Spring 2022 Courses

Instructor: Stéphanie Bérard

This undergraduate course aims to unveil a lesser known face of Paris linked to its colonial past in order to reread the present social, political and cultural landscape of France’s capital city. By visiting the hotspots of a forgotten Parisian black history, students will learn about the legacy of a colonial past often unknown and neglected. Sites will include the Latin Quarter which saw the birth of Negritude movement in the 1930s with the encounter of African and Caribbean intellectuals (Césaire, Senghor, Damas) and the foundation of the editions Présence Africaine with Alioune Diop. We will also focus on the movement of migration from African and the Caribbean to France in the 1960s until now. This itinerant historical and sociological approach of Paris is complemented by an exploration of the contemporary cultural and artistic politics of the Black stage. By attending theater plays and dance shows, and meeting with African and Caribbean artists living in Paris (playwrights, directors, opportunity to explore Black Parisian culture from an insider’s point of view and find out what it means to be a Black artist today in France. actors, choreographers, dancers), students will enjoy the The reading and analysis of literary and cinematographic works will allow students to tackle social, political and racial issues, and explore further the global dimension of today’s diasporic and multicultural France. This course will finally question how skin color and politics are deeply intertwined by questioning discrimination on stage today. Does the cultural, intellectual and artistic capital that Paris was in the 1930s remain a cosmopolitan city open to the world?

Instructor: Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi

Based on a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the city diplomacy course is designed to offer a general introduction to the international role of cities. Through an innovative approach cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines (international relations, urban sociology, area studies, history, geography),  the course will combine the emerging scholarly literature with a comparative accent linked to the analysis of primary sources from cities and international actors from all regions of the world. As a result, students will learn to connect global and regional macro-dynamics with micro-transformations at the local level, while gaining an in-depth understanding of city diplomacy's core features, management, tangible impact, and evolution.

Instructor: Jean-Michel Dequeker

The course offers the chance to discover Paris both chronologically and spatially. It is about understanding how Paris has developed and transformed since Antiquity. We will explore how its neighborhoods and their identities have been shaped, as well as how the social and cultural geography of the city took shape. The course is set up in a way that most of the classes will be held in various neighborhoods around the city.

Instructor: Nicolas Baudouin

In this course, we will focus on a key artistic period that is full of upheavals. We will particularly consider the affirmation of the individuality of the artist in relation to the institutions and great pictorial movements that have marked the history of French painting of that time.

Description pending.

This course is only open to Columbia and Barnard students. Non-Columbia and Barnard students may audit the course.

Instructor: Christelle Taraud

The question of violence - a central paradigm for analyzing and understanding the ambivalences, paradoxes, and tensions of our contemporary societies - will be questioned in contexts of specific gender, class and racial power relations: those of revolution(s), war(s) and genocide(s) between the 19th century to the present in Europe, Asia, America and Africa. However, although the course focuses on situations of extreme violence against women in times of conflict, (in class we will refer to Diana Russel’s 1990 concept of “feminicide”), this course also intends to place women in an epistemological and political continuum: that of the "banality" of physical, psychological and sexual violence of everyday life. Yet, while women are undeniably victims of violence, the course will also demonstrate that there, as elsewhere, they are neither "inert" nor "passive". Indeed, violence will not only refer to the violence suffered by women but will also concern the violence produced by them. Multiple examples taken from contemporary history will demonstrate this last point (e.g. fighting figures such as Amazons, Pétroleuses - female supporters of the Paris Commune, accused of burning down much of the city during the last days of the Revolution in May 1871 -, women terrorists / suicide bombers / jihadists, women soldiers, anti-colonialist and / or anti-imperialist revolutionary activists). In addition, using concepts of agency and empowerment, students will rethink the question of these "women in arms" allowing them to interrogate central notions of gender studies such as gender binarity, the fixity of female identity, the "virilization" of women, gynophobia…, in many historical and current contexts where male domination is proven. Through these reflections, students will question the central link between combat (revolutionary or conventional) and women's emancipation / liberation. It is, however, in this dynamic between suffered violence and produced violence that lies the heart of the course. Indeed, throughout history, violence of women - which is still globally undiscussed and remains a minority field in academic and scientific discourse - was a way to control, monitor and punish women. This can be seen in the paradigmatic example of the French Revolution, at the end of the 18th century, with which we will begin our investigations and reflections.

Instructor: Julien Blanc

This course aims to analyze the different wars in which France was involved during the “dark 20th century”. From the “Tranchées” of World War I to the end of the Algerian war, through the disaster of June 1940 and the German occupation, we are going to study the most dramatic events of French contemporary history. Based on different types of documents (articles, speeches, diaries, paintings, literature, memoirs and several movies), the course will explore the political choices and behaviors of the population, the social and cultural fields (what war changes?) as well as questions of memories and representations, with a special focus on films.

Instructor: Fabien Delmas

French cinema is characterized by its artistic richness, its vigor and, above all, its diversity. This film history course will function as a journey in which we explore contemporary French cinema. Our itinerary will take us from the 1990s, those of “young French cinema” and neoclassicism, to the end of the 2010s, those of directors like Julie Delpy and Christophe Honoré. Together, we will develop a panorama in which the works of Cédric Klapisch and Nicole Garcia will intersect, as well as those of Céline Sciamma and Arnaud Desplechin. The objective of this course will be to introduce students to French cinema, its history and its diversity. We will also have the chance to correlate academic knowledge and practical experience, so as to give the students a significant idea of French film activity. For this reason, the semester will end with a real trip to Cannes for the film festival. There, students will be able to attend screenings and film meetings. To prepare for this event, a module of the course will be devoted to the festival, its history and how this global event has reflected, over the decades, the mutations and evolution of cinematographic art. This trip is all the more important as the Cannes Film Festival has always been connected with the great movements that have fueled, animated and invigorated French cinema. There are no pre-requisites to take this course. Curiosity and an interest in cinema are the only qualities required!

Instructor: Cédric Moreau de Bellaing

The main objective of the course is to offer a global perspective on French political life by recalling its history and analyzing its dominant current characteristics. After presenting the basics of the French political system - including institutions, political trends and major institutional issues - this course will address the themes that structure French political life. Particular attention will be paid to social issues that influence French policy, as well as to major changes impacting the environment in which new political issues appear (Europe, national identity, secularism, social inequalities, ecology and terrorism). The presentation and analysis of these various themes will permit students to fully benefit from the series of lectures intended to deepen certain major aspects of what we will be studying. Various academic guest speakers will also provide the opportunity for students to expand on the knowledge acquired in class as well as to witness diverging perspectives that will lead to lively debates and critical thinking.

Directed Research allows motivated students to deepen a research topic while acquiring methodological and analytical skills essential to research. Students define their area of interest, then work under the direction of a Research Director, appointed by the Program Director.

Students interested in completing a directed research project during the Spring 2022 semester must schedule an advising appointment with the Program Director and submit a research proposal (one page) no later than Thursday, January 20.

For more information on this option, please visit the Directed Research page.