Sundays March 28th, April 11th & April 18th from 1 to 3pm EST / 10am to 1pm PST

Part of learning French includes learning about France, its long history, vivid culture and current events. You will get to do all of this and more in Coucou’s new “Revue de Presse” workshop series. Find out where the French get their news – they love radio and the 8 o’clock news (“Le 20 Heures”) – and the topics they get angry and passionate about!

Led by Marie Rousseau – Coucou teacher, licensed NYC guide and author of the weekly French “revue de presse”, Le Kiosque de New York – this 3-workshop series will look at the weekly news through articles from prominent newspapers, online publications, podcasts, radio and video, etc …
Participants will be encouraged to share their own picks, which will all be discussed during the 2-hour session. 

Each workshop will also focus on a favorite French topic with roots in the country’s cultural et political history, such as “Les grèves et les manifs” (strikes and labor protests), “La laïcité” (secularism) and “Le féminisme”. We’ll look into the French perspective on these topics and the differences in coverage with the American media. 

• This workshop series will be taught entirely in French & take place via the video conference platform Zoom.

Sunday March 28: French Feminism after #MeToo

The country of Simone de Beauvoir had its very own #MeToo reckoning, which gave birth to the slightly more explicit hashtag #BalanceTonPorc. A new generation of journalists and activists spoke up and grabbed the headlines, such as the actress Adèle Haenel (“Portrait Of A Lady on Fire”) who staged a walkout at the César Awards ceremony in 2019. Meanwhile, an older generation of prominent women like Catherine Deneuve publicly disavowed the campaign, which they qualified as “rampant censorship”. We will explain and discuss the media debates between different generations of French feminists.

Sunday April 11: Strikes and protests – a French tradition

Not a single month goes by in France without some kind of protest; it’s a long-standing tradition of which the French are very proud, beginning with the French Revolution and cemented by the May 68 general strike. Recent examples of such mouvements sociaux include the Gilets Jaunes movement and the 2019 pension reform strike, which made headlines in the past few years.
We’ll explore France’s tradition of protests and how it is viewed by the media (and the general population), with attitudes ranging from sympathetic to critical.

Sunday April 28: The French concept of secularism

La Laïcité is the concept of secularism which is a founding principle of modern French society. It implies the strict separation between religion and public life, including government. For the last 20 years, it’s been one of the most controversial topics in French politics and media, leading to such contentious measures as the hijab ban. This tenet is often misunderstood by foreign observers, whereas the French are always baffled by the intrusion of religion in the political life of other western democracies such as the US. The workshop will explore these conflicting views.