France

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.

Since the Scientific Revolution of the early 17th century, France has been the site of many of the most important scientific innovations of the modern age. More than this, science has played a crucial role in the construction of French national identity. From the 1635 foundation of the Jardin des Plantes by Louis XIII as a center of botanical and medical research, to the construction of the Eiffel Tower as a monument to the scientific accomplishments and to the engineering might of France, discoveries, innovations, and scientific feats have long been at the heart of France’s understanding of its own place in the world. In this course, students investigate the history of science in modern France, with a particular focus on the figures and institutions that contributed to this history within the walls of Paris. The course develops a critical approach to these figures, borrowing methods and insights from the scholarly discipline known as “history and philosophy of science”, or “HPS”.