There are 220 million French speakers in the world today, the majority of them outside Europe, and that number is set to rise to over 700 million by 2050. French is one of the most important languages for international relations, business and finance. French literature spans a thousand years and has fundamentally shaped our modern world and our understanding of ourselves. French, and the francophone cultures of Europe, Africa and the Caribbean, are also some of the richest and most rewarding to study on the planet. With 54 member states, Francophonie is not limited to the hexagon but a global linguistic phenomenon.

The sub-faculty of French and Francophone studies is the largest teaching and research department in the country, as is its undergraduate and graduate populations. It is a vibrant pedagogical and research environment, whose historical strength in modernist literature and poetry has expanded to include cutting edge research in medieval, early modern and Francophone literature and culture, as well as historical and contemporary linguistics and film studies. The sub-faculty is committed to the humanities as a set of disciplines investigating what it means to be human-a thinking being, a social and political one, a culturally and ecologically situated one.

Gender and intersectional identities, the long history of theatre and performance or of race and its poetics, song and rhythm from medieval lais to the ditties of Arthur H, the Francophone world from the Norman period to créolité, French media from manuscripts to the digital age–all these topics and more are studied and taught here in the undergraduate course. Students coming to study French at Oxford can study it on its own, with another language, or in a Joint school (Classics, English, History, Linguistics, Middle Eastern studies, Philosophy). The degree course normally lasts four years, one of which is a compulsory year abroad, which may be spent studying at a University, teaching French, or working in France or another French-speaking country.

Undergraduate Studies

 

Graduate Studies

 

Research