| Day and Time | Instructor | Course Number | Title | Comments |
Mon & Thur 11:00am-1:30pm |
Simon | IFST-GA 2810 | France, Societe Multiculturelle en Debats: L’Apport des Sciences de la Population |
First Seven Weeks: Jan.-Mar. Taught in French. Hybird In-Person/Zoom. |
Mon & Thur 11:00am-1:30pm |
Avril | IFST-GA 1500 | Classe, Genre, Race et Sante en France |
Second Seven Weeks: Mar.-May. Taught in French. Hybird In-Person/Zoom. |
Tue 10:30am-1:00pm |
Viguier | IFST-GA 3720 | Doctoral Research Seminar |
Restricted to 2nd- and 3rd-year doctoral students who took the first part of this course in 2019-2020. |
Tue 2:00-4:45pm |
Spritzer | IFST-GA 1620 | Twentieth-Century France and Its Empire |
Taught in English. |
Wed 9:30-12:00pm |
Gerson | IFST-GA 2720 | The Politics of Disasters, History and Genealogy |
Taught in English. Cross-listed with French. Hybird In-Person/Zoom. |
Thu 3:00-5:30pm |
Fink | IFST-GA 2910 | Public Humanities and French Studies |
Taught in English. Hybird In-Person/Zoom. |
Spring 2021 Graduate Schedule
FRANCE, SOCIETE MULTICULTURELLE EN DEBATS: L’APPORT DES SCIENCES DE LA POPULATION
Patrick Simon, IFS Visiting Professor and socio-demographer (INED and Sciences Po)
First Seven Weeks, Jan.-Mar. Taught in French.
Les sciences de la population forment une discipline qui, par leurs objets et leur mobilisation dans la conduite de l’action publique, ont un lien très étroit avec le politique. Cette proximité opérationnelle et conceptuelle leur confère une place un peu particulière dans les sciences sociales, celle d’une « science de gouvernement » (Foucault, Desrosière, Lenoir). Par ailleurs, leurs objets sont au cœur des débats de société, qu’ils concernent la mort (la morbidité et les inégalités de santé, les inégalités devant la mort, mais aussi la fin de vie et l’euthanasie), la famille, la sexualité, la reproduction et la contraception (PMA, avortement, contraception), les migrations, les dynamiques de population au Nord et au Sud (population et développement, dénatalité, surpopulation), et plus généralement les transformations des sociétés multiculturelles. C’est en effet la première fois dans l’histoire que la diversité se produit à une telle échelle, dans un contexte d’Etats-Nations, et met en présence dans les pays du Nord des populations du Sud qui ont été assujetties et racialisées lors de l’expansion européenne. Les enjeux de la diversité concernent tout particulièrement la France où les changements en cours suscitent de nombreux débats aussi bien sur la façon de concilier diversité et cohésion, la résurgence d’un racisme décomplexé associé à un racisme plus subtil et diffus, les inégalités liées à cette diversité ethno-raciale et religieuse. L’objectif de ce cours est d’aborder ces transformations à partir de controverses qui se sont tenues dans les espaces scientifiques, médiatiques et politiques et qui ont impliqué les sciences de la population.
CLASSE, GENRE, RACE ET SANTE EN FRANCE
Christelle Avril, IFS Visiting Professor and sociologist at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)
Second Seven Weeks, Mar.-May. Taught in French.
Ce cours propose une réflexion sur les inégalités sociales de santé dans la société française contemporaine. En prenant appui sur des enquêtes empiriques abordant différents secteurs du soin (hôpital, prise en charge des personnes âgées et des jeunes enfants à domicile et en institution, médecine du travail...), l’objectif est de dresser un panorama des inégalités et de comprendre comment les pratiques de soin s’articulent aux rapports sociaux de classe, de genre et de race. Comment les pratiques des professionnel·les de santé varient-elles selon les appartenances de classe, de genre, ethno-raciale des patient·es ? Dans quelle mesure le monde des professionnel·les de santé est-il lui même structuré par des inégalités sociales ? Et comment ces positions et trajectoires sociales différenciées des professionnel·les de santé font-elles varier les pratiques de soin ? Par-delà ces questions, le cours accordera une attention particulière à la genèse du système de soins français et notamment aux effets des nouvelles politiques de gestion publique (New public management) sur la transformation des conditions de travail des professionnel·les de santé et ce faisant sur le traitement des patient·es.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRANCE AND ITS EMPIRE
Evan Spritzer
Taught in English.
This course will explore central issues in the history of France and the French empire from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. We will begin in the 1880s-1890s with the emergence of mass politics and communication and with new approaches to nation, race, and empire. These developments will help us analyze the passions unleashed by the Dreyfus affair, the social changes wrought by the First World War, the violent expansion of colonialism, and the extreme contestation of 1930s politics. We will then privilege primary sources to explore the experience of occupation, resistance, and liberation during World War II. In the postwar, we will turn our attention to reconstruction and decolonization, with special emphasis placed on the Algerian war and its legacies for French republicanism, racial divides, and the political football of immigration. After looking at the insurrections of 1968 and the rise of the National Front, we will finish the term by discussing attempts in France to legislate interpretations of the past and to regulate the wearing of religious symbols.
THE POLITICS OF DISASTERS, HISTORY AND GENEALOGY
Stéphane Gerson, Professor of French Studies, French, and History at NYU
Taught in English.
Natural and technological disasters have become importants objects of study among historians of France (and other countries as well). These unexpected events make visible those forces, power relations, tensions, and vulnerabilities that are otherwise hidden from view. They can also propel history in new directions. Sometimes, they provoking disruptions and nourishing ways of thinking, grounds for contestation, or emotional registers; at other times, they consolidate pre-existing norms, conceptual frameworks, and social, gendered, or race/ethnicity-based inequalities. In both respect, the history of disasters can provide a genealogy of our own disaster culture, caught in what one commentator calls “the long emergency.” This course has three dimensions. The first is conceptual, revolving around notions of risk society, trauma, resilience, new social possibilities, disaster states, states of emergency, biological citizenship, spectacles of disaster, media frames, catastrophe writing, dark tourism, and collective memory. The second dimension —empirical and archive-focused — will lead us to study past disasters. Finally, each student will write a research project of significant ambition and workshop it in class.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES AND FRENCH STUDIES
Liz Fink, Historian and Editor of French Politics, Culture & Society
Taught in English.
This course will introduce students to the idea of the public humanities and think about French Studies in that larger field. How have cultural theorists and historians defined the “public sphere?” Who is considered a “public intellectual” and what does being a public intellectual entail? How do scholars communicate with different publics, and how do their ideas change when they do so? What is deemed worthy of preservation and presentation and who gets to control the stories we tell about the past? The course will be broken down into four parts, which pair theoretical and historical readings with a consideration of what is French about that story. Part 1 addresses the history of the public sphere. Part 2 considers the museum and the city within the public humanities, with emphasis on works of art in French museums obtained during colonialism. Part 3 examines publishing inside and outside of academia. Part 4 considers civic engagement, particularly around an issue of particular urgency: immigration. In addition to readings, the class will examine digital tools, including maps, soundscapes, and archived exhibits, and explore public humanities sites in New York City as well as feature discussions by public humanities practitioners.
DOCTORAL RESEARCH SEMINAR
Frédéric Viguier, Clinical Associate Professor of French Studies at NYU
Restricted to 2nd- and 3d-year doctoral students who took the first part of this course in 2019-2020.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THEORY: POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES
Cécile Bishop, Assistant Professor of French Thought, Culture, and Literature
Cross-listed with French Dept. Taught in English.
The course will introduce student to the rich body of theory concerning the photographic image, from the nineteenth century to the present day. The focus for the course will be the visual culture of the francophone world in the colonial and postcolonial context. Through a wide variety of photographic images, including colonial imagery, private archives, artistic photographs and press documents, we will investigate the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of photographic representation. In addition to considering photography’s fraught relationship with the production of cultural and racial otherness, we will address major ethical questions such as: What are the responsibilities of the spectator? What is at stake in representing the suffering of others? We will explore these issues through the works of major thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Jacques Rancière and Ariella Azoulay. Beyond this theoretical grounding, one of the key objectives of the course is to give you the skills to interpret and analyze images. Throughout the class, the study of theoretical texts will therefore be closely associated with the discussion of specific images.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES AND FRENCH STUDIES
Liz Fink, historian and editor of French Politics, Culture & Society
Taught in English.
This course will introduce students to the idea of the public humanities and think about French Studies in that larger field. How have cultural theorists and historians defined the “public sphere?” Who is considered a “public intellectual” and what does being a public intellectual entail? How do scholars communicate with different publics, and how do their ideas change when they do so? What is deemed worthy of preservation and presentation and who gets to control the stories we tell about the past? The course will be broken down into four parts, which pair theoretical and historical readings with a consideration of what is French about that story. Part 1 addresses the history of the public sphere. Part 2 considers the museum and the city within the public humanities, with emphasis on works of art in French museums obtained during colonialism. Part 3 examines publishing inside and outside of academia. Part 4 considers civic engagement, particularly around an issue of particular urgency: immigration. In addition to readings, the class will examine digital tools, including maps, soundscapes, and archived exhibits, and explore public humanities sites in New York City as well as feature discussions by public humanities practitioners.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THEORY: POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES
Cécile Bishop, Assistant Professor of French Thought, Culture, and Literature
Cross-listed with French Dept. Taught in English.
The course will introduce student to the rich body of theory concerning the photographic image, from the nineteenth century to the present day. The focus for the course will be the visual culture of the francophone world in the colonial and postcolonial context. Through a wide variety of photographic images, including colonial imagery, private archives, artistic photographs and press documents, we will investigate the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of photographic representation. In addition to considering photography’s fraught relationship with the production of cultural and racial otherness, we will address major ethical questions such as: What are the responsibilities of the spectator? What is at stake in representing the suffering of others? We will explore these issues through the works of major thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Jacques Rancière and Ariella Azoulay. Beyond this theoretical grounding, one of the key objectives of the course is to give you the skills to interpret and analyze images. Throughout the class, the study of theoretical texts will therefore be closely associated with the discussion of specific images.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES AND FRENCH STUDIES
Liz Fink, historian and editor of French Politics, Culture & Society
Taught in English.
This course will introduce students to the idea of the public humanities and think about French Studies in that larger field. How have cultural theorists and historians defined the “public sphere?” Who is considered a “public intellectual” and what does being a public intellectual entail? How do scholars communicate with different publics, and how do their ideas change when they do so? What is deemed worthy of preservation and presentation and who gets to control the stories we tell about the past? The course will be broken down into four parts, which pair theoretical and historical readings with a consideration of what is French about that story. Part 1 addresses the history of the public sphere. Part 2 considers the museum and the city within the public humanities, with emphasis on works of art in French museums obtained during colonialism. Part 3 examines publishing inside and outside of academia. Part 4 considers civic engagement, particularly around an issue of particular urgency: immigration. In addition to readings, the class will examine digital tools, including maps, soundscapes, and archived exhibits, and explore public humanities sites in New York City as well as feature discussions by public humanities practitioners.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THEORY: POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES
Cécile Bishop, Assistant Professor of French Thought, Culture, and Literature
Cross-listed with French Dept. Taught in English.
The course will introduce student to the rich body of theory concerning the photographic image, from the nineteenth century to the present day. The focus for the course will be the visual culture of the francophone world in the colonial and postcolonial context. Through a wide variety of photographic images, including colonial imagery, private archives, artistic photographs and press documents, we will investigate the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of photographic representation. In addition to considering photography’s fraught relationship with the production of cultural and racial otherness, we will address major ethical questions such as: What are the responsibilities of the spectator? What is at stake in representing the suffering of others? We will explore these issues through the works of major thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Jacques Rancière and Ariella Azoulay. Beyond this theoretical grounding, one of the key objectives of the course is to give you the skills to interpret and analyze images. Throughout the class, the study of theoretical texts will therefore be closely associated with the discussion of specific images.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES AND FRENCH STUDIES
Liz Fink, historian and editor of French Politics, Culture & Society
Taught in English.
This course will introduce students to the idea of the public humanities and think about French Studies in that larger field. How have cultural theorists and historians defined the “public sphere?” Who is considered a “public intellectual” and what does being a public intellectual entail? How do scholars communicate with different publics, and how do their ideas change when they do so? What is deemed worthy of preservation and presentation and who gets to control the stories we tell about the past? The course will be broken down into four parts, which pair theoretical and historical readings with a consideration of what is French about that story. Part 1 addresses the history of the public sphere. Part 2 considers the museum and the city within the public humanities, with emphasis on works of art in French museums obtained during colonialism. Part 3 examines publishing inside and outside of academia. Part 4 considers civic engagement, particularly around an issue of particular urgency: immigration. In addition to readings, the class will examine digital tools, including maps, soundscapes, and archived exhibits, and explore public humanities sites in New York City as well as feature discussions by public humanities practitioners.
PHOTOGRAPHY AND THEORY: POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES
Cécile Bishop, Assistant Professor of French Thought, Culture, and Literature
Cross-listed with French Dept. Taught in English.
The course will introduce student to the rich body of theory concerning the photographic image, from the nineteenth century to the present day. The focus for the course will be the visual culture of the francophone world in the colonial and postcolonial context. Through a wide variety of photographic images, including colonial imagery, private archives, artistic photographs and press documents, we will investigate the ethical, political, and aesthetic dimensions of photographic representation. In addition to considering photography’s fraught relationship with the production of cultural and racial otherness, we will address major ethical questions such as: What are the responsibilities of the spectator? What is at stake in representing the suffering of others? We will explore these issues through the works of major thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Jacques Rancière and Ariella Azoulay. Beyond this theoretical grounding, one of the key objectives of the course is to give you the skills to interpret and analyze images. Throughout the class, the study of theoretical texts will therefore be closely associated with the discussion of specific images.
PUBLIC HUMANITIES AND FRENCH STUDIES
Liz Fink, historian and editor of French Politics, Culture & Society
Taught in English.
This course will introduce students to the idea of the public humanities and think about French Studies in that larger field. How have cultural theorists and historians defined the “public sphere?” Who is considered a “public intellectual” and what does being a public intellectual entail? How do scholars communicate with different publics, and how do their ideas change when they do so? What is deemed worthy of preservation and presentation and who gets to control the stories we tell about the past? The course will be broken down into four parts, which pair theoretical and historical readings with a consideration of what is French about that story. Part 1 addresses the history of the public sphere. Part 2 considers the museum and the city within the public humanities, with emphasis on works of art in French museums obtained during colonialism. Part 3 examines publishing inside and outside of academia. Part 4 considers civic engagement, particularly around an issue of particular urgency: immigration. In addition to readings, the class will examine digital tools, including maps, soundscapes, and archived exhibits, and explore public humanities sites in New York City as well as feature discussions by public humanities practitioners.