Paris 2013 Course Descriptions
MORNING COURSES
Intro to Sociology
Dr. Thomas Hochschild (VSU)
Introduction to Sociology: With the “City of Love and Lights” as your backdrop, you will learn about society, culture, media, religion, education, the economy, and politics. You will also develop a cross-cultural perspective as you learn how various social forces and geographic locations affect individual outcomes. In addition to traveling to museums, gardens, and the Eiffel Tower, you will learn about the everyday life of French urbanites as you take in the sights, sounds, and smells of one of the world’s great cities.
French 1001 : Introduction to the French language and Culture.
Luc Guglielmi (KSU)
Introduction to French language and culture, stressing progressive acquisition of effective communication skills in both the written and spoken language and an understanding of the practices and products of French and Francophone cultures. Students will take advantage of living in Paris by participating in many out of class activities such as visits to museums, and cafés. In addition, field trips will provide real life experiences which will enable students to establish concrete and direct connections between classroom activities and French culture and institutions.
French 1002
Beth Mauldin (Ga Gwinnett)
In this course, students will immerse themselves in the French language while exploring the history and culture of Paris and its surroundings. Students will actively learn grammar and practice new vocabulary by planning and taking a trip to Versailles, ordering food in the cafés made famous by Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernest Hemingway, discussing art at the Louvre, and learning about fashion during a walking tour of the Rue St. Honoré, the capital of French haute couture. This course is a continuation of the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills learned in French 1001.
British Literature I—Brit. Lit. Goes To Paris (LD)
Laura Thomason (Macon State)
As John Donne reminds us, “No man is an island.” People, languages, nations, and cultural movements are connected. This course will explore those connections by placing British literature in a broader European context. From Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales through Shakespeare, Restoration drama, neoclassical poetry and satire, and the rise of the novel, students will not only read and interpret literary works but see artifacts and manuscripts and visit historical sites. These hands-on experiences will contextualize a series of literary periods that can often seem remote. Students can then synthesize connections among literary themes, historical moments, and social movements.
Visual Rhetoric (LD)
Dr. Brian Carroll (Berry College)
While visual images have increasingly come to dominate our culture, our colleges and universities have devoted relatively little attention to visual media. As a partial response to this problem, this course is a study of visual theory, visual literacy and how images are used to persuade. We will utilize Paris’s seemingly unlimited visual possibilities in architecture, advertising and high and low culture to study and interpret audience-specific visual culture and communication. Field trips for us likely will include, among others:
o Disneyland Paris
o Cathedral de Notre Dame
o Shoah Holocaust Museum
o Musee du Louvre
o TV5 Monde television studios
o Rue de la Paix, a fashionable shopping street with top French brand names
o Pont des Arts Bridge and Seine riverwalk for other symbols of romantic love
Survey of Philosophy: Reason, Passions and the Good Life (LD)
Dr. James Winchester (GCSU)
This is an introductory course (no pre-requisites) with an emphasis on French philosophers. We will focus on how French philosophers understood reason and the passions and the role that these play in a good human life. Reading Montaigne, Descartes, Sartre, De Beauvoir, and Camus, we will ask how each understood the passions and reason, and what kind of balance they tried to achieve between these two. We will also explore the Paris of their respective epochs to see how their thinking was at times mirrored and sometimes rebuffed by their times. This will be a discussion based seminar.
AFTERNOON COURSES
Sociology of Urban Life (UD)
Dr Thomas Hochschild (VSU)
The Sociology of Urban Life: With the “City of Love and Lights” as your classroom, you will learn about the social history of cities, urban culture, competing metropolitan interests, and social change. As you explore the sights, sounds, and smells of Paris, you will learn about the symbolism of urban places—imparting meaning, conveying identities, affecting attitudes, and guiding human behavior. In addition to traveling to museums, gardens, and the Eiffel Tower, you will learn about the everyday life of French urbanites as you take in the sights, sounds, and smells of one of the world’s great cities.
Music Appreciation (LD)
Dr. Kenneth Kirk (VSU)
An introduction to music. Students will learn to use fundamental concepts of music history and theory as they encounter masterworks of western music. Fieldtrips will include concerts and recitals in such beautiful and historic venues as the church of St. Julien Le Pauvre, the Sainte Chapelle, and the Caveau de la Huchette jazz club. Fulfills Area C Humanities/Fine Arts requirement.
Paris: A cultural study of Paris through art and literature (UD)
Beth Mauldin (Ga Gwinnett)
A cultural study of Paris through art and literature. The course begins with the 1860s and the massive restructuring of the city by Baron Haussmann and ends with the années folles of the 1920s. Topics include the Belle Époque, impressionism, the naturalist novel, café culture and writers of the Left Bank, and surrealism. Classroom discussions will be supplemented by visits to the Musée d’Orsay and the Picasso Museum and walking tours to explore the vibrant and rich history and architecture of the city. All literary texts will be read in English with a comparison in the original French.
Dangerous Liaisons: Anglophone Cultures and France (upper division class)
Laura Thomason (Macon State)
Since 1066 the English-speaking world has had a love/hate relationship with the French. This course will examine, and attempt to define that ambivalent relationship through literature. How has French influence shaped English language and Anglophone cultures through the centuries? How have English and American writers responded to the historical presence of the French as role models, allies, and rivals? Students will read and respond to works that invoke France as a promised land, a purgatory, an inspiration, and more. Excursions and activities will give students direct exposure to the culture that produced this challenging but enduring relationship.
Digital Storytelling (UD)
Dr Brian Carroll (Berry College)
Taught as an international multimedia reporting practicum, this course will seek to exploit Paris journalistically as perhaps one of the best sources and contexts for stories in the world. Learning and doing journalism in an intercultural, cross-cultural context, students will learn how to identify and overcome barriers in culture, language and attitude. Given the multiplicity of inexpensive digital publishing tools, students will be able to immediately put into practice what they are learning. The course provides an introduction to digital media and strategies for effective communication, including interactivity, hyperlinking, spatial orientation and non-linear storytelling. To help students find, report and publish the stories, field trips will organize around a theme, such as “The Faces of Paris,” or around a location or event, such as the Tour de France finale down the Champs-Élysées.
Philosophy in the City: Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus, and the Good Life
Dr. James Winchester (GCSU)
Sartre claims that philosophy belongs in the streets and often wrote in the cafes of Paris. De Beauvoir and Sartre spent much of their lives in Paris, while Camus was influenced not only by Paris, but also by his early years in Algeria. All three searched for how to live while repeatedly making reference to those living in Paris. Reading their works and retracing some of their steps we will ask how Paris shaped their thought and how the Paris of today might shape our own attempts to understand how best to live. This will be a discussion based seminar. (Pre-requisite, willingness to read challenging texts)
Registration
Council institutions will identify courses and course numbers of their own that are comparable to the courses being offered by faculty members from other institutions. This will enable most students to register for courses through their home institutions. Students from non-member institutions, or from institutions that do not permit registration for certain courses, should contact the European Council Office at Valdosta State University for assistance. For students at institutions actively involved in the European Council, the first step in registration is meeting with the campus representative.
Note that the program package cost does NOT include tuition fees. Tuition is paid directly to the college or university where you are registering.
