French

This course explores French language through the medium of the radio. It discusses the various types of podcasts and examines the forms that these can take. Students write scripts which are then made into a podcast for the final project. The course provides an opportunity to learn and use sound and podcast software.

This course focuses on the climate crisis and, more broadly, the ecological issues, environmental struggles, and social movements that participate in it. It studies how sociology has taken hold of ecological problems (subjects, issues, methodologies), notions and concepts (risks, Anthropocene, transition/transformation, environmental inequalities, justice), and theoretical frameworks to identify the postures (scientific, ethical, committed, neutral) endorsed by sociologists. The course first reinscribes these current dynamics of mobilizations and research in a double chronology: that of environmental struggles and that of the constitution of a sociological field dedicated to the environment. It then considers recent works on environmental policies and controversies relating to industrial and agricultural pollution to illustrate scientific results and actions that sociological approaches can produce on issues of environmental justice.

This French language course consolidates the basics in oral and written French. It improves the four competencies: written production, written comprehension, oral production, and oral comprehension. Written production involves writing short texts respecting coherence and cohesion using the tenses (past, present, future) and introducing the notions of cause, purpose, and obligation. Written comprehension focuses on understanding short texts on daily life and activities with the past and present tenses. Oral production practices addressing someone to ask for information and precisions on facts. Oral comprehension practices understanding simple or more complex conversations on present daily life and on past events.

This course presents the various methods and techniques of psychological evaluation.

The course is broken into three parts. The first part focuses on the science of vision, covering early theories and anatomical observations, the eyes’ dark adaptation functions, visual organization (size, shape, orientation, and spatial frequency shown with illusions and clinical testing of the limits of vision), and vision impacting memory. The second part focuses on a linguistic aspect showcasing auditory anatomy and vocal anatomy. It describes the science behind how sound is measured and differentiated and how language is produced and understood; and observes language by breaking down the elements of sound and signing into primitives diving into phonemes, phonology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. There are also demonstrations of early cognitive development showing how plastic young brains are compared to their adult counterparts. The last part of the course is about language and memory. It focuses on comprehending text and writing and covers theories of how humans developed and started using written language as it is a relatively young invention in the history of the earth and humanity. The course reviews the role of comprehending knowledge and discusses the biological systems that make up and help our understanding of language.

This course is for students at an intermediate level of French. The oral part of the course helps students understand the main points of broadcasted programs, give oral presentations in various types of discourse such as informative, narrative, and argumentative, as well as participate in a debate and work on a group project. The written part of the course guides students to better express themselves in order to properly communicate with others. Students are given methods on how to express themselves with precision and improve the quality of their written expression. Exercises focus on comprehension and production of texts in various forms including informative, narratives, descriptive, expressive, and argumentative, chosen in everyday life or professional and social situations. Students study and produce literary texts, news articles, official letters, and reports. The course also focuses on the principal and basic difficulties of the language.

This focuses on the study of francophone cultures through different thematic workshops that expose students to a francophone cultural point of view. Looking at several francophone countries, it provides an initial overview of Swiss German literature and includes two theater outings in Geneva.

The course provides a study of fundamental French linguistic structures and applied grammar. It includes practical exercises in spoken and written language as well as laboratory practice.

This course allows the development of a personal graphic practice. Students choose tools and gestures among those offered in their training and learn to situate their practice in the field of creation. The course provides an opportunity to consider the openness, deepening, and methods of presentation (material support, framing, hanging, installation, public perception of the work) of the student's personal practice.

This course focuses on the political aspects of Hollywood cinema by questioning the links that exist between the production of films and the ideological structures hidden behind the images. It discusses how genre cinema appears to be a "dream factory" whose specific economic organization is accompanied by ideological and political schemes that should be identified in the perspective of political and cultural studies. The course demonstrates how much cinema contributes to the diffusion of the traditional values of the American Dream and how the big studios manage to find a balance between submission to the commercial constraints imposed by the market, simplification of political phenomena (whether situational or systemic), and artistic research.