French

This course enables students to delve deeper into certain issues in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on inter-state conflict. The course looks at the state of conflict, the African Peace and Security Architecture (its conception, organs, competences, actions, and modalities of intervention); issues of the Pan African organization; the African Union, Regional Economic Communities, the United Nations and other international organizations highlight the changes and continuities of objectives achieved across different levels. Attention is paid to identifying the concrete aspects by the various actors (negotiations, mediations, peace-keeping operations) and relevant cases are presented to grasp the complex issues of conflict resolution.

The extensive independent study field research paper produced by the student is both the centerpiece of the intern's professional engagement and the culmination of the academic achievements of the semester. During the preparatory session, IFE teaches the methodological guidelines and principles to which students are expected to adhere in the development of their written research. Students work individually with a research advisor from their field. The first task is to identify a topic, following guidelines established by IFE for research topic choice. The subject must be tied in a useful and complementary way to the student-intern's responsibilities, as well as to the core concerns of the host organization. The research question should be designed to draw as much as possible on resources available to the intern via the internship (data, documents, interviews, observations, seminars and the like). Students begin to focus on this project after the first 2-3 weeks on the internship. Each internship agreement signed with an organization makes explicit mention of this program requirement, and this is the culminating element of their semester. Once the topic is identified, students meet individually, as regularly as they wish, with their IFE research advisor to generate a research question from the topic, develop an outline, identify sources and research methods, and discuss drafts submitted by the student. The research advisor also helps students prepare for the oral defense of their work which takes place a month before the end of the program and the due date of the paper. The purpose of this exercise is to help students evaluate their progress and diagnose the weak points in their outline and arguments. Rather than an extraneous burden added to the intern's other duties, the field research project grows out of the internship through a useful and rewarding synergy of internship and research. The Field Study and Internship model results in well-trained student-interns fully engaged in mission-driven internships in their field, while exploring a critical problem guided by an experienced research advisor.

This course takes the form of a tour of the city and the environment near the Maison des Arts. Each session refers to two or three artists, photographers, or painters. Students learn to handle the device, exercise the gaze, and situate their work in relation to old or current references. This course alternates short exercises with visits to exhibitions and artistic places and meetings with actors of contemporary art. Topics such as device, document and fiction, photography and identity, and certain salient elements of the history of photography are discussed. Students design, produce, and present a photographic project that demonstrates a unique approach to the subject and a required minimum mastery of the photographic tool, and reflects on the place of the optical image in the field of art not as a goal to be achieved but as an exchangeable form open to the subjectivity of the spectators.

 

The theme for this course is “Thinking about freedom in the 21st century”. The transdisciplinary approach in this course focuses mainly on history, economics, philosophy, literature, geopolitics, and political and cognitive science. Each year, the subject is broken down into cross-cutting themes. The central theme for the 18-19 academic year is: "Can we save the free world? ". The "free world", thought by Roosevelt, Churchill, and de Gaulle, combining democracy with the defense of individual freedom, has for decades been considered obvious in the West, without always measuring its extreme fragility. The course questions what makes the world free –its roots, successes, excesses, and perils– before considering its future in the tornado of the current upheavals.

This seminar studies the changes that take place in the context of an "Enemy of the State" and in the practices concerned with that situation. It looks at the evolution seen in Germany and in France since World War II. It examines how the model of a succession of four waves of terrorism-anarchy, far-left with the intent of social revolution, far-right, and ethnocentric based on religious fundamentalism- is relevant to these two countries. The main sources that are analyzed in this course are from the State (justice, security services, parliament, and State Summit) in addition to actors who are persecuted for their acts of terrorism. Also reviewed are publications and media products from this era such as films, expositions, etc.

This course focuses on the evolution of the role and function of the image in the contemporary history of Europe and the United States. At the crossroads of the history of media, art and mentalities, the course analyzes how the image has progressively become an essential part of mental representations. Using precise examples, this course looks at the history of the image as well as the methods of understanding and analyzing different types of iconographic documents.

This course focuses on interpersonal communication. Topics include physical communication as such as gestures and the notion of personal space, psychological and sociological factors that influence forms of communication, and the functions communication serves. Analysis of works by Goffman, Hall, Birdwhistell, and Winkin. Course is made up of theoretically focused lectures, and sections that analyze these theories in situations.

This course analyzes shifts in political theory and international relations in the wake of the Renaissance in Italy and France. This course revisits the political history of the Renaissance through the lens of more contemporary tools and concepts of political sciences and the analysis of international relations. Students experience an exercise in “mastered anachronism” using current paradigms such as the security dilemma, transformational diplomacy, asymmetric conflicts, constructivist approaches, and the esthetic wave to analyze historical situations which were foundations for modern politics. In return, the course is an opportunity for the student to broaden their political culture beyond the normal genealogies of modern western politics (The Enlightenment and the Revolutions of the eighteenth century) by going backwards to Absolutist Europe and even further back to the foundations of pre-Renaissance Europe. The study of the clash between the Holy Roman Germanic Empire and the Pope, the civil wars inside the Italian cities, to the first affirmation of the Monarchies (English, Spanish, and French), the initial signs of the Reformation, then the effects of the rupture of the Religious Wars, etc. are an opportunity to develop a deeper knowledge of political innovations and experimentations which the modern world has inherited. This course is a rich think tank, as it discusses the following: first emissaries of the Grand Khan; the legislations of Machiavelli for the King of France; the invention of modern language of the State by Giovanni Botero, inventor of the raison d'Etat; the complex relationships of Raguse with Venice and the Ottoman Empire; the trial of Savonarole; the invention of Christian Humanism; the first public library by Gabriel Naudé, the secretary of Mazarin.