University of Bordeaux

This course presents and discusses contemporary new propaganda techniques and their applications in various political and national conditions. It introduces the basic concepts of classic propaganda, beginning with an explanation of the classic definitions, and continues with the recent studies in which propaganda is identified as non-consensual, not informed, and/or not free organized persuasive communication. The course covers the history of propaganda using the perspectives of both war and peace times, including the establishment of the influential department of the Curia in Catholic Church in 1622 (Propaganda Fide), the 20th century phenomena of fascist and communist propaganda, as well as more recent information warfare and hybrid wars in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Propaganda techniques are analyzed using the examples of, among others, the information-psychological operations from Russia and the American public diplomacy. Additionally, the propaganda operations that accompanied the military conflicts in Middle East and North Africa are covered. The course discusses the role of the traditional and new media, especially social media, in propaganda wars, as well as the relationship between marketing, public relations, and propaganda.

This course explores how space is navigated in the modern novel. It focuses on Kafka’s LE CHATEAU, which describes various types of places (roads, bridges, inns, walls, corridors) and disturbed perceptions of space-time, to see how literature places the modern subject in the wide world. The course considers the difference between places and spaces: physical and geographical space, private and public space, foreignness and strangeness, borders and limits, cultivated and uncultivated. It observes how a text, narrative or descriptive, constructs a space and the symbolic role it can give it.

This course develops linguistic skills to increase cultural competences for a more comprehensive understanding of the French way of life. It studies the main media of information and their credentials, the organization of information in a newspaper, the press review, and the press design. The course includes a visit to the printing house of the newspaper Sud Ouest.

This course studies civil procedure. It focuses on the organization and functioning of civil justice, including the organization of the court and the trial system. Topics include how cases (mostly non-criminal) are brought before a judge, the criteria for gaining an audience with a judge, the roles of various members of the court, and the general rules for conducting court proceedings.

This course presents theories on the diversity of languages. Through a theoretical approach, it focuses on the relationship between language, culture, and geographical environment to study the representation of the world in relation to languages. The first part of the course deals with the categories of linguistic variation and the importance of translation and language learning. It presents characteristics common to languages or invariants, investigating the universals of language. The course then introduces the genetic classification of languages and revisits its history and related theories. It also discusses the typological classification and the areal method. The first part of the course serves as a theoretical foundation to lay the groundwork for the second part on sociolinguistic structures, which studies the contact of languages to explain the formation of mixed dialects.

This course clarifies a number of key facts on the place and functions of the modern state in a selection of “advanced” or “developed” economies, mostly in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sample. It adopts an approach by main themes of government intervention. It also traces the successive developments of the modern state over the past 200 years in order to highlight the logic of today’s functions and actions and their determinants and objectives. The lectures, along with economic data, weave together major insights from political philosophy, history, and sociology.

This course takes the form of a tour of the city and the environment near the Maison des Arts. Each session refers to two or three artists, photographers, or painters. Students learn to handle the device, exercise the gaze, and situate their work in relation to old or current references. This course alternates short exercises with visits to exhibitions and artistic places and meetings with actors of contemporary art. Topics such as device, document and fiction, photography and identity, and certain salient elements of the history of photography are discussed. Students design, produce, and present a photographic project that demonstrates a unique approach to the subject and a required minimum mastery of the photographic tool, and reflects on the place of the optical image in the field of art not as a goal to be achieved but as an exchangeable form open to the subjectivity of the spectators.

This course analyzes the media’s construction of historical discourses and their representations according to the type of media. This interdisciplinary workshop analyzes historical content from a semi-discursive approach.