University of Bordeaux

This course focuses on the major theories of acting developed in the 20th century in the West, a period during which the theater underwent major transformations, particularly in terms of pedagogy. More specifically, it deals with the work carried out by French actors and directors such as Copeau, Decroux, Barrault, Marceau, and lecoq. The course also studies the two pillars of this pedagogical revolution, Constantin Stanislavski and Vsevolod Meyerhold, who, in Russia, were the first to emphasize the importance of systematic training for the actor based on the practice of exercises. It explores how their discoveries have changed the habits of the actor while opening the way to new research initiatives, including those of Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, whose proposals are analyzed during the course.

This course provides an experimental approach to psychology. It introduces the use of probability and common tools to analyze and synthesize data and apply various methods involved in the practice of the discipline.

Exploring French political history since 1870, this course presents the history of the French republican system during the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics. It explains how this political regime gradually stabilized and became synonymous with democracy. The lectures focus on the successive constitutions and their application, while also enabling students to discover the main political figures of the period, the presidents and the political leaders for instance, and to understand the great moments of crises and of progress. The course also focuses on France during the two World Wars and the colonial crisis, underlining the effects of these events on the government.

History—both the actual physical materials that help historians establish a timeline of events of the past and the imaginings contemporaries have of those events—is a crucial part of feminist and gay rights activism. This course analyzes feminist organizing in the U.K. and gay rights organizing in the U.S. from two perspectives. First, it delves into specific historical moments that have created significant cultural and political reverberations, such the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York and the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp from 1981. Second, it examines how those events and others become parts of the storytelling used by the feminist and gay rights movements as tools to advance their demands in specific national contexts. From this dual articulation, the seminar examines the relationship between the past and the present as well as the stakes that this reciprocity has for advancing or hindering social progress. Students engage in independent and original research as they learn to engage in historical archival research and think about these issues from the perspective of apprentice scholars.