University of Bordeaux

This course offers a panoramic view of the history of France. While in Bordeaux, students confront the names of historical figures through Bordeaux and French toponymy. This historical background makes it possible to better understand actuality and the press. Learning takes place by encountering historical characters from prehistory, antiquity, the middle ages, the renaissance, modern times, and the contemporary period.

This course focuses on the problems and methods of philosophy through a survey of philosophical responses to the following questions: What exist and what is its nature? What is it to have a mind and knowledge, and how much knowledge do we really have? Can we freely determine our actions, what actions are moral or immoral, and what is the good life for a human being? What is justice and is it possible to design a just government for human societies? The selection of readings is taken from the following four areas of philosophical thinking: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. The course provides a preliminary orientation to the notion of philosophical argument, its various forms, and the ways they can be analyzed. The course analyzes and comments on philosophical arguments, develops knowledge of the canonical position held by philosophers, and encourages students to develop and defend their own positions through careful argumentation.

This course represents additional work for the AGENDA SETTING AND ISSUE DEFINITION course. This course is concerned with how public problems are formed and framed. It considers how public problems become, or do not become, items on the public agenda in order to lead to policy development. After introducing the notion of agenda setting, the course develops the social problem approach, and then exposes leading concepts to explain the character of the agenda in modern times.