France

This course analyzes the "Hollywood" system of move making and its strict adherence to genre films during its golden age. Additionally, it studies multiple film genres, their repeated formulae, and their global reception through reviews and economic trends.  Along with film viewings, coursework includes theoretical texts and primary source documents.

This course explores the interconnectivity between the rapid evolution of media outlets and content, the contemporary “banalization” of terrorist and other types of violence, and their fallout over issues related to social justice in France and Europe. The course examines some recent forms of social confrontation and the way these confrontations are channeled on a grand scale through mass media, both old and new. Students interrogate the political, economic, cultural, and psychological implications, as well as the “spectatorship component,” related to the growing, constant sharing of violence over public platforms, and political agendas. Different cases of social controversies are studied and compared as we probe their relevance to some larger, technological, and globalized frames of analysis. The course examines the adjustments political institutions, social bodies, and media actors have practiced when faced with these forms of protest in moments of crisis. The course attempts to understand how, and to what extent, all these altered notions have impacted national, sectorial, and class-oriented identities.

This course focuses on the relationship between the environment and planning, particularly on zoning policies, construction methods, target objectives, and effects on the desired territories. It discusses policies of the European Union regarding zoning, development and environmental risks, and the connection to game theory to address the link between land development projects, the environment, and justice.

This course endorses an interdisciplinary approach to the various issues that Europe (as European Union and non-European Union) must address, combining traditional and critical security studies, politics, political sociology, media studies, and European studies. It considers whether, through crises, Europe not only builds policies but shapes its collective polity, as well as the risk of European collapse. It looks at key elements related to European unity and disunity to explore various crisis scenarios faced by the continent and create a place for students to exchange ideas about current affairs and the future of Europe. 

This course introduces the lawyer's profession practically and theoretically from an international perspective. The first part of the course explores the provisions governing the exercise of the lawyer's job in various legal systems, across multiple jurisdictions, and at the different levels of courts. The second part of the course focuses on the various manners to practice as a lawyer, from a comparative legal perspective, by studying the traditional missions of advising, representing, defending, and assisting clients in legal proceedings; as well as the lesser-known missions of negotiating, mediating, facilitating, and lobbying. The third part of the course explores the everyday practical reality of the profession of an international lawyer in several areas of law and across various industries and sectors, including the key concepts and technical issues related to the exercise of the legal profession in a disruptive post-Covid-19 world.