France

This course considers destruction and the life and destiny of works of art. It investigates how we understand and describe the gestures or modes of destruction of works of art, a question that seems to arise from the more general problem of iconoclasm, defined as the refusal and destruction of images. It also considers other means of destruction: the effect of time and ruin, of a natural disaster, or the consequence of a voluntary gesture on the part of an artist, whether they are the producer or not. The course discusses how we can distinguish iconoclasm from “vandalism,” “attack” from artistic gesture by offering a philosophical history of the arts and an investigation into the different modes of existence of works of art.

This course covers three main topics: measuring the per capita income of countries; measuring inequalities; and measuring poverty. It examines key indicators, how these indicators are actually constructed using available data, and the conditions for their comparison over time and between countries.

This course is a chronological presentation of French literature from the Middle Ages to 1600.  It connects genres and literary texts with the history of ideas and mentalities.

This course explores how literature shapes our perspective on the past and identity. By studying Patrick Chamoiseau's LE DIMANCHE AU CACHOT and Josephy Boyden's DANS LE GRAND CERCLE DU MONDE, this course considers how authors can use fiction to reconquer a painful past to better reconstruct an identity and a perspective that has been hidden.

From the first European measures to the European Green Deal, this course focuses on energy transition plans and strategies. To do so, it analyzes the stakes inherent to the multilevel governance of energy in the EU, between European objectives, national policy-making, and local implementation of energy infrastructures. Through this multi-scale approach to public policy, the course explores and compares the challenges raised by the regulation of different energy forms in various European countries. It tackles renewable energies such as wind power, fossil fuels such as shale gas, and provides an overview of European energy policy-making through national case studies.

Firms are faced with informational and cognitive problems that threaten their efficiency and even their survival. This course shows how contract and governance structures can answer these problems. It explains how corporate firms, in their various forms, can be analyzed as networks of property rights; shows how their different organizational designs can be explained by knowledge and information constraints. It then analyzes, through theoretical models (incentives, screening, signaling, etc.) and case studies (CEOs' remunerations), the ways in which asymmetries of both information and knowledge have led to specific modes of executive governance and compensation.

This course is an introduction to the social and political dynamics that shape the lives of Muslim minorities in Western Europe and North America. The first part of the course situates Islam and Muslims within the larger European and American histories, by comparing how church-State relations, colonial history, immigration and racial inequalities have affected their representations. The second part unpacks a series of public controversies over Islam and Muslims and explores what they reveal about Euro-American societies. Finally, the course investigates how Islam is lived among ordinary European and American Muslims. This course takes a comparative stance by covering a plurality of national contexts to become familiar with the various public and academic debates surrounding European and American Muslims.

The last fifteen years have been marked by a series of expressions of discontent around the globe, emerging in waves of protest (Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Gilets jaunes) and in so-called “populist” movements, both right-wing (Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, Bolsonaro) and left-wing (Bernie, Podemos, SYRIZA, Lula). This course analyzes these phenomena as a crisis of political identities in a context of growing precarity. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the course introduces, develops, and critically debates the main concepts of post-structuralist discourse theory (hegemony, antagonism, ideology), and their relation to communication theory, economics, and social psychology. The leitmotif of the course is the articulation of theoretical debate and empirical cases.

The extensive independent study field research paper produced by the student is both the centerpiece of the intern's professional engagement and the culmination of the academic achievements of the semester. During the preparatory session, IFE teaches the methodological guidelines and principles to which students are expected to adhere in the development of their written research. Students work individually with a research advisor from their field. The first task is to identify a topic, following guidelines established by IFE for research topic choice. The subject must be tied in a useful and complementary way to the student-intern's responsibilities, as well as to the core concerns of the host organization. The research question should be designed to draw as much as possible on resources available to the intern via the internship (data, documents, interviews, observations, seminars and the like). Students begin to focus on this project after the first 2-3 weeks on the internship. Each internship agreement signed with an organization makes explicit mention of this program requirement, and this is the culminating element of their semester. Once the topic is identified, students meet individually, as regularly as they wish, with their IFE research advisor to generate a research question from the topic, develop an outline, identify sources and research methods, and discuss drafts submitted by the student. The research advisor also helps students prepare for the oral defense of their work which takes place a month before the end of the program and the due date of the paper. The purpose of this exercise is to help students evaluate their progress and diagnose the weak points in their outline and arguments. Rather than an extraneous burden added to the intern's other duties, the field research project grows out of the internship through a useful and rewarding synergy of internship and research. The Field Study and Internship model results in well-trained student-interns fully engaged in mission-driven internships in their field, while exploring a critical problem guided by an experienced research advisor.

This interdisciplinary course examines the socioeconomic and political disenfranchisement experienced by residents of the "other France"—a France comprised of working-class citizens often of immigrant origin and from France’s former colonies. It introduces students to urban sociology by requiring that they focus on the particular problems experienced by social actors who live in economically and socially disfavored parts of Paris. Topics covered include urban sociological theories, de-facto segregation, poverty, crime, schooling, public policy, national identity, the negotiation of bi-culturality, and the French secularizing mission. Students investigate these topics from a variety of sources, ranging from documentary film and photojournalism to literary and cinematic expressions. Via these sources, students become familiar with a vibrant urban "vernacular" culture that contests issues pertaining to citizenship, racialization, and representation.