French and Italian

This commitment to interdisciplinary work can be seen in the profiles of our faculty, whose training and teaching encompass psychology, anthropology, art history, continental philosophy, and analytic philosophy along with their literary expertise. It can also be seen in the variety of programs run by or in conjunction with the Department: a new Program in Literature and Philosophy; the France-Stanford Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies; the French Cultural Studies Workshop; the Philosophical Reading Group; and numerous ad hoc workshops on issues in epistemology and interdisciplinary research. This long tradition of interrogating the relationship between literature and other cultural domains gives French and Italian at Stanford a particularly sharp perspective on the importance of literary studies today. The Department of French and Italian offers students the opportunity to pursue course work at all levels in the languages, cultures, literatures, and intellectual histories of the French and Italian traditions. Whether interested in French and Francophone studies, Italian studies, or in both, students will find a broad range of courses covering language acquisition and refinement, literary history and criticism, cultural history and theory, continental philosophy, and romance linguistics.