Christie McDonald, professor of romancelanguages and literatures and the chair of theFrench section, agrees that other areas are notneglected.
"Many of us are interested in feministcriticism and writing on and by women but I don'tfeel that the program [is] in any way unbalanced,"she says. "This is, in fact, an enrichment to theprogram that many other French departments do nothave."
And some of the 13 undergraduates concentratingin French--11 of whom are women--say they believethat feminist theory is not overemphasized at theexpense of others.
"I think that feminist theory is a literarytheory that's been prevalent in the 20th-centuryand that to present it within the course offeredis nothing out of the ordinary," says Elizabeth M.Remy '95, who pursued a joint concentration inmusic and French.
Remy, who took her sophomore tutorial withJardine, says it was a chronological discussion ofFrench Literature and theory, so the class diddeal with feminism at the end of the course.
"It is a major theory that has been presentedin this century and whether everybody agrees withit or not, it's worthy of being discussed andplaced [with] the other trends of the century,"Remy says.
Sarah J. Lacasse '97 agrees with Remy. "In mycourses, I've been satisfied with the variety ofliterature to which we've been exposed,"
Other professors also responded to the chargesof a narrow focus.
"I think the [critics] are absolutely in errorto say that the French faculty at Harvard[teaches] exclusively feminist study," Gaylordsays.
"I would invite such critics to look at thecurriculum and see for themselves that there is avery wide variety of subject and approaches andfocuses represented by the curriculum," saysGaylord, who says she just reviewed next year'scatalog. "I think it's very clear from the catalogthat this kind of criticism is not based onknowledge of the facts."
Berenguier agrees that the curriculum issufficiently broad.
"Even if our research is fairly oriented in thefeminist direction, our teaching is not solelyfocused on feminism and does a not only representfeminist points of view," she says. "We open thecurriculum to all different aspects of criticaland literary studies."
"We don't limit our teaching or our studentsand don't force the students to work in thatdirection [of feminism]," she says. "They shouldbe free to work with all kinds of questions andtopics. problems, areas of studies, they do nothave to do feminism,"
And Suleiman says all areas have been coveredeven though there were some vacancies.
"We teach major authors in every century," shesays. "It is also true that in the last few yearswe have had some vacancies in our [section] on thesenior level so that not all periods were coveredconstantly to the same degree."
McDonald says the section has filled vacancieswith visiting professors.
"We try very hard to balance our program interms of teaching all the centuries from medievalto the 20th century," she says.
"When we're lacking for a course or teaching ina period, we invite