Accent, Paris

This course introduces students to different psychological perspectives for thinking about social justice, inequality, freedom, and collective life. Drawing on social psychology, cognitive psychology, cultural psychology, affective neuroscience, clinical and abnormal psychology, and selected psychodynamic perspectives, the course examines psychological processes involved in social judgment, prejudice, collective action, mental health, and social change. Rather than approaching social justice as a fixed concept or through a single dimension of analysis, the course considers it as a dynamic, socially and culturally situated construction shaped by how people perceive, interpret, feel, contest, and organize around questions of fairness, exclusion, autonomy, and belonging. Anchored in Paris, and in a context where liberté, égalité, fraternité remains both an aspiration and a point of tension, the course also introduces students to French traditions that continue to inform clinical psychology and the human sciences. Through readings, guest lectures, and site visits, students encounter ideas that may offer complementary lenses for contemporary psychology. This comparative approach allows students to place U.S.-style psychological frameworks in dialogue with French ways of thinking about the psyche, society, language, power, and institutions. Field-based learning plays an important role in the course. At La Salpêtrière Hospital, students visit a historically significant site for the development of psychology, psychiatry, neurology, clinical observation, and institutional care in France. The visit to the Paris Commune offers a different kind of historical case study, focused on collective action, social identity, political imagination, and struggles over equality, while also allowing students to discover another facet of historic Montmartre. Guest speakers, including clinical psychologists working in France, help students connect these historical and theoretical questions to contemporary issues in mental health, liberty, autonomy, social inclusion, and public care. Together, these experiences invite students to expand psychological concepts with complementary analytical tools drawn from French theory, cultivating a critical perspective on the psychology of social justice in a French context.

The city of Paris is a constantly evolving structure, shaped by 2,000 years of history. Its urban layout and buildings reflect and stand on a substrate resulting from a balance between political, religious, social, demographic, heritage, and environmental aspects. This course provides an understanding of the city and its architecture during key periods through the analysis of notable buildings and neighborhoods. More specifically, it investigates constructions composed over a long period of time (on the scale of a building or site where different architectural styles coexist). Structures, materials, aesthetics, and ornamentation: the art of building reflects technical skill and thinking of an era. Thus, it is proposed to study this question of palimpsest architecture through a historical, cultural, and stylistic approach, through the transmission of essential urban and architectural vocabulary, as well as through bibliographical references. Furthermore, by focusing on strategic points in the city, this study connects to the history of architectural history and urban history, as well as themes that, beyond Paris, are linked to French and European history. Theoretical instruction is supplemented by field trips where students train their observation skills, making sketches that help them memorize and become familiar with architectures from ancient times to the present day.
 

This course explores the diverse cultures, practices, and geographies of activism with a focus on France and Paris. Through lectures, workshops, site visits, and films, students engage with the ways individuals and collectives resist systems of domination, claim rights, and imagine alternative futures. It examines the theories and practices that shape activism, ranging from ecological and feminist struggles to LGBTQIA+ movements, artistic interventions, and festive forms of protest. By combining conceptual readings with experiential learning, the course emphasizes both critical reflection and direct engagement. Students map sites of power and resistance, participate in workshops, analyze cultural artifacts, and debate pressing issues of social justice. Throughout, they develop tools to understand activism not only as political action but also as a cultural practice that reshapes identities, communities, and public space.

The city and language course introduces students to French history, culture, and language through team-taught instruction. In the “City as Public Forum” sessions, students are introduced to French history and culture through a series of lectures and site visits. Students discover some of the fascinating ways the core principles of social justice were tested in theory and practice on the streets of Paris in the past and explore how they evolved into the pillars of French society today. The course focuses on just how an ideal society should be forged, where all are free individuals and members of a cohesive community at the same time. Trying to make individuals believe—as religions do—in the primacy of the collective, and in its concomitant goal of protecting human rights, is at the core of social justice in France. From 52 B.C.E to today, France has been an exemplar of how—and how not—to construct a just society. To render these values visible, and therefore legible, to all by adding a physical dimension—whether constructive or destructive—to the usual means of establishing laws or setting policies, is what distinguishes the history of France's capital city of Paris. Those who control Paris—be they monarchs, revolutionaries, or presidents, past and present—believe that erecting all kinds of physical structures will render their values concrete and immutable. The ideal French society did not always necessarily mean a democratic or inclusive one. Since the French Revolution, however, institutionalizing the concept of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” has been France's greatest universal achievement and a source of constant upheaval, eliciting a unique form of secular activism that has led to targeting buildings and monuments that no longer reflect the collective's values. Students discuss how the diverse social actors, who constitute “the French,” continue to thrust their bodies and minds into the physical spaces of the public sphere in the pursuit of social justice. In the “Unlocking French” sessions, students learn targeted language skills through situational communication, so they have the opportunity to use everything they learn as they go about their daily activities.