University of Bordeaux

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.

This course explores how various forms of art, especially painting and architecture, have served to establish and strengthen the political cohesion of the young American nation. After defining key concepts, the course focuses on landscape painting in the 19th century, which was dedicated to the majesty of American landscapes. On the architectural level, it studies classicism as well as specific American forms of architecture. The course provides an opportunity analyze an artistic work in its historical and cultural context through the prism of building a national identity.

This course introduces the roles and functioning mechanisms of two major remote communication systems between the cells of the organism: the nervous system and the endocrine system. It covers the mechanisms and consequences of membrane permeability to electrolytes, the bases of cellular excitability (neurons, endocrine cells, muscles), cellular communication (Ligand-receptor interactions: receptors for neurotransmitters (synapses) and hormones), and the muscular excitation-contraction coupling.