International Studies

This course introduces students to contemporary Chinese foreign policy. It examines how historical and geographical legacies, domestic institutions, political leadership, and societal forces shape China’s foreign policy decisions. The course also explores China’s relations with major countries and regions, including the United States, Russia, Japan, and the Korean Peninsula, as well as China’s growing role in global governance in areas such as the economy, technology, and the environment. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically analyze China’s foreign policy in a changing global context.  

The course provide a comprehensive understanding of the issues shaping today's world. The working sessions focus mainly on regional studies in order to illustrate how international issues are changing. Particular emphasis is placed on the new geopolitics of Europe and the Middle East, using the reemergence of a power such as Russia as a basis for analysis and relating it to the policies of the European Union and the United States. The course articulates global and regional scales and to shows the links between economic and geopolitical changes.

This course provides the fundamental keys to understand the new place occupied by the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf on the international scene. It offers a panoramic study that is twofold: how are these Arab monarchies deploying regional policies to consolidate their influence in the Middle East; and how have these Arab monarchies become a new global epicenter of international relations? The course also includes a simulation module for international negotiations. It provides a more practical approach of the subject and its stakes, but also to practice international negotiations, public speaking and to solicit the knowledge acquired in the course. In view of the breadth of the theme and the area covered, the teaching involves many disciplines, such as history, geography, economics and international law, with a predominance of international relations and strategic studies.

This course is an introduction to public international law. It covers evolution, sources, relationship between international and municipal law, the law of treaties, the law of the sea and international institutions, particularly the United Nations.

This intermediate international relations course engages students to design prospective scenarios for emerging challenges that have an impact on the international system, organizing the information in a way that will facilitate international political decision-making processes and using forecasting tools. Prior knowledge is required of qualitative and quantitative research methods and historical analysis of the international system.

This is intermediate course delves into the historical evolution of the international system. It covers the main trends and characteristics of the system in different eras of modern world history, identifying the main causes, consequences, and stakeholders of different international conflicts. 

This is a translation workshop where students translate and do research on activism. It includes several guests speakers, including a certified court interpreter, a Translation Studies specialist on gender, a sociolinguist, and representatives from the U.S.'s Montclair State University Human Trafficking Center. Students are also introduced to a free language corpus analyzer software.

This course examines how international security is challenged by the risk of systemic disruptions that not only spread within a single system but may also spill over into other systems. Particular attention will be paid to the trinity of international security, risk, and uncertainty. Identifying, assessing, and mitigating risk are essential capabilities for achieving international security. 

This course deepen understanding of cooperation, forms of governance, and political institutions in the contemporary international system and its evolution, using the various analytical tools provided by theories of international relations. It explores the diversity of international actors and the complex nature of their interactions within an international system profoundly transformed by the end of the Cold War, shifts in power, and new rivalries among states. In particular, drawing on the study of the various settings, types, and levels of international cooperation, the course identifies the challenges currently facing the classical model of the international system based on state sovereignty and formal multilateralism. At the same time, it examines the extent to which this shift toward multi-actor (public and private) and multi-site international cooperation (toward what are called “complex regimes”) is impacted by the intensification of inter-state tensions.

This course explores what gender studies—and feminist studies in particular—teach us about the international sphere, and how they lead us to reexamine traditional subjects such as war, power, and security. To this end, the course uses a selection of foundational and more recent texts to introduce these fields, their questions, and their methods. Sessions are structured around interactive activities (oral exercises, both individual and group, and discussions) and lectures on feminist or gender studies in international relations. Focused on examining diverse cases and contexts, the course analyzes social movements (the #MeToo movement, the Iranian uprising, eco-feminism) and international public policies, whether originating from states (France’s “feminist diplomacy” or the projection of U.S. military power worldwide) or from international organizations (UN documents or European Union policies).