France

This course offers an immersive journey into the world of French luxury, thoughtfully designed to captivate students from various academic and social backgrounds. The course begins with a focus on the history of French fashion, exploring its evolution from the 17th century to its present role as a global leader in style and innovation. Students uncover the cultural and technical advancements that have kept French luxury at the industry’s forefront, while examining how it continues to adapt to changing consumer demands. The course also provides an expanded look at the luxury world, touching on other sectors such as high-end automobiles, watchmaking, jewelry, and hospitality to offer a well-rounded understanding of luxury’s diverse landscape. Building on this historical foundation, the course then shifts to a business perspective, exploring the strategies, management practices, and digital transformations of iconic brands like Chanel, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, and Dior. Students learn how these luxury houses maintain their prestige in a fast-paced, digitally-driven world. To enrich the Paris experience, the course includes field visits to institutions like the YSL Museum and Cartier Foundation, as well as guided excursions to luxury boutiques and hotels. These experiences offer students studying in Paris a unique, hands-on look at the codes of luxury and the art of customer experience, making the most of their time in one of the world’s fashion capitals.

This course explores the intersection between food cultures and food politics, with an eye towards arguments and debates that have animated French culinary culture, and diverse interdisciplinary approaches to the scholarly study of food. How is food a portal for studying the changing dynamics of cities, global systems, and national identity? In what ways has food been employed to construct notions of community and belonging, and, inversely, exclusion? Through discussions of interdisciplinary course readings, analytic and ethnographic writing assignments, and excursions around the city of Paris, the course considers how food structures identities, everyday practices, and political lives in contemporary France.

This course offers a study of American literature through a selection of short stories related to major American cultural themes. Students acquire analytical, reading, and argumentative tools for written and oral expression, and learn the methods of literary criticism. 

This course on the British 19th century focuses on London and beyond. London is the neuralgic center of 19th-century England, and a key subject of study for Anglicists - making it an ideal location for a multidisciplinary, civilizational, artistic, historical, and literary approach. Complementary insights highlight the specificity of the capital in the 19th century. But London is also an invitation to travel, both spatially (the foreigners who visit London, but also, conversely, the Empire/Commonwealth elsewhere, and the orientalism they generate) and temporally: today, London is a figure, it lends itself to all the "neo" crazes, and Victorian London seems resolutely modern.

In this course, students delve into the cultural, historical, and economic significance of France’s most iconic culinary staples, analyzing their impact on modes of production, consumer behavior, and France’s national branding in a globalized market. Drawing on anthropology, food studies, and economics, it examines market trends in French food within the context of France’s mythical status as a gastronomic nation par excellence. The course traces the history of the Michelin-star restaurant rating system, ideologies of terroir, and claims to unique French savoir-faire when it comes to food. It also considers contemporary challenges to French food traditions—from the impact of climate change on cheese-making and farming, to how rising food prices are leading to a decline in domestic consumption—and emerging trends relating to the rise of global fast food in the land of the gastronomic meal. Through a variety of case studies the course offers insights into the cultural and economic implications for local producers, businesses, and the wider food industry ecosystem of such events as the recent baguette strikes, international foie gras controversies, the emergence of bean-to-bar chocolate in France, and the growing market for biodynamic wines. The class savors the complexities of France's gastronomic landscape through a variety of site visits which connect in-class discussions of France’s iconic culinary heritage with first-hand observation of diverse locations of contemporary food production and consumption in and around Paris.

This course provides a better understanding of France, its population, their characteristics, and the country’s political life. The curriculum focuses on current French society and its evolution in relation to the weight of history, its territorial dynamics, and cultural and political ideals.

In order to approach the Feminine/Masculine dichotomy or its complementarity, it is worth taking a diachronic approach that embraces different literary genres and philosophical arguments. From the earliest texts of Antiquity to contemporary novels, it's important to note the clichés and canons of the two genres in order to better reopen representations of binarity. Starting with Plato's myth of the androgyne, which proposes the invention of the sexes, the course works on the definitions of masculine and feminine, as well as their relationships. It then studies extracts from medieval literature to analyze the implementation of a codified image of masculine behavior and feminine posture. This highlights works less frequently found in school anthologies, and discovers original voices that sing of the links between men and women. The Renaissance period is explored through a painting by a man depicting a woman: starting from this banal subject, it sees the stakes, both poetic and aesthetic, in the figuration of the symbols chosen. Crossing the Grand siècle, with its coquettes, inconstants and honest men, the course moves on to the Age of Enlightenment, where the question of gender becomes pressing, with the proposals of Poulain de la Barre, for example. The poetics of uncertain or metamorphosed genders is explored using texts from the 19th and 20th centuries: the castrato, the hermaphrodite, and transvestites are studied. The course looks at new ways of referring to these figures as they find their representation in literature. Intersexuality will thus be examined in the light of works chosen for their literary interest and the philosophical reflection they generate. Finally, it takes a closer look at representations of male and female bodies in contemporary literature, focusing on the poetics of weakness, injury and ageing, with particular reference to the motif of the gaze of a third party and that of the mirror to which one speaks of one's own body.

This course improves conversational French at some of the highest levels of French grammar, such as the subjective, conditional, and simple forms. Grammar worksheets, in-class videos, debates, and class discussions are used to improve oral and reading comprehension to reach proficiency goals and prepare for language competency certification at the B2/C1 level. Emphasis is placed on the field and vocabulary of the Sciences.

This course enriches students' culture by deconstructing many prejudices about a film genre that is often caricatured. It also provides a parallel view of the evolution of a young nation, and the main problems linked to its expansion. Working with films and documents emphasizes the importance of speaking out and constructing an argumentative discourse. Students also work on their writing skills through research projects.

Through multimedia and practical classes, this course guides students to travel across the history of fashion editorials through the lenses of photography and film, learning to create in any media format, from print to digital. Students are encouraged to express their creativity in any desired industry, whether it is connected to fashion, food, art or any other idea brought by experiencing Paris. Special visits and exhibitions throughout the city provide an inspiring backdrop for students to produce artful projects. By the end of the course students have a deep knowledge of the main image creators, as well as the ability to develop their first still and moving images with accessible everyday tools. From designing a mood board to producing digital content, students accurately achieve innovative storytelling. This course requires no prior experience in media, fashion, or branding—just an interest in media and the creative world of editorials.