France

This course introduces the Sahel region, whose strategic importance is expected to rise in the next decades. Located between the Maghreb and the Gulf of Guinea, the Sahel region is at the crossroads of many strategic issues. The course analyzes security threats (socioeconomic difficulties, cross-border trafficking, ethnic tensions, etc.) and terrorist threats as a result of the numerous cross-border and rural spaces characterized by a security vacuum that contributes to criminal and terrorist groups' activities. It examines the states’ structural weaknesses and political tensions that have jeopardized the region’s stability, as well as the rapid demographic growth and urbanization that could lead to new socioeconomic prospects or increased instability.

This course covers the history modern East Asia from the 19th to the 20th century. It focuses on China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The relations between these countries as well as the colonial forces from the West are among the topics covered.

This course consists of weekly lectures accompanied by readings and film viewings outside the classroom. Each week, it studies and explores a different writer, literary genre, or event pertaining to the French Revolution through a rhetorical and literary lens. Authors include Victor Hugo, the Chenier brothers, Michelet, and Chateaubriand.

The goal of this course is to increase students' cultural sensitivity through an in-depth examination of the many layers that make up French history while at the same time exposing them to how this history shaped the physical city of Paris itself. Through comparative examination of current events in France and the US, the course also sensitizes them to differences in cultural norms. Lastly, the course seeks to increase students' understanding of how a nation's “eternal values and universal truths” develop in response to a people's particular historical experiences (e.g., the place of religion in the public sphere). The assigned readings and topics in the syllabus vary from year to year in order to align them with recent major events. Past units have included a variety of topics, such as: “The Veil”, Health insurance as a social or a socialist program; Presidents and the use and extent of power/elections; Women in the public eye; War and terrorism; Income distribution and the human costs of urban development. In each unit, the current issue is paired with careful study of related moments in French history (e.g., Huguenots in the 16th c. with Muslims today; a president with Napoleon). Readings expose students to the various ways history is/can be written. Readings include: First-hand accounts and editorials; Essays by specialists in political, social, economic, and urban history; Seminal texts of reference (e.g., “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen”). In this course students develop written and oral rhetorical skills as well as their analytical skills through class discussion on readings, in which close attention is paid to both style and the use of evidence to support an argument, in-class analysis of things like political cartoons, and the deciphering of political messages embedded in the iconography of monuments' façades. Students are presented techniques to read visual evidence. Students engage in a photo-essay project that sends them to the Invalides in small groups. The final exam tests students on their ability to compare a set of recent newspaper articles/editorials to explain the differences in American and French attitudes by providing the appropriate historical background.