HSSC French Exam
Guidelines for the Department's French Language Exam
The French exam consists of a 20-to-30-minute discussion (in English) of a scholarly article written in French, including a (rough) off-the-cuff translation of a short passage from the article selected by the examiner.
1. Find one or more articles or book chapters originally published in French on a topic or topics of interest to you. (Avoid articles that have been translated into English, or that were originally written in a language other than French.) Copy all or part of the article(s) for the examiner (David Barnes) to approve.
Here are a few prominent French journals in history/history of science in which you might be able to find relevant articles:
Revue d'histoire des sciences
Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales
Cahiers d'histoire
Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine
Revue historique
Annales (a/k/a Annales: Histoire, sciences sociales and Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations)
Some are available online for some years, but a stacks visit will probably be necessary. This is not an exhaustive list--just a place to start.
2. Spend as much time as you need reading and reviewing the approved article. You do not need to memorize it or translate it word-for-word; just review it until you feel comfortable with the general content and argument. Be ready to discuss the article as a work of scholarship much as you would discuss an article in English in a graduate seminar. (You do not need to understand every word, but you must be comfortable with the gist of the article.)
3. Schedule the exam by notifying the examiner (David Barnes) that you're ready to go.
4. The exam itself will take about 20 minutes. You will be asked to summarize the article in English, then answer follow-up questions about the content and argument. The examiner will then pick a passage from the article with more or less typical French syntax for you to translate *roughly* on the spot.
5. (Sigh of relief.) That's it.
