French

In this course, students learn how the relationships between actors affect the control of territories and resources. The following topics are covered: who are the actors; what scale are they at; what are the power relationships; what are the conflicts, etc. The course analyzes actors roles in different geographic, economic, political, and environmental conflicts.

This course provides an in-depth look at French business law. It is comprised of three sections: Essential notions of civil law, obligations, classification of obligations, contracts, and legal action; Commercial activity concerning producers and business assets; Introduction to the law of society, communal rules of commercial society and an overview of current commercial societies.

In this course, students develop their language competence to an intermediate level. Students learn to perform a range of language tasks in familiar and social contexts with emphasis on strategies for communication. Students extend their reading and listening comprehension skills as well as their knowledge and use of French grammar and syntax. The course deepens students' understanding and appreciation of the customs, culture, and society of French speaking regions. This course is delivered via small group teaching with classes having a maximum of 18 students.

Based on International Relations theories, this course looks at the origin of conflicts and cooperation within the international system. It explores the following: the factors which lead States into war; the links between political systems–for example democracy–and the risk of international conflicts; the reasons behind the increase in the number of civil wars; the interdependent sources and the conflicts in the economic, financial, and development areas. The course analyzes how the international institutions promote friendly relations between nations and the definition of common rules, what are the results of international negotiations, and why international law becomes more and more important in contemporary international relations. The course proposes different explanations to these developments. It looks at the distribution of power, the presence of international organizations, and the importance of interior policy as it relates to the exterior policy of a State. The course is divided into four parts. The first discusses the vast paradigm that is the analysis of international relations. The second focuses on international conflicts, the third analyzes the policy of international economic relations, and the fourth discusses transnational relations.

Sign language poses many challenges for linguistic research: its visual-gestural communication, its vocabulary, and its grammar in three dimensions make it necessary to reconsider certain concepts and tools used in analyzing vocal languages. This course addresses questions touching on the writing of sign language, its history, the cultural and linguistic community of deaf people, and the philosophy and politics surrounding sign language and the deaf community.

The main objective of this course is the acquisition of language and basic probabilistic and statistical concepts, and their uses in computer science. The student must apply mathematical skills, logic, and reasoning. This course deals with notions of probability, statistics, and combinatorics. The teaching focuses on discrete probabilities (event concept, probabilistic calculation rules, conditional probabilities, random variables, expectation, variance, probability laws: uniform, binomial, geometric and Poisson). Practical manipulations (simulation and implementation) deepen the theoretical notions of the course. The link with certain continuous laws is approached (normal law, exponential). On the combinatorial aspects, the notions of elementary counts (i.e., sums, products, combinations), recurrences and generating function are approached and applied to the counting of words, sequences and discrete structures usual in computer science. Descriptive statistics (i.e., series, histograms, mean, standard deviation) and an introduction to hypothesis testing are also discussed.

This course looks at the transnational players and globalization practices in Africa. Topics covered in the course include: how do we measure globalization; the macroeconomic fictions in Africa; political commerce in Africa; triptology of State, financial institutions, and the private sector; cultural globalization; a dynamic of flows and closures; ports of transport and international ports; African villages; African/Chinese relations in commerce and politics; tourism and disenchantments.

This course covers the elements of French urban planning law, including: the different sources of law and the hierarchy of legal norms; the place of planning law in the French legal system; urban planning authorizations and sources of land law (planning documentation); what urban planning litigation is and how the administrative tribunal works; the legal tools of operational urban planning.