French

This is an intermediate level French language course for students who have previously completed two or more semesters of French. Building on the basics of the language and utilizing good listening comprehension skills, the course builds students’ confidence in their ability to communicate. It focuses on understanding expressions and common vocabulary relevant to one’s persona life, including family, purchases, surrounding environment, studies, and work. The course builds skills to understand advertisements, announcements, and simple clear messages; read short, simple texts; and find specific predictable information in common documents such as short advertisements, brochures, menus, and timetables; understand short simple personal letters and emails; communicate during simple, habitual tasks that demand only an exchange of simple, direct information on subjects and activities that are familiar; have brief exchanges, using a series of sentences or expressions to describe in simple terms family or other people, living circumstances, education, and current or recent professional or academic activities; write notes and simple, short messages; and write a personal letter or email that is focused and structured, such as a thank you letter.

Through a series of concept-letters, this course uncovers various approaches to politics. It covers a selection of classical and contemporary notions, doctrines, and various styles of reasoning, and presents their usefulness for the city. It considers what these doctrines and reasonings mean for today's citizens, and how they can be mobilized to understand political issues and act in a just, democratic, and responsible way. Beyond abstract reasoning, the course reflects on the articulation between theory and practice; deliberates contemporary social and moral problems; discusses the formal understanding of political phenomena and the way they are understood, implemented, or contested by individuals and groups; and finally, demonstrates that philosophical concepts are not only elaborated in the realm of ideas, but are inspired by and act upon in the political and social world.

This course examines the definition of propaganda and the persuasion of the masses in the contemporary world. It relies on several disciplines (history, communication, sociology, political sciences, social psychology, art history, and neuroscience) and puts into perspective the evolution of propaganda and persuasion from the "age of paper" through the "digital age." Students analyze a multitude of platforms (text, fixed images, animated images, sound, objects, and monuments) by using both a theoretical and empirical approach. Along with a methodology of writing and presentation, this course explores critical analysis in a global perspective and techniques of forming public opinion.

This course is an introduction to the comparative approach. The exploration of a corpus of works around the notion of utopia presents the canonical exercises within this discipline: comparative commentary, comparative essay, while maintaining a focus on the different comparative perspectives in a situated manner. Works studied: Aristophane’s THE BIRDS; Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST; Aimé Césaire’s UNE TEMPÊTE; Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS.

This tutorial course focuses on Francophone literature. It discusses two novels centered around the idea of laughter and irony, as well as excerpts from critical texts and other short literary works.

This course studies the theories and concepts of Judaism. It examines its principal texts and practices as the literature and customs of this religion serve as a gateway to understanding its fundamental philosophical structure.

Combining political history, political law, and political science, this course examines how political life is organized in France, how constitutional texts and institutional practices interact, and how the new and old political worlds relate to each other. Representative democracy is being questioned. Participatory democracy is regenerating it. Referendum-based or even “digital” democracy is being called for. Presidential dominance over the parliamentary majority remains subject to the agreement of both presidential and parliamentary majorities. Rationalized parliamentarianism is increasingly being questioned. In a context of political radicalization, the course considers how Parliament, the majority, and the opposition are organized; why revise the Constitution, why certain failures, why question our institutions again; how Parliament positions itself in relation to random selection, how it deals with climate transition, and what are its ethics.