Political Science

This course provides a critical understanding of the major issues currently faced by European countries, and the interplay between Member States, European institutions, global challenges and democratic legitimacy concerns. It analyzes the facts to understand the major causes and potential consequences and think of possible solutions to address challenges existing in the euro area, those created by the unprecedented migrant flows in Europe, stemming from climate change. The course also looks at the rise of Euroscepticism and the issue of democratic deficit in the European Union. The course provides a critical approach and a solid understanding of the major issues and debates on the topics covered during the class.

In examining how contemporary political power is organized, notably through constitutions, this course presents a view of issues past and present, legal and political, French or foreign, national and international.  It also offers several keys so that students can orient themselves among the facts, the information, and the documentary sources.  Students are given a certain amount of information but also encouraged to build intellectual and practical skills to bring out their critical thinking abilities, their ability to hold a rational argument, and stimulate their creative intellectualism.  The themes examined in the course include: defining a certain number of fundamental notions related to the analysis of constitutional law and the political institutions; examining several examples of foreign political institutions; and understanding the trajectory, the situation, and the characteristics of today’s French institutions.  Through case studies and applied examples, each course meeting is an opportunity to enrich the methodology required to examine these issues.

This course examines the history of East Asia`s international relations and East Asia`s diplomacy towards the United States and the world at large from the 19th century to the advent of the Cold War. More specifically, this course is devoted to answering the question, "How did Korea charter her own path towards establishing a modern conception of national sovereignty throughout the long 19th and 20th centuries?" Topics include a comparison between a Confucian tributary system and a Westphalian system, Japan`s modernization and competing Chinese and Korean responses, Japanese imperialism and the coming of the First and Second World Wars, Japan`s surrender to the Allies and lingering post-colonial questions such as territorial sovereignty over Dokdo, the Korean War and the first two Indochina Wars as the opening "hot wars" of the Cold War, and finally, the future of the Northeast Asian international order after the Cold War.

There are three main objectives in this course. First, it examines how to prepare a theoretical basis to analyze East Asian international relations from the 19th century to the advent of the Cold War and paying special attention to how Korea encountered changes and vicissitudes of fortune as it chartered its own course in the world. Second, it identifies factors which stabilized and disrupted the East Asian international order and how interactions between such factors affected Korea’s responses. Finally, it explores what the future of East Asia’s international order will look like and how Korea’s diplomacy should act as a pivot between East Asia and the United States.

This course analyzes the role that religious forces play in international society today. It provides an overview of major world religions then discusses the role of religions in conflicts and peace.