The French program at Johns Hopkins University features a distinguished and dynamic faculty with expertise in early modern, modern, and contemporary French literature, as well as in topics in cultural studies, film, and the teaching of the French language. We offer an undergraduate major and a minor, as well as a PhD in French literature.

French has a long and distinguished history at Johns Hopkins, having played a leading role in embracing and circulating critical approaches and methods. Ground-breaking modern literary theory was born here in its dialogue with the interdisciplinary French structuralist and post-structuralist projects, which united under the banner of language such diverse intellectual endeavors as anthropology, history, philosophy, political theory, and the history of ideas. In our teaching and research, as well as through the lectures and colloquia of the Centre Louis Marin and the Hopkins Literature Forum, we are pursuing and deepening this distinctive tradition in critical thought.

French News & Announcements

  • Le Pont des arts: Writer in Residence Maylis de Kerangal

    Author with logos superimposed

    The program in French at Johns Hopkins is pleased to announce that with the generous assistance of the French Embassy in the United States, the Centre Louis Marin will host […]

  • Talk by Prof. Hélène Merlin-Kajman

    The Centre Louis Marin and the program in French are pleased to host Prof. Hélène Merlin-Kajman of Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3/Institut universitaire de France for a talk in French […]

  • Call for 2024 MLN French issue contributions

    The 2024 French issue of MLN invites original contributions, in English or in French, to a special issue entitled “Passage to the Nineteenth Century” edited by Daniel Desormeaux in collaboration […]