France

This course addresses the transformation of world order which underlines a return to great power competition. It examines how the inertia of international structures is met with a deregulation of competition, inside and outside of the boundaries of international law. The course investigates the global struggle between peer and near-peer competitors expressed at the world level and its impacts on regional and local stability. It addresses the growing phenomenon of assertive emerging powers encountering self-questioning Europe and the United States and the return of political rivalry and military frictions. The course analyzes its historicity, comprehends its current trends, and projects its prospects through an inter-disciplinary approach.

Game theory is a formal language to describe situations in which each agent's decision affects other agents' well-being. Games can be used to analyze a very broad range of economic, social, and political interactions. The main objective of the class is to present all key concepts of game theory (players, strategies, solution concepts etc.), and apply them. The course is self-contained and does not require any previous knowledge in game theory. The class also incorporates behavioral considerations that help better understand what agents actually do or should do. The methodology of controlled experiments in economics is presented, and recent experiments discussed.

Media and popular culture have long played a key role in shaping and reflecting gendered power relations as well as processes of identification. This course provides an introduction to the representations and constructions of gender in contemporary culture and media. It develops students' understanding of gender, media, and culture in a period of time of rapid globalization and digitization. Through this course, students acquire theoretical and methodological tools to study gender in the media, and across a range of contemporary cultural phenomena. They apply a critical lens to the representations of gender in popular cultural media, focusing on the production, circulation, and reception of media representations of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality. The course also explores the ways in which questions of gender and sexuality might shape and inform identities. It adopts an intersectional approach and analyzes the way gender intersects with race, class, and sexuality.

This fifteen-week beginning conversation and grammar course immerses students in the French language and culture through bi-weekly class sessions and occasional instructor-led site visits. The course includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing with a focus on communication. Students have the opportunity to use everything they learn in class as they go about their daily activities. Students can expect to be able to talk about daily life, food, travelling, Paris, and a wide variety of activities. While students are learning how to speak the language, they continue their introduction to the culture of the French-speaking world. To immerse students in the language, only French is spoken in class. Although students are not expected to understand every word, they should try to follow the gist by paying attention to the context. Students find their comprehension increasing as the course progresses. By the end of the course, students are able to understand, perform, and possess the following at a level appropriate to a novice-mid learner. Understand the basic structures of French grammar and use the present and use occasionally the past and near future of high-frequency regular and irregular verbs, use reflexive verbs to talk about their daily routines, use occasionally the imperative and polite conditional moods, as well as use subject and object pronouns, articles, prepositions, possessive and demonstrative adjectives, interrogative expressions, expressions of quantity, and time and weather expressions. Possess a basic working vocabulary and engage in short conversations with a sympathetic interlocutor in French, using simple sentences and basic vocabulary, with occasional use of past and near future tenses, on familiar topics (such as the academic environment, family, food, and the home environment, habitual activities and hobbies, going out, memories, travelling, etc.) and express their basic everyday needs. Understand information on French and Francophone culture on the following topics: greetings, leisure activities and sports, vacation time, family structures, schooling and values of the French Republic, cuisine, grocery shopping and eating habits, the workplace, café life, multiethnic society, youth culture, and the geography, music, and cuisine of the francophone world. Read, understand, and discuss short, highly contextualized, and predictable texts, containing cognates and borrowed words, on familiar topics. Write with some accuracy on well-practiced, familiar topics using limited, formulaic language in simple French. Understand basic French spoken by someone who is sympathetic to non-native and beginning students of French on familiar topics, using context and extra-linguistic support to determine meaning. Reflect upon basic cultural differences as reflected in a variety of French and Francophone contexts, such as varying levels of familiarity/formality, etiquette, cuisine and dietary habits, family structures, commerce and the professional world, etc., as well as in cultural products such as film, performances, and music.

This course focuses on theater and film in the 20th and 21st centuries. The first part of the course explores the representation of masculinities in crisis since 1945 in the major film genres (thriller, melodrama, horror, social realism, war film) of British cinema. The concept of hegemonic masculinity in British cinema is also explored. The course consists of watching and discussing short clips from films, with additional readings and a final paper. The second part of the course engages in theatrical, film, and textual analysis by providing an understanding of the issues of mise-en-scéne, adaptation, and transsemiotizing. It focuses on recent adaptations of British texts, canonical or not, to navigate between the close analysis of text, stage, and film, and the more comprehensive approach to works within their contexts. Starting with the analysis of Canadian-Armenian director Atom Egoyan’s adaptations of two of Samuel Beckett’s shorter plays, the course questions the issue of fidelity in the light of poststructuralist theories. It then focuses on different recent scenic versions of Shakespeare’s RICHARD III, one British and two Continental ones, to show how cultural contexts and aesthetic conventions impact the receptions of the text(s). Finally, the course considers a successful contemporary play and how it was transformed to meet the demands of filmic conventions and the film industry when adapted for the big screen.