France

This course is a practical workshop to explore painting based on reflective subjects proposed by the professor. Students complete several paintings while working individually according to a theme or subject of their choosing. The use of various media is welcomed. As well as deepening their technical skills, students develop their pictorial practice, knowing how to situate themselves in relation to the history of painting, and more specifically in relation to contemporary painting.

This course covers French literature from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It is an analysis of the French literary canon and the historical, cultural, linguistic, political and social parameters that took place during the time of the authors. The course also considers why these works are consistently taught and reads authors often left out of the school system, such as female authors and francophone authors not from France. The course examines the parameters linked to the identity of an author, the object chosen, the language chosen, sex (cultural and political construction), race (literature said to be francophone, or national allophone literatures), social classes (the nobility of literary genres, literature said to be "popular"), and religion.

This comparative literature course studies literatures of migration. It focuses on two books from different countries that have been translated into French and utilizes the French methodology for textual analysis.

This course examines contemporary theories of justice such as those of Sen, Rawls, and Dworkin in the light of the distinction between theory and practice that we inherit from Aristotle. Of particular interest are those approaches to modern political problems that combine the unique insights that emerge from a sensitivity to conceptual history with the unquestionable moral progress that is owed to the ethical outlook of modern democracy.

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 considers how to act in times and under conditions of uncertainty, assuming uncertainty as one fundamental feature of politics. This main question is explored through political-philosophical and policy literature with the intention to bring both bodies of literature together. Global climate change and the Anthropocene serve as empirical examples of policy-making in times of uncertainty which are characterized not only by unpredictable futures and non-linear developments, but also by unknown consequences of policies.

This course focuses on the historical and current government, politics, and economy of Ethiopia and the Horn from an international context. It covers the history of Ethiopia and provides context for how Ethiopia is situated in Africa and the wider world while also explaining its internal dynamics.

This course offers an introduction to Francophone cultures by discovering a space of the Francophonie and its components (society, culture, language, history, geography). The work is done from the reading of a literary work in the program. Excerpts from the work are studied in class and illuminated by various documents such as videos, songs, texts, and authentic documents. In this course students discover a region of the Francophonie, learn about francophone literature, develop language skills through literary study, and study documents of various types and how to present them.

This course explores the place of food in art in France, with a focus on the modern and contemporary periods. Throughout the course, representations of food are studied as a means to survey the evolution of French art within a global context, and as significant markers of social, ethnic, and cultural identity. The analysis of these depictions provides the opportunity to learn about dietary and dining customs, habits, and beliefs prevalent in France from the early modern period to the present. The course begins by decoding the archetypal representations of succulent food in the still life and genre painting of 16th-17th-century Holland, which established the conventions of the genre for centuries to come. It then examines how the rise of these previously minor artistic genres in 18th-century France coincided with the birth of French gastronomy. Frivolous depictions of aristocrats wining, dining, and indulging in exotic beverages like coffee and hot chocolate then give way in post-Revolutionary France to visions of austerity and “real life,” featuring potato-eating peasants. The focus then shifts to representations of food and dining in the age of modernity, when Paris was the undisputed capital of art, luxury, haute cuisine, and innovation. The course analyzes how Impressionist picnics and café scenes transgress social and artistic codes. Building on their momentum, Paul Cézanne launches an aesthetic revolution with an apple. Paul Gauguin’s depictions of mangos and guavas speak to his quest for new, “exotic” sources of inspiration, and allow discussion of questions of race, gender, and French colonialist discourse. Drawing from these pictorial and social innovations, the course subsequently observes the place of food and dining themes in the avant-garde movements of early 20th-century Paris, whose defiance of conventional society and art leads them to transform previously comforting themes into troubling ones.  It questions the place of food—or its absence—in art to capture the suffering and violence of upheavals like the Second World War and consider the place of food and dining in contemporary art: from the Pop Art movement’s calling into question postwar consumer society through its representations of mass-produced food; to contemporary creators in a plural and globalized art scene who use these traditional themes to challenge the status and roles of the artist, the spectator, and the work of art itself; to how depictions of food in visual art grapple with multiculturalism in France today.