English

In this course, students learn about a number of key topics in the philosophy of mathematics. It ensure students are familiar with the main views such as Platonism, nominalism, logicism, formalism, intuitionism, and structuralism, as well as the main criticisms of each. Students learn about the philosophical significance of Russell’s paradox and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. From here, they consider topics in the philosophy of mathematical practice, such as the nature of mathematical proofs, the use of diagrams in mathematical reasoning, explanation and understanding in mathematics, mathematical knowledge, and the ethics of mathematics.  

This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning for students with a solid statistics background. Topics include supervised learning (generative/discriminative learning, parametric/non-parametric learning, support vector machines, neural networks), unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, generative models), and other learning theories. 

This course covers global issues and the impacts of the globalization on the East Asian countries. It examines the concept of globalization and discusses international and transnational Issues in East Asia. Topics include the globalization of world politics; its distinction from internationalization; the driving forces behind globalization; state sovereignty; environmental Issues; sustainable development; 1992 UN Conference; nuclear proliferation; properties that distinguish nuclear weapons from conventional forms; changes in the motivations for acquiring nuclear weapons; nuclear proliferation concerns that have stemmed from the dissolution of the Soviet Union; humanitarian intervention and values; European and regional integration; and the spread, function, and implications of nationalism.

This course introduces the topic of gender by using basic concepts like biological sex, nature, nurture, roles, norms and culture. The meaning of gender categories is examined in relation to difference, exchange, reproduction, knowledge and social change. Although the main perspective is ethnographic, this course is intended to be an exercise in interdisciplinary thinking. Understanding gender provides a foundation to analyze social structures (power and inequality), social institutions (family, kinship, education, economy, the state, health) and cultural issues (science, food, emotions, popular culture).

Contemporary global problems such as pollution, biodiversity loss, and population growth are critical issues for the planet's future and demonstrate the interdependence of social and environmental systems. This course unpacks the complexity of these challenges by analyzing different manifestations of "a world in crisis" as questions of geography - shaped by geographic processes operating at a range of scales (from the global to the local). The course thus explores how Geography works as a "world discipline" that is equipped to examine global problems from a range of human, environmental and physical geography perspectives. 

This course deals with psychological phenomena, biases, and socially-oriented behavior that affect economically relevant decisions of people. The main focus is on what economists have learned from various experiments, as well as the methodology of answering questions by the means of an experiment. In order to understand better the motivation and contribution of experimental works, the course reviews the structure and predictions of standard models in Microeconomics and discusses the ways in which they are modified or extended to incorporate psychological theory and empirical findings. Students who have preparation in Calculus, Statistics, Econometrics, and Intermediate Microeconomics benefit from the course the most. Lack of background knowledge in one of these disciplines increases the amount of work that students need to do to keep up with their peers.

This course introduces students to a range of Victorian fiction. It addresses the content, form, and significance of the Victorian novel and how it develops amid the cultural, historical, and intellectual contexts of 19th-century Britain. It also examines the alternative form of the short story and considers what specific kinds of narrative and narrative effects this form enables. Authors to be studied may include Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Wilkie Collins, Dinah Mulock Craik, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Vernon Lee, Margaret Oliphant, Bram Stoker, and William Thackeray.

Since the 1983's March for equality and against racism (“Marche des Beurs”), up until the current debates on Islamism separatism, the French public sphere is struggling with a new intellectual debate, which can be described as “the postcolonial question”. By defining and questioning this phrasing, this course first establishes a political history of immigration in France, and how it has deeply defined and redefined the definitions of social progress. Moreover, using diverse approaches in social science, the course explains this rising issue of identity politics in France which seems to have deeply impacted the political scene. The appearance of this issue is mostly due to economic crises, recent immigration waves and diverse social and political movements which stirred a topical debate on the notion of identity - but also the parallels established with the American debate on race and gender, and how the French university has used (or refused) these categories. Analyzing the evolution of immigration and Islam in France, and how the administration has tried to address these stakes, the course discusses political and religious phenomena which currently are one of the main fault lines within French parties - both within the left and the right, on the question of integration or assimilation, on a liberal or strict vision of laïcité. The teaching mainly focuses on France, in order to understand the consequences of these events as a matter of domestic policy. However, those dynamics are systematically compared to foreign similar events and replaced in a Euro-Mediterranean context through a comprehensive chronology.

This course examines the definition of national innovation systems and business ecosystems and the understanding on how to identify and build innovative business models. It discusses the phenomenon of innovation considering the relationships between firms, national innovation systems, and business ecosystems and presents the basic concepts related to the innovation process. 

This course teaches the fundamentals of econometrics, in particular regression analysis and statistical inference. It purposefully starts at a level that assumes no prior knowledge of statistics, econometrics, or programming. The objective is to understand and interpret simple and multiple linear regressions and detect whether an analysis uncovers correlations or causality. The course does not rely on advanced math; rather it uses practical learning to teach the main concepts. Moreover, it introduces how to use R, a very powerful and widely used programming language, to perform data cleaning and undertake statistical analyses. By the end of the course, students carry out small-scale research projects using real-world data and regression analysis to reveal associations between various variables.