France

This course concerns biodiversity law which is, first and foremost, a right to protect species, their habitats, natural areas, and ecological continuity; as well as a law governing certain activities, whether they contribute to the regulation of species (hunting) or are detrimental to them (urban planning, agriculture, development of major infrastructures). The course provides the foundations needed to understand these major legal issues in their various aspects (international law, EU law, and domestic law) while drawing on concrete, emblematic cases.

This course focuses on the ancient history of the Middle East as a textbook case illustrating the transition from prehistory to history, via the establishment of a centralized power served by a powerful administration, an influential religion, a codified practice of writing, and subtle economic and diplomatic networks. It investigates the unifying factors behind the extension of the geographical contours of this cultural area, what memories classical antiquity retained of this distant East, and the discoveries it made. The course examines this abundant premise, at the crossroads of political, cultural, religious, and artistic sources, to shed light on a few fundamentals with parallels to our own times that should be considered with as much curiosity as caution.

This course focuses on the sociology of the State and its relations with society in contemporary Russia. Historical and political sociologists have focused on the state in the form it has taken in the West since the Middle Ages. These essential and fundamental analyses form the starting point for study of the sociological reality of the state in post-Soviet Russia. Using the tools of the historical sociology of politics and comparative politics, the course studies the political transition following the collapse of the USSR, the reform of public action, the trajectories of elites and state agents, and the reform of the state and its authoritarian modernization. Ultimately, the course considers what makes the recent transformations of the Russian state so singular on the one hand and so banal on the other, in the context of the global neoliberal modernization of the state and public action.

This course demonstrates how the political mobilization of law can be analyzed from a sociological perspective. At the intersection of the sociology of law and the sociology of mobilizations, it shows how the "weapon of law" constitutes an essential dimension of contemporary mobilizations. The place of law in the repertoires of collective action is examined: its scope, its limits, and the historicity of its uses. The course looks at various forms of mobilization, both in France and abroad, such as anti-colonial struggles, feminist mobilizations, trade union struggles, the defense of freedoms, and mobilizations in favor of the environment.

This course focuses on the analysis of 19th century American poetry from poets such as Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, and Walt Whitman.

This course reflects on how the novel genre was constructed in awareness of multilingualism and the challenges of translation, based on the most translated novel in the world, DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA. It discusses the numerous rewritings of the novel that have been carried out around the world and studies a certain number of “adaptations” for youth, theater, comics, and film.

This course offers a political history of the environment through the mobilization of the working classes around issues related to common goods, industrial risks, health, and pollution. It also takes a global, long-term approach to these mobilizations. The course is designed as an introduction to research: it first introduces scientific writing through a reading note based on an article, then analyzes primary sources to present findings at a "mini-colloquium," and finally provides an opportunity to write a collective research article.

This course provides a survey of the geography and geopolitics of Europe throughout history. It considers how Europe was created and the contents significance on a global scale.

This course begins by discussing the notion of “international community,” the Middle East, and how this part of the world has always been described as dominated by external actors. It examines how, since the Iraqi quagmire, the United States as the other actors of the “international community” seem to be unable to prevent a regional tilt towards a sense of chaos conveyed by the failure of the “Arab springs,” the crumbling of the modern States and borders, the growing autonomy of the local actors, and the emergence of new transnational non-State actors such as al-Qaeda and more recently the Islamic State. The course considers the actors' identities, the current situation of crises more and more threatening for international security (particularly for the European Union), and highlights key points of understanding.