AT THE CROSSROADS OF GENDER AND CULTURE - WHERE FEMINISM AND SEXISM INTERSECT

The controversy over the alleged sexism of French in Action (Capretz, 1987, 1994) is analyzed within the context of key differences between French and American feminist thought. American students and professors tend to impose their own culturally informed beliefs about gender stereotypes and literary realism on the foreign language textbook. Read within a French cultural context and from a perspective that emphasizes the important role played by the video component of French in Action, this text can be more accurately perceived as a postmodernist, feminist critique of Hollywood's heterosexual romance narrative and of conventional discourses of masculinity. The debate over French in Action provides an opportunity to include foreign language study and pedagogies in current discussions of curricular transformation in the academy.