The USC PhD in French and Francophone Studies offers an interdisciplinary home for research across the Francophone world, connecting literature and culture with Transpacific, African and Caribbean studies, early modern studies, plant studies, media studies, gender and sexuality, migration and postcolonial studies. Housed within Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, the program offers close faculty mentorship, five years of financial support, and the intellectual resources of USC and Los Angeles to support ambitious research that crosses languages, cultures, media, and disciplines.

Contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Edwin Hill for more information.

 

 

Why French & Francophone Studies at USC?

  1. All Offers of Admission Receive Five Years of Guaranteed Funding
    All admitted students receive five years of full financial support, including tuition remission, health and dental insurance, fees, and a stipend, with three fellowship years at approximately $45K per year and two teaching years.
  2. Interdisciplinary and Comparative Studies Training
    Doctoral students can work across French, Comparative Literature, Comparative Media and Culture, Spanish and Latin American Studies, and courses in other departments to create unique research projects combining chosen fields of interest, for example:

    French Thought + Theories of Plant/Human + Early Modern Studies + Empire
    Unsettling distinctions between human, animal, and plant life in and against projects of empire

    France + Race + Media + African Studies
    Thinking through archives of perception, histories of media, and how race enters the field of vision in West African cinema and television

    French + Comparative Literature + Latin American Studies
    Adopting transatlantic and hemispheric approaches to Caribbean literature, thought, and history

    SWANA Studies + Visual Culture + Francophone Thought
    Exploring North African cinema, photography, and visual archives of anti-colonial and postcolonial memory

  3. Global Francophone Approach
    Graduate studies in the French & Francophone Studies track at USC allow students to focus on diaspora and global Francophone and Francospheric worlds. Our faculty and students focus on Africa, the Caribbean, North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, France, and their relevant diasporic histories and complex cultural contexts.
  4. Beyond French and Francophone Literature
    Your doctoral research can extend beyond French and Francophone Literature. Our faculty and students conduct research on narrative films and militant experimental documentaries, popular music and sound studies, digital media, dance and performance studies, as well as literature and other primary materials and practices. Through CSLC and the wider university, students pursue interdisciplinary coursework, mentorship, and research connections across areas such as:

    • Comparative Literature
    • Comparative Media and Culture
    • American Studies & Ethnicity
    • Gender and Sexuality Studies
    • Film and Media Studies
    • Visual Studies
    • Translation Studies
    • Digital Humanities
    • History
    • Anthropology
    • Art and Design
    • Music
    • Other humanities and social science fields

    The goal is not simply to add a second field to a French degree. The goal is to let you build the intellectual training and interdisciplinary environment your dissertation requires.

  5. Los Angeles
    Being part of the CSLC program at USC means living in a huge, multilingual, immigrant, and diasporic cultural environment with world class museums and performance venues offering an incredibly stimulating environment for intellectual and cultural work. Our location in Los Angeles, combined with our interdisciplinary and global Francophone approach, makes French and Francophone studies look less like a traditional European language department and more like a global cultural studies degree.


Who Should Apply?

French and Francophone Studies at USC is designed for students who want to pursue advanced research involving French language and Francophone materials and who are interested in asking questions that cross disciplinary boundaries. NOTE: MA degree *not* required. You do not have to already look like a traditional French PhD applicant to belong here. If the research involves French or Francophone worlds and intersects with another field, USC has a place for it. Applicants may come from backgrounds in:

French • Francophone Studies • Comparative Literature • Early Modern Studies • Caribbean Studies • Black Studies • Middle Eastern Studies • Film and Media Studies • Cultural Studies • Gender and Sexuality Studies • History • Sociology •  Musicology / Ethnomusicology • Anthropology • other related fields

If fact, your work need not fit neatly into an already existing category. What matters is having a compelling research question, strong preparation in French, and an intellectual project that can develop through doctoral study.

Build the PhD your Research Requires