France

From recurring economic crises to political upheavals, pandemics to armed conflicts, and the looming climate catastrophe, this course explores how social science perspectives can advance our understanding of the phenomenon of crisis. It provides an overview of divergent social-theoretical perspectives on crises and discusses respective concepts for assessing current socio-economic developments. On the basis of classical and more recent literature, the course examines the emergence and political constitution of crises as well as their transformative and innovative potential. The second part of the course focuses on exemplary contemporary crises and shows which insights social science research offers to makes sense of and cope with our disruptive reality. In addition to developing knowledge about crises and the state-economy-society nexus, the course also provides an opportunity to approach various formats of academic writing, transfer conceptual knowledge to other empirical fields of interest, and concisely present ideas.

This course examines fundamental questions about the nature of wars and conflicts in international politics through an interdisciplinary perspective. It incorporates insights from political science, anthropology, psychology, and history to better understand the current security environment and make sense of the phenomena of wars.

This course provides a historical understanding of some key issues and themes in modern and contemporary political history. It provides a general basis of knowledge of the 20th and 21st centuries while addressing multiple topics and historical questions, as political history is understood broadly and flexibly, encompassing social, economic, and cultural factors. This course presents the history of the contemporary world through carefully selected topics with a particular focus on the history of Europe and the Americas. The opening session of the course will address the decline of traditional empires, which characterized world history throughout the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. The final session of the course will bring the material up to the present. The course presents a comparative and transnational analysis and discussion of the history of the past one hundred years.

The course focuses on the study of the non-Western European artistic and political scene from the second half of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. It analyzes and discusses the notions of national and artistic identity through specific examples. At the same time, the course also studies the challenges of globalization.

This course encourages new readings of American literature through the lens of theories that have developed in the field of gender and women’s studies over the last decades. It introduces a wide array of critical perspectives, ranging from early advocates of gynocriticism and theoreticians of “women’s writing,” to champions of intersectionality, queer studies, masculinity studies, and ecofeminism. The course pays special attention to the development of Black and Chicana feminist discourse and to their contribution to gender politics. It uses key concepts such as revision, mestizaje, silence, queering, performance, empowerment, resistance, embodiment, margin, and center to foster a revaluation of certain canonical or lesser-known texts and, sometimes, to uncover hidden layers of meaning beneath more conventional readings. The literary texts included are drawn from different periods and from a variety of genres (novel, short fiction, poetry) and include extracts from works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Alice Walker, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Carmen Tafolla, Paula Gunn Allen, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

This course offers a comparative study of the institutional law of international organizations. While it is acknowledged that each organization has its own legal structure and functioning, institutional challenges and rules of different organizations resemble each other in some way, and a great deal of body of institutional rules and principles has been developed. International organizations have much in common, such as the law on membership, competence, structures, decision-making and implementation, financing, and legal personality. The course discusses the practice of a number of international organizations, including the United Nations and regional as well as subregional organizations. The course explores the law, life, and functioning of these organizations.

This course examines the ambivalent role of digital technologies in our societies and interrogates the future by questioning their relevance. It considers where we come from and how the pre-web world prepared us for this new reality, notably through science fiction. Then, it discusses what is happening in our daily lives by deciphering the announced technological advances and their effects on reality; in particular, a "synthetic horizon" where the Metaverse, crypto-assets, and artificial intelligence coexist to help humanity meet the challenges ahead. Finally, it considers whether these technologies will really help and explores a horizon that seems the most desirable for all. 

This course consists of three segments. The first part focuses on grammar, covering logical analysis, tenses, modes, style, and spelling, accompanied by regular dictation and vocabulary building. The second part focuses on writing skills to develop competence in French written expression. The third part on written comprehension focuses on understanding different type of texts: informative, argumentative, and authoritative.

This course explores how British food has evolved across the centuries. It studies a few of the current food-related issues that are relevant today in the United Kingdom through various analyses of texts, film extracts, menus, maps, and statistics. The course provides the opportunity to reconsider stereotypes to gain a better understanding of British food.

This course studies the psychology of language. It focuses on how language, specifically bilingualism, is psychologically manifested in children.