptions of color without becoming overwhelmed by a large amount of unfamiliar vocabulary. In addition to increasing their language proficiency by studying N’Diaye’s work, the door has been opened to a new-to-them representation of what it means to be a French speaker living in a decolonized society.
Once noun/adjective agreement using colors has been mastered, students will be provided with a list of other general adjectives to expand their vocabulary. To apply the skill using the new descriptors, students will be given a brief presentation on Alabama creole artist Andrew LaMar Hopkins12. Although I have encountered several more senior artists from the Francophone world while creating this unit, I also know that my gen-z, social media generation of students need someone a little more recent in these lessons to make them more relevant. Hopkins describes himself in his Instagram bio as, “Francophile, artist, drag queen”. I could not have found a better contemporary artist to include here if I created him myself. His work focuses on the role that la créolité (the self-identity of the Franco-African-American population) and its associated culture played in the 18th and early 19th centuries in Alabama/Louisiana.
La créolité manifested as a response to the 1930s’ la negritude discussed above. However, with time, la negritude was felt to be somewhat problematic in its oversimplification of how race impacts the creation of art. In contrast, Martinician writer Edouard Glissant13 stressed the need for a style which incorporated the history of blacks across the Francophone world, including the impact that slavery, colonization, and contact with other indigenous groups may have had on their literature and art work. La créolité celebrates the unique qualities of la francophonie which contribute to diversity, rather than Senghor’s insistence on a fixed universal civilization that preserve clear lines between racial groups.
Students will analyze Hopkin’s painting La Belle Nouvelle-Orleans Creole14 and share their observations in English before moving on to creating a description using their aforementioned new vocabulary in French. Students will observe that painting depicts white subjects as well as black ones enjoying life in antebellum Louisiana as equals (or at least, not in the roles of colonizer versus colonized), conveying the theme of hybridity as a positive concept. The painting also portrays Francophone culture’s status as an amalgamation derived from contact with whites, indigenous people, etc. This painting, being so recent in comparison to those earlier in the unit offers a more modern look at la francophonie.
It will be necessary for students to re-visit the method of color-coding to grasp how other groups of adjectives change in the feminine or plural form (for example, heureux/heureuse, animal/animaux) as the number of adjectives at their disposal grows and their descriptions and observations about Francophone art become more specific.
Part III: Qu’est-ce que je peux créer?
At this juncture in the unit, I would love to have students take a field trip focusing on Francophone art and the existence of a wealth of paintings originating from formerly French- colonized countries. Rothe (2023) states in his article about increasing diversity in specifically the novice-level World language classroom that “…not all language instructors and learners have access to nearby heritage sites or open-air museums. Therefore, they need other activities that engage learners in their language communities locally and help them explore the diverse lived experiences of the TL”. A more interpersonal experience would support my overall goal of this unit’s advocacy for the importance of representation of the heterogony of the French-speaking world.
Previously, I mentioned contemporary artist Andrew LaMar Hopkins, who both personally and artistically is a strong role model for students as a black, male, LGBTQ+ member of the Francophone community. My hope is that he or another colleague of his in the art field may be available for a “virtual trip experience” via a presentation on Zoom detailing some additional Francophone artists, the implications of la créolité found in his paintings, as well as his own family history and self-identification as a member of the Francophone community. Having a question and answer session, even a virtual one, would bring a more humanity to the idea of people of color in the Francophone space and serve to develop students’ “plausible foreign language selves”15 as learners of French.
Following the virtual Q & A session, I would like to provide the students with at least 10 different pieces of art representing different countries in la francophonie, with an option for some additional choices that students could research and analyze independently for the final project to prevent too many students from focusing on the same work. I have been able to find paintings from Haiti, Martinique16, Canada17, Senegal, New Orleans, and Algeria which will be discussed throughout the unit.
For the final activity, students would pick one of the works of art we have studied and recreate it in their own style as “word art”. In other words, students would replace the sections of color in the piece with the color word in French18. This activity connects the previous analysis of artwork students have done throughout the unit to their own second language use using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This culminating project would also serve as the final artifact in the students’ EPortfolios19, which they will build throughout the unit. When finished with the fabrication of their own “word art” design, students would then curate their own “art gallery” as a class by hanging their pictures on the walls and walking around describing their classmates’ work using noun/adjective agreement. This task would prevent students from becoming isolated to the grammar and vocabulary they are engaging with in their own project, by allowing them to think about see some other representations of la francophonie in the work of their classmates as well.
To address the presentational speaking standard, students could create a short presentation for the class as an extension activity if time at the end of the unit allows, to describe their own recreation work in French using noun/adjective agreement as well as how it may be different from the artist’s original work. Subsequently, students could independently complete a brief analysis of on of the paintings not analyzed in the unit, including a brief biography of the artist and what that individual’s painting has taught them about Francophone culture.
Overarching Understandings and Questions of the Unit
Students who have received the instruction contained in this unit will take note of the following understandings: (1) La francophonie is a diverse group with a culture that includes a rich history (2) Native French speakers of all ethnicities exist, with the largest part of the demographic being people of color (3) As learners of French, inclusivity of Francophone art history beyond the white, Eurocentric perspective is necessary (4) Themes in Franco-African and Franco-Caribbean art often mirror those that we see in that produced people of color in the Anglophone world (4) We can apply the target language to discuss and describe Francophone art and express our likes and dislikes about it (5) Describing objects and people in French is a relevant and transferable skill to describing objects and people in our daily lives
Essential Questions:
- Who is part of la francophonie?
- What patterns do we notice in the demographics of people around the world who are native French speakers?
- Are most well-recognized pieces of French art truly representative of that demographic?
- What themes may exist in Francophone paintings that are relevant to us?
- How do we apply the target language to discuss and describe Francophone art?
- How can we transfer the skill of describing objects and images in the target language to describing them in our everyday lives?
- How can we challenge our own stereotypes about Francophone culture and French speakers?
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