France

This course introduces, develops, and critically debates some of the major theories of democracy in political thought – liberal, deliberative, radical – and the responses they offer to the current crisis of democracy. It discusses how, throughout the 20th century, the presence of the word "democracy" has become mandatory in political discourses, and politicians from the left and right claim to speak in the name of democracy. It also examines the contemporary debate and disagreement about what democracy actually is and the feeling that democracy is in crisis or at risk.

The story of post-World War Two war crime trials was long told from a Western standpoint with attention mostly focused on a few highly publicized international trials. By contrast, in this course, the stress is on the transnational delivery of justice; the plurality of protagonists, including genocide/war survivors, involved in shaping it; the window into regime changes, evolving power hierarchies, and social and gender norms trials offer. The course builds upon a diversity of print, visual, and oral primary and secondary sources, including filmed trials and archival documents. It provides an opportunity to explore these complex sets of data as well as interact with former judicial investigators and scholars, invited as guest lecturers.

This course provides a first introduction to the field of political economy and the geopolitics of natural resources. It is based on rich literature from political philosophy, economics, comparative politics, and international relations. The period of analysis focuses on the post-war era and does not concentrate on any particular region. However, the specific characteristics of different regions or countries are discussed, including Latin America, Russia, Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa region.

This intermediate A2 level Russian language course focuses on the four skills of listening comprehension, spoken expression, reading comprehension, and written expression to enable students to use documentation in Russian and to practice the language in a non-specialized context. The listening comprehension section focuses on understanding sentences in simple, everyday situations and following short conversations on familiar topics. The spoken expression section allows for conversation in practical, simple, and predictable situations; holding a simple conversation; and summarizing a text. The reading comprehension section practices reading texts fluently and understanding the familiar elements. Finally, the written expression section provides an opportunity to compose a story. Some sessions may be devoted to Russian culture and civilization. In addition to the textbook, the course utilizes extracts from newspapers and other news media. The grammar and vocabulary learned enable students to form a descriptive and explanatory level of speech.

An annexed territory and the only colony of settlement in the French Empire, Algeria was officially a part of France, and its loss represents not only a dramatic territorial amputation (more than twice the size of metropolitan France) but also a traumatic symbolic and ideological shift. Long repressed, cloistered and today fragmented and manipulated, the painful and sensitive memories of the colonization of Algeria and the subsequent War of Independence have contributed to the construction of a deeply divided society in France. This course examines the multiple relations between Franco-Algerian history, memory, and minority identities as represented in contemporary France (Algerian immigrants and their "French" descendants, Sephardic Jews, Harkis, Pieds-Noirs, mixed-race individuals). Other groups of people living in France participated in the Algerian War, such as conscripts, professional soldiers, porteurs de valise (French who supported the Algerian nationalists), and all claim different and often conflicting histories. The course material consists of scholarly texts (articles from different disciplines), literature (three novels), and a few films. The course examines how these different resources elaborate memorial discourses carrying public claims of Franco-Algerian identity. The different minority stances often contradict the official French (and, incidentally, Algerian) narrative(s) while being in conflict with the State’s interest. Through interdisciplinary critical readings, this class studies in depths the concept of "representation" and its several meanings: the mental representation (memory of a historical trauma), artistic representation (literature, films), historical representation (conventional narratives and non-conventional approaches), and political representation (representativeness). The analysis of diverse forms of discursive practices about the French colonial past in Algeria, leading to contemporary processes of minority identifications and "community" dynamics in France, allows the class to deepen its understanding of current debates about “wars of memory” and “competitive victimhood” in French society, while reflecting upon issues of citizenship and possible ways to think of conflicted identities as a legacy of colonialism and immigration.

The course focuses on the scientific study of elections and voting behavior in modern democracies. It examines in detail the act of voting in contemporary democracies (mostly Western but also non-Western democracies). The topics covered include how voters form preferences for parties/candidates, how they translate these preferences into a vote (or an abstention), and how they react to electoral campaigns and the state of the economy. It also covers how parties decide upon their electoral program, and how this affects their electoral performance. The course develops skills to actively read, fully understand, and critically appraise the scientific literature on elections; mobilize and articulate this scientific literature on elections to form an informed judgement about the state of elections in contemporary democracies and analyze new elections; and independently catch up with the latest developments of the scientific literature about elections. 

This course examines the economics of climate change. Topics include technology and the history of economic thought, the economic evaluation of climate change, and climate change and public policy instruments.

This course examines a controversial issue: the history of slavery in France and the United States from the 17th to 21st centuries. It first focuses on the history of two cities at the heart of triangular trade, Bordeaux and Charleston, and the way in which their elites thought and translated into their lifestyles, in their urban spaces and, today, in their museums, this historical fact over time. The course then considers how the American and French slaves, unwilling actors in the history of slavery, for their part, thought and translated their history, but also their emotions, in particular through writing. The autobiographies published between the 18th century and the 19th century are an appreciable complement for the researcher even if they raise the question of the subjectivity of their authors and their status as sources. Finally, the course questions the way in which French and American literature, including that dedicated to youth, thinks about and translates the history of slavery through specific examples. The publication of historical novels relating to these lively questions having always been consciously accompanied by civic and moral objectives and the formative function of literature for youth being undeniable, the course investigates if French and American publications think and translate in the same way this part of our history and, above all, whether they transmit the same values. 

While questioning the relevance of the concept of the "Iranian world," this course provides fundamental knowledge in the political sociology of contemporary Iran and Afghanistan, from a comparative perspective. The course considers together the political, economic, and cultural developments of these two states over a long period, from the fall of Isfahan in 1722, under the blows of an Afghan invasion, to the fall of Kabul in 2021, via the Anglo-Persian war of Herat in 1856-1857 and the concomitant upheavals of 1978 and 1979. Methods of comparative politics are combined with those of connected history to better understand the "Iranian world" as a whole, as well as each of its two major components, highlighting their differences as much as their similarities. The comparative study of Islamic currents of thought in the two countries forms an important part of this course. This includes a focus on the Arab world, as well as the Indian subcontinent. Finally, while the course focuses on Iran and Afghanistan, it also includes Tajikistan, the only other state where Persian is the official language. The course includes a visit to the Guimet Museum.

This course is specialized for international students. It offers a contemporary history of political ecology in France, from the mid-19th century to present day. The course covers how the environmental issue has gradually become more and more political and cultural over the years, and how historiography has tended to favor the hypothesis of a delay in the emergence of this issue in France, in contrast to the situation in the United States. After recalling the main historical milestones (the creation of national parks in the United States, the National Trust in Great Britain), it looks at the first forms of identifying and safeguarding areas identified as "natural," using the example of tourism and the protection of remarkable sites. The course discusses how this process developed and amplified in the twentieth century, as industrialization and urbanization increased, with experiments such as allotments and debates on the return to the land; and finally, in the last third of the twentieth century, intellectual and popular movements took up environmental issues (Friends of the Earth, Larzac movement) and helped place them on the public agenda. The course reflects on the convergences and tensions as seen from the cities or from the countryside, by linking two historiographical traditions: urban and environmental history, and rural and agricultural history.