French

This course discusses the cultural, economic, technical, institutional, and political reasons that allowed the emergence of the New Wave. It studies the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers in France at the turn of the 60s, and the changes it brought about in the production, representations, staging, reception of films and in the future history of cinema. The course contextualizes this turning point in the history of French cinema in order to grasp its importance, as the keystone of a process of legitimization of cinema as an art that began in the beginnings of cinema. It then identifies the issues at stake in the authors' policy born within the "Cahiers du cinéma" during the 50s under the pen of the future directors of the New Wave. The course also distinguishes between the careers of filmmakers from the Paris "right bank" and those from the "left bank."

The course focuses on key algebraic structures including ring and polynomial theory, with a strong emphasis on mathematical proofs and applications of algorithms including Euclid's, Lagrange interpolation, RSA cryptography, and the Fast Fourier Transform.

This course covers the following topics and subtopics: reduction of endomorphisms, determinants, eigenvectors, and eigenvalues; characteristic polynomials and minimal polynomials; Cayley-Hamilton Theorem; diagonalization and trigonalization; Dunford and Gauss-Jordan Reductions; Hermitian and Euclidean spaces; bilinear forms; quadratic forms; self-adjoint; and orthogonal groups in 2 or 3 dimensions.

This course allows students to get familiar with the camera (film and/or digital) and its set of technical parameters. Lessons and exercises develop a technical foundations, understanding light, exposures, and dynamics. The course also includes an opportunity to work in the film lab to experiment with image development without a physical camera, and provides an opportunity to practice presentation by submitting photographs in exposition style.

This course is dedicated to better understanding the evolution of theatrical art in Europe from antiquity to the 20th century. It considers performance spaces characterized by their architecture, their place in the city, and their function in society to understand the possible history of the “places of theater.” The course starts by examining the origins of theater in ancient Greek and Roman society, followed by medieval theater and theater of the Italian, English, and Spanish Renaissance. It then studies French theater from the 17th century to the 19th century and finally, takes a look at European theater up to the 20th century.

This course delves into psychology and behavior when faced with risk, cognitive biases, and decision making. It discusses emotions and their relevance to economic phenomena and examines the works of Smith, Kahneman and Tversky, John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, and other names in psychological and behavioral economics.

This course explores the French-language crime novel from an eco-critical approach. It studies the crime and resolution as means that lead to a thematic and stylistic analysis of texts in which societal transformations and ecological and environmental issues become the fulcrums of a critical reflection of modernity, tradition, and community. The course discusses the works of three French-language authors: Désiré Boyla Baenga's LA POLYANDRE (1998), Modibo Sounkalo Keita's L'ARCHER BASSARI (1984), and Moussa Konaté's L'ASSASSIN DU BANCONI (2002) and L'EMPREINTE DU RENARD (2006). From a historical and theoretical reflection on the detective novel in general, it considers, on the one hand, the different ways of representing "ecological crimes" and, on the other hand, the way the detective novel focuses on place and ecology. Finally, the course examines how the Francophone detective novel reports on the environmental crisis.

This course introduces the current and past issues at stake in the political, legal, and cultural relations between religions and states. A subject of recurrent debate and controversy in France, laïcité (or rather, secularism) is rarely treated critically, dispassionately and from an international perspective. Such is the focus of this seminar. Depending on the areas covered, the course discusses more generally about “laïcité” (in the case of France) or “secularism” (in the case of Anglo-Saxon countries). The course is interdisciplinary, drawing on historical, political, legal, and sociological approaches. It also focuses on comparative approaches in Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. 

This course involves the study of the physiology and development of the different organs and reproductive systems of plants, as well as how researchers study these processes. It includes lectures, lab work, and section work. The course examines the life cycle of plants, the use of arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism, and the methods of studying development such as transgenic plants, mutants, and reverse genetics. It also studies the organization of the shoot apical meristem (SAM) and the effects of mutations on its function, as well as how the SAM becomes the floral meristem and the development of the reproductive organs of flowers. The course finishes with a look at the root apical meristem.