Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po)

This course provides an exploration of the relationship to Eastern European Jewishness, both secular and religious, from the end of the 18th century to the present, marked by profound social, economic, political, and cultural transformations. The complex relationship between all of them reflects on the evolutions of Jewish singularity, paradigmatic to other minorities. This interdisciplinary course introduces a modern encounter between Jews, societies, and States, both in culture and politics, including the consequences of the Holocaust and its legacy in the present. It offers a precious key to understand the diversity of contemporary debates on singular versus universal rights, traditions versus modernity, rural versus urban cultures, religiousness versus secularity and beyond that, the condition of modernity in Europe. Olga Tokarczuk's Nobel Prize-winning book, THE BOOKS OF JACOB, is the focus of reflective, historical, and creative work throughout this course. The creative cartographies produced are presented to and potentially commented on by the author.

This course explores the current state of play in EU platform regulation and the societal developments to which it responds. It covers the most important current issues in platform governance, including topics such as harmful social media content, platform labor, competition in digital markets, and the “platformization” of media and culture. It also explores and analyzes how EU law is responding to these issues, in areas such as data protection and competition law as well as sector-specific regulations targeting platforms, like the just-passed Digital Services Act. While the course focuses on legal issues, a legal background is not essential, as the focus is on how the EU is aiming to address concrete policy issues rather than on technical/doctrinal questions. The course encourages thinking in a critical and interdisciplinary manner. Rather than simply attributing social changes to technological developments, it encourages thinking about how platform companies' technology and business practices interact with and influence broader social and political trends. To this end, class sessions focus on discussing the assigned reading and helping students formulate and share their own opinions on each week's topics.

This course concerns biodiversity law which is, first and foremost, a right to protect species, their habitats, natural areas, and ecological continuity; as well as a law governing certain activities, whether they contribute to the regulation of species (hunting) or are detrimental to them (urban planning, agriculture, development of major infrastructures). The course provides the foundations needed to understand these major legal issues in their various aspects (international law, EU law, and domestic law) while drawing on concrete, emblematic cases.

This course focuses on the ancient history of the Middle East as a textbook case illustrating the transition from prehistory to history, via the establishment of a centralized power served by a powerful administration, an influential religion, a codified practice of writing, and subtle economic and diplomatic networks. It investigates the unifying factors behind the extension of the geographical contours of this cultural area, what memories classical antiquity retained of this distant East, and the discoveries it made. The course examines this abundant premise, at the crossroads of political, cultural, religious, and artistic sources, to shed light on a few fundamentals with parallels to our own times that should be considered with as much curiosity as caution.

This course focuses on the sociology of the State and its relations with society in contemporary Russia. Historical and political sociologists have focused on the state in the form it has taken in the West since the Middle Ages. These essential and fundamental analyses form the starting point for study of the sociological reality of the state in post-Soviet Russia. Using the tools of the historical sociology of politics and comparative politics, the course studies the political transition following the collapse of the USSR, the reform of public action, the trajectories of elites and state agents, and the reform of the state and its authoritarian modernization. Ultimately, the course considers what makes the recent transformations of the Russian state so singular on the one hand and so banal on the other, in the context of the global neoliberal modernization of the state and public action.

This course demonstrates how the political mobilization of law can be analyzed from a sociological perspective. At the intersection of the sociology of law and the sociology of mobilizations, it shows how the "weapon of law" constitutes an essential dimension of contemporary mobilizations. The place of law in the repertoires of collective action is examined: its scope, its limits, and the historicity of its uses. The course looks at various forms of mobilization, both in France and abroad, such as anti-colonial struggles, feminist mobilizations, trade union struggles, the defense of freedoms, and mobilizations in favor of the environment.

This course offers a political history of the environment through the mobilization of the working classes around issues related to common goods, industrial risks, health, and pollution. It also takes a global, long-term approach to these mobilizations. The course is designed as an introduction to research: it first introduces scientific writing through a reading note based on an article, then analyzes primary sources to present findings at a "mini-colloquium," and finally provides an opportunity to write a collective research article.

This course offers an introduction to the major geographical and historical dynamics that structure (and divide) the Middle East region; the national, ethnic, and religious identities that divide the region; as well as the major transnational movements shaping the region in the contemporary era (anti-imperialism, “Arab nationalism,” political Islam, along with relevant concepts and terminology). It characterizes the evolving and shifting roles of key external actors (United Nations, United States, Russia, China, European states, European Union) All of this is based on the use of open sources, including those from American and European think tanks (though not exclusively).

This course shows that Africa is a productive laboratory for students and researchers in international relations and security studies as the region gathers some of the most enduring interlinked political rivalries within the international system. It challenges and sometimes clarifies powerful concepts developed by the field (hegemonic stability, regional security complex, failed states, small state, sovereignty). It contrasts arguments that international relations focuses on the politics of powerful states and that, as a consequence, there is an African exceptionalism which explains the field’s inability to accurately address African experiences. The course examines how Africa has often been neglected by the different theoretical approaches to international relations and more generally by the discipline, demonstrating that the Horn of Africa is pertinent not only for area specialists but also constitutes a remarkable ground for fieldwork and theory-testing of both old and new approaches. 

This course offers an introduction to gender studies, extending to the study of feminist and queer theories, women's and LGBTQI+ movements, and masculinities. The course explores critical questions concerning gender in society while introducing key issues, questions, and debates in gender studies scholarship. It develops a gender prism to conduct gender analysis in a range of spheres, including political institutions, the labor market, healthcare systems, and media, cutting across various disciplines such as law, political science, sociology, and economics. Additionally, it provides the necessary critical tools to evaluate and participate in contemporary policy debates, such as same-sex marriage, surrogacy, and #metoo. The course provides a solid foundation in gender studies to be able to analyze gender dynamics in various contexts and engage thoughtfully in ongoing discussions about gender-related issues and contemporary debates.