France

This course is transdisciplinary in its framing and combines various approaches and scholarship from critical security studies, surveillance studies, sociology of technology, data sciences, human rights, and international law. The course develops a reflexive understanding of the main categories at work when using geopolitics, security and securitization, mass surveillance, and privacy rights, by joining different experiences too often fragmented by disciplinary knowledge. It analyzes the scripts they produce in order to build a transdisciplinary understanding reflecting the debates (or lack thereof) concerning digital spaces.

This course explores the concepts of nation and identity in modern France via its cultural, political, and intellectual history. It examines key ideas developed by some of the most influential modern French thinkers. Each week students consider a handful of central ideas, contained in short slogans or quotations, which is then developed more fully in accompanying texts. Students discuss the ideas developed in these texts, relating them to broader course questions and to their own experience in contemporary Paris.

This course explores the ongoing negotiation of rights and responsibilities in the modern Western world as represented in both fiction and nonfiction works. It teaches how to evaluate and interpret texts using the standard conventions of literary analysis (a solid thesis statement, textual evidence, attribution of citations); identify and discuss strategies used in literary and rhetorical texts to comment upon and find meaning in the world; identify and discuss strategies that are used in literary and rhetorical texts to enact change in the world; and compare the discursive strategies used by thinkers from diverse disciplines to ask questions, interpret evidence, make arguments, and express emotions.

This course helps students grasp fundamental notions of French society today by studying the roots and the development of the main institutions and concepts of French political life. It contributes to the overall purpose of the IFE preparatory session, which is to equip students to participate as fully as possible in French professional life and social and political discussion. The course establishes a thorough familiarity with the politically and institutionally constitutive elements of contemporary France by examining how history shaped institutions and outlooks which in turn shape France today. This includes an understanding of the interactions between the political/institutional sphere and social structures. It also discusses France’s role in the world, perceived and real, past and present. Students become familiar with the mainstays of French academic literature on these subjects. The course is taught in two parts, or “modules”, the first one focusing on the foundations and structures of the French State and the second on the French State in a European and international context from a historical perspective. As a survey for non-specialists, the course adopts a hybrid chronological-thematic approach to looking at the major notions of the state and the nation, since the Revolution. Founding principles, the rapid institutional developments of the 19th century, the effects of 20th century upheavals, and other themes are treated in turn. 

This is an advanced level French course for students who have completed three semesters of university level French. Certain fundamentals of the language are reinforced and completed in this course. Building on good comprehension skills, the course improves the ability to communicate in speaking and writing. The following skills are acquired within listening comprehension: understanding important points when clear, standard language is used on familiar subjects related to work, school, leisure activities; understanding the main point of a range of radio or television broadcasts related to current events or subjects of personal or professional importance provided that speech is relatively slow and distinct. The following skills are acquired within reading comprehension: understanding texts written in routine, daily language and/or related to studies or work; understanding descriptions of events, expressions of sentiments, or wishes expressed in personal letters and emails. The following is accomplished within expression: communication and interaction, ability to confront most situations that can be encountered during a trip in a region in which the target language is spoken, taking part without preparation in a conversation on familiar subjects or subjects of personal interest or that are related to daily life (for example, family, leisure, work, traveling, or current events). The following is accomplished within speaking skills: articulating expressions in a simple way to relate experiences or events, dreams, hopes, and objectives; briefly describing the reasons or explanations for opinions and plans; re-telling a story or plot of a book or movie and expressing reactions to them. Finally, the following writing skills are obtained: writing clear, detailed texts about a wide range of subjects related to personal interests; writing an essay or report by transmitting information or describing reasons for or against a given opinion; composing letters that emphasize the meanings that are personally attributed to events and experiences.

This course focuses on language rights as legal benchmarks for managing linguistic diversity, particularly in contexts marked by a high and unfair multilingualism. From a human rights perspective, it highlights how use of language or language preferences by government authorities, individuals, and other entities impacts protected individuals or minority groups who would otherwise be discriminated against or marginalized by the respective majorities.

This course provides a panorama of art history from the beginning of the 1900s to the 1950s, following the history of the avant garde in the United States and in Europe. Various topics are explored including color, movement, and deformation. These topics are treated in relation to fauvism, futurism, expressionism, cubism, dadaism, and surrealism, as well as the debut of abstraction and the numerous other schools of thought linked to modernity. Additionally, this course investigates the terms of modernity and contemporality to better understand the artistic revolution of the beginning of the 20th century.