France

One of the oldest traditions in France has been la contestation: a word that can be translated as questioning, entering into a dispute, confronting, protesting, or simply contesting. French history has consequently borne the imprint of this long and lively history. More often than not these movements have been led by the youth, for whom protest was a means to bring about change and right what they viewed as wrong. This course journeys through a number of such movements and investigates what was being contested and why, what was being proposed in its place and why, and what was achieved as a result. The course begins with the French Revolution of 1789. In the 19th century, the course visits the barricades of 1848 and the Paris Commune, where the youth often paid with their lives for their ideals. It analyzes the texts of the thinkers and intellectuals who gave the youth the tools to question the status quo. Following these upheavals, the course continues into the 20th century, when the youth were faced with two cataclysmic wars in which their contestation became synonymous with choice, freedom, and resistance. The course then concentrates on the movement that culminated in the year 1968, when the streets of Paris and other major cities witnessed an unprecedented level of contestation, challenging the all-powerful government of General de Gaulle. Here, too, the course studies the texts that questioned authority. It ends with a glance at the beginning of the 21st century, where the youth—faced with the consequences of globalization, ecological concerns, unemployment at home, and wars beyond their borders leading to major waves of migration—continue to confront and question what they view as unfair and unjust.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Western world of the early Middle Ages underwent centuries of transformation marked by new political structures, the adoption of Christianity, and a renewed social organization. This course offers an overview of the early European Middle Ages, prior to the Gregorian Reform and the Crusades, and examines political, social, economic, and cultural aspects while introducing the historical sources that allow us to reconstruct this period.

This course covers etching, aquatint, and soft varnish techniques, as well as other more elaborated techniques. During the sessions, each technique discussed is accompanied by a demonstration. Students work with a predefined theme throughout the semester and present a project that highlights the techniques discussed during the semester.

This course introduces the arts of diplomacy and negotiation. To this end, the course offers both a theoretical and practical approach and presents the key concepts and tools behind the arts of diplomacy and negotiation. It analyzes the links between diplomacy and negotiation as well as the main challenges attached to traditional and modern diplomatic practices; discusses the impacts of globalization on the evolution of diplomatic practices and more specifically the impact of culture on international negotiation; identifies the main tools and strategies for successful negotiations: therefore, the course also serves as an introduction to communication techniques. It provides an opportunity to practice all these tools and concepts during workshop sessions, exchange in group debates, crisis and negotiation simulations. The course is designed to be very interactive: students are expected to actively participate in class and their communication skills will be assessed.

This course works on translating from Spanish to French. The course is taught in Spanish using French texts.

This course addresses the major challenges of a kind of political organization which is highly depreciated and suffers from a worrying lack of confidence from the citizens in every contemporary liberal democracy: the political party. The course focuses on the problems of both new and traditional political forces: from electoral decline to financial issues, from ideological void to organizational disintegration, it analyzes the role of political parties today and explains how they are trying to reinvent themselves in modern-day democracies. With a concise overview of a major subfield of the political science literature, this course demonstrates how an everyday subject can be observed through different perspectives, and how a mosaic of academic works can be used to draw a global picture which goes beyond current democratic dead ends.