History

This course provides an overview of the history of law in Europe. The course sketches the history of a common civilization, to which people contributed coming from different and faraway lands, cities, kingdoms, and towns. A special focus is on the sources of law: legislation, legal doctrine, and legal practice. The relevance of each of these sources varied over time. In order to shed light on the common features throughout the history of Europe, the course focuses on a selection of the institutions of private and public law which are most representative of each epoch and each country. A special emphasis is on the correlation between the laws and the role played by professional jurists. All topics in the course are dealt with particular attention to the exchange of normative bodies, legislations, doctrines, judicial decisions, and customs within Europe, including English Common Law. Overall, the course introduces students to the complexities of European legal history through in-depth analysis of the sources of the law, from the middle ages to the present time. The course recommends students have background knowledge with the fundamentals of Private Law and Public Law.

This course explores the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of Spain during the 19th century, contextualizing the historical evolution that took place and shaped Spanish society during that period.

This course examines the role played by international law during European colonization and after the decolonization movement of the 1950s and 1960s (exploitation colonies) and the 1980s and 1990s (settlement colonies). The first part of the course shows how traditional international law was a colonialist and racist international law that legalized the entire colonial movement. The second part looks at the ambivalent role of contemporary international law: on the one hand, it is used to repair colonial history; on the other hand, it helps to perpetuate a regime of domination and contemporary neo-colonialism.

The history of historians is part of a range of representations and appropriations of the past. It differs from them while echoing them. The scientific approach, based on a quest for truth and objectivity, using procedures and rules for the administration of evidence, coexists with a multitude of social and political relationships with the past, which have continued to multiply over the last forty years. Memorial claims, demands for reparations, ideological constructions, and the reinvention of traditions fuel numerous and contradictory discourses on the past, which take various forms (literature, cinema, visual arts, commemorations, collections, etc.). The past is a shared object, the uses of which are at the heart of political and social conflicts, particularly through the spread of the phenomenon of victim competition. The challenge of this course is to understand the logic and forms of these various uses, while defining the specificity of historical knowledge, its requirements, and its objectives. It also involves questioning its possible role in the current context marked by the resurgence of political nationalism, religious fanaticism, and attacks on democracy.

This course focuses on the history of the 1960s in America and connects it to global and American artistic reactions. It studies mediums such as sculpture, painting, text, and performance. The course explores David Hammons and the connection of his work to the history of the civil rights movement in America.

The course deals with themes of Lyon's urban history (by urbanization, space, public squares, housing, architecture, places of worship, trade and commerce, the ways of life of the inhabitants and their relationship with the Rhône and Saône rivers). Comparisons are made with other cities. Finally, the course covers the city’s cultural institutions in charge of transmitting memory and urban heritage (museums, archives, etc.) and includes field study sessions. Through the approach of social history, the course presents the two-thousand-year history of the city, from its origins to the present day, with emphasis on certain particularly decisive moments in the construction of space, the transformations of urban activities, and ways of life.

While the pursuit of happiness is an ideal present in many Western cultures, for the French, happiness takes various forms: a certain joie de vivre, an appreciation of life’s simple pleasures, and an affinity for companionship. Why is it, then, that France is consistently ranked as one of the least happy countries in Europe according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE)? The French may be known as contentious grumblers who are prone to flights of melancholy and often embroil themselves in gloomy philosophical reflection. And yet, the deeply-ingrained cultural desire to live a full life and find happiness is undeniably a major concern for the French. This course explores representations of happiness in French cultural production, with an emphasis on the city of Paris. Through the study of socio-cultural and historical events as well as critical, literary, and cinematic texts, students explore how the concept of happiness manifests itself in unique ways throughout recent history and in diverse social worlds. From the nineteenth century to the present, happiness has taken many forms: material seduction, consumer delight, everyday bliss, personal independence. The course explores how authors and filmmakers encourage us to reflect on a deceptively simple question: What is happiness and where can we find it? Is happiness to be found in the people and things that surround us, or are we to find it within ourselves?

This course provides an introductory understanding of the processes that shaped the modern Middle East from the turn of the 20th century to today. It seeks to engage with the history of the region from within as it examines themes like colonialism, nationalism, international relations, social and political movements and intellectual trends. The course provides a foundation for more advanced discussions of politics and society in the region.