Audrey Burba, Ph.D., is an Assistant Teaching Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of French and Italian and the Humanities Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has extensive experience teaching French and Francophone language, culture, and literature at all levels, with a focus on engaging students in literary, cultural, and critical analysis. In addition to her work in French and Francophone studies, Professor Burba’s teaching interests center on medical humanities, where she examines the literary and cultural representations of the body, with a particular emphasis on the sick feminine body, femininity, and death. Her courses explore the intersections of gender, cultural identity, and health, drawing connections between literary, cultural, and medical narratives about the body. Through both areas of her teaching, she encourages students to think deeply about how language, literature, and culture shape our understanding of the human experience.
keywords
medical humanities; 19th-21st century French literature and critical thought; feminist theory; history and theory of the novel; semiotics and sociology of culture; second-language acquisition and pedagogy
Teaching
courses taught
FREN 1020 - Beginning French 2
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2024 / Spring 2025
Continuation of FREN 1010. Completes students' introduction to core French grammar and vocabulary. Students are encouraged to take FREN 1010 and FREN 1020 OR FREN 1050. FREN 1010 and FREN 1020 are required prior to taking FREN 2110.
FREN 2110 - Second-Year French Grammar Review and Reading 1
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2025
A film based curriculum will expand the knowledge of francophone culture and will continue the development of communication skills begun in the first year. This third semester course will review essential beginning grammar before introducing intermediate structures, vocabulary, and cultural/literary texts.
FREN 3050 - French Composition
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2025 / Spring 2026
Develops advanced French writing skills through practice in multiple genres, structured revision, and analytical engagement with short literary and cultural texts. Emphasizes grammatical accuracy, stylistic refinement, and critical thinking. Taught in French. FREN 3050 is one of three Advanced French course options of which French majors and minors must successfully complete two.
HUMN 1002 - Visualizing Culture: An Introduction to Humanities
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Spring 2023 / Spring 2024 / Spring 2025 / Fall 2025 / Spring 2026
How do we see, what do we consider worth looking at, how does this shape culture? What do visual media do to/for us and how do we endow them with meaning? This class probes such questions using a range of visual media including visual art, film, music videos, and social media. With the help of theoretical, scholarly, and popular sources, students analyze examples of visual culture and articulate their responses to the issues raised.
HUMN 1110 - Introduction to Humanities: Literature 1
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Fall 2020 / Fall 2021
Introduces students to works from the major Western literary periods (Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque) from the 8th c. BC to the early 17th c. AD comparatively, i.e., outside their national literary boundaries. Theorizes interdisciplinary, genre studies, periodization, comparativism, thematology, hermeneutics, criticism, etc. May be taken separately from HUMN 1120.
HUMN 1120 - Introduction to Humanities: Literature 2
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2018 / Fall 2019 / Spring 2020 / Spring 2021 / Spring 2022
Introduces students to works from the major Western literary periods (Baroque, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism) from the 17th- through the 20th-centuries comparatively, i.e., outside their national literary boundaries. Theorizes interdisciplinarity, genre studies, periodization, comparativism, thematology, hermeneutics, criticism.May be taken separately from HUMN 1110.
HUMN 3093 - Topics in Humanities
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Spring 2020 / Spring 2022
Students should check with the department for specific semester offerings. May be repeated up to 12 total credit hours, provided the specific offerings vary.
HUMN 3200 - Fictions of Illness: Modern Medicine and the Literary Imagination
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Spring 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2022 / Fall 2023 / Fall 2024 / Fall 2025
Examines the ways in which the rise of modern medicine fueled the literary imagination with a new focus, new patterns of perception and potent metaphors. Through a study of various works of fiction, critical theory and medical history, the course traces how medical discoveries and the increasing professionalization of medicine manifested itself in modern literature.
HUMN 3930 - Humanities Internship
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Spring 2026
Students gain academic credit and professional experience working in fields such as museums, galleries, arts administration, publishing, nonprofits, and cultural organizations. They work 3-18 hours per week under the guidance of a professional supervisor and meet regularly with a faculty advisor, who oversees the academic requirements, including reading and writing assignments. An interview with the faculty advisor is required.
HUMN 4070 - Making Meaning: Language, Myths, Dreams
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Spring 2023 / Spring 2024 / Spring 2025
Introduces students to theories concerned with signification, communication, and meaning. The course will focus on the legacy of Ferdinand de Saussure�s study of the sign and examine how Saussure�s insights have been put to work in a variety of intellectual contexts from literary analysis to cultural anthropology, and psychoanalysis. Formerly offered as a special topics course.
HUMN 4720 - Architecture and the Feminine: Women on Space and Creativity
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Fall 2022 / Fall 2023 / Fall 2024 / Spring 2026
Examines women�s depictions of space, confinement, and liberation in literature, art, and film. Women�s artistic productions have sought to conceptualize, expose, and subvert the ways that gender and power relations are inscribed into the spaces they inhabit. Students will trace the history of these visions of spaces (physical, geographical, psychological, imagined) and explore their relationship to subjectivity, power, and creativity.
