Honors in Paris - Spring Term 2010

A partnership between the UF's Honors Program and the Paris Research Center offers the opportunity for high achieving students to enroll in challenging, interactive courses, enhanced by excursions, guest speakers, and tours. The curriculum is tailored for high-caliber students who are enthusiastic about living in France with Paris as their classroom. In addition to intensive studies of French Culture and Language, Photography, History and more taught by distinguished UF faculty members, students will participate in activities including a week-long trip (location TBA), lectures by esteemed guest speakers, group dinners, concerts, and excursions to other areas of France. Classes are held at the UF Paris Research Center, located in Columbia University's Reid Hall, an innovative center for American academic life in the heart of Paris.

This program is open to students from all majors and the courses are conducted in English; you do not have to speak French to attend. Priority will be given to students in the Honors Program, but all students with a 3.0 GPA or above are encouraged to apply.

This is a UF sponsored UFIC program so the credits you earn will satisfy major, minor and university requirements while living and studying in Paris with top UF professors. Bright Futures scholarships do apply to this program and can be applied to the program fee at the current UF rate.

For more information, please contact the John Denny, Interim Director of the Honors Program (jdenny@honors.ufl.edu), Dr. Gayle Zachmann, Director of the Paris Research Center (paris-research@clas.ufl.edu), or Dr. Martin McKellar of the UF International Center (mmckellar@ufic.ufl.edu).

• Download the 2010 brochure (pdf)
• Download the 2009 Program Scrapbook (pdf)

Honors in Paris 2010 Program Theme
Engagements with France: Images, Texts and Cultures

Instructors and Courses

• Modern Paris and Contemporary French Culture
  3 credits
  Professor Gayle Zachmann
• An Appetite for Paris: Gender, Globalization and Food
  Pending course approval - 3 credits
  Professor Anita Anantharam
• The Flâneur Reconsidered: Photography and Video in the Streets of Paris
  3 credits
  Professor Barbara Jo Revelle
• Strategic Communications in France as a Reflection of Society and Culture
  Intensive Module course, 3 credits
  Professor Juan-Carlos Molleda
• The Knight, The Lady and The King: Courtly Love and Chivalry in Medieval French Romance
  Pending course approval - 3 credits
  Professor William Calin
• Beginning French at the PRC
  FRE 1182, 3 credits

Students may also choose to take French Language courses (FRE 1182 or higher) and Independent Studies, depending on their needs & interests. *pending CLAS approval

Course Descriptions - 2010

Modern Paris and Contemporary French Culture

3 credits
Professor Gayle Zachmann

What is Contemporary French Culture? What contributes to a society’s world image and its image of itself? Much of modern thought leads us to conceive of the fabric of identity, history, culture and names as historically and situationally determined, a matter of circumstance. The goals of this study will be to trace the principal historical events which have formed and transformed the nation state, the mentality and the cultural production for which the country is so well known. In this survey of the principal political, intellectual, religious, social, and artistic currents that have marked France and France’s image since the Second World War, we will ask what it may mean to be French within a unified Europe in an increasingly global context. The course is designed to provide a deeper understanding of the historical relations between political and cultural identities and communication. The course will use a background text, site visits and guest lectures, as well as the students’ own initiatives in Paris.

An Appetite for Paris: Gender, Globalization and Food

Pending course approval - 3 credits
Professor Anita Anantharam

If there is one thing that is both culturally specific and truly open to global experience at the same time, it is food. Food is not just a basic necessity to sustain life, but also the one thing that all humans and animals have in common: you need to eat to survive. Yet each culture’s attitudes towards food preparation and consumption tells us a great deal about that society’s socio-political organization and structure. Because foodways (the cultural, social and economic practices relating to production and consumption of food) transcend geographic boundaries, the politics of what we eat, where we eat it, and how we eat reflect deep-rooted gender, religious, racial, class, and national biases. By examining foodways historically, we can see how these issues have developed over time and across cultures in relation to political, social and economic changes.

The Flâneur Reconsidered: Photography and Video in the Streets of Paris

3 credits
Professor Barbara Jo Revelle

This course is a documentary photography and video-making course with serious theoretical underpinnings. The heart of the course will be our 'fieldwork' exploring Paris. As our point of departure, we will take the Situationist idea that movement through space is an act of reasoning, that thinking itself is spatial in nature, and that moving from one idea to another by way of association is like moving through space from one point to another. Therefore, concurrent with exposure to various theoretical texts about artworks based on walks, "drifting", documentary practice and various forms of personal map-making, the class will take many field trips -- directed and in groups but also as solitary wanderers -- as a means of discovering each student's own version of Paris.

Classes will explore the city's famous tourist attractions, streets and museums, as well as less frequented or under-represented places. The class will view and do close readings of exemplary photographic, film, and video works in the "street-shooting", "flâneur" and documentary traditions. We will also examine contemporary artworks staked on contesting or deconstructing the idea that documenting reality is even possible, and will discuss many relevant essays and texts in an attempt to let critical theory inform our art-making practices.

Strategic Communications in France as a Reflection of Society and Culture

Intensive Module course, 3 credits
Professor Juan-Carlos Molleda

France has a long tradition of professional news media and strategic or persuasive communication industries (i.e. advertising and public relations). This module will introduce students to the historical evolution of the strategic communication industry in France, as well as the cultural dimensions that determine its practices. In addition to lectures and class exercises, the module will include presentations by experts and pioneers in the industry, as well as site visits to news media outlets, advertising agencies, and public relation firms. The module will conclude with individual analyses of an advertising or public relations campaign developed in France, in which students will scrutinize cultural dimensions and messaging systems.

The Knight, The Lady and The King: Courtly Love and Chivalry in Medieval French Romance

Pending course approval - 3 credits
Professor William Calin

Romantic love, as we know it, is not a universal in the human condition. It is a historical construct that first came into being, in the West, in medieval France. The same is true for the notion of knightly honor and chivalry. So much of French culture received its impetus and was, to an extent, shaped by the Middle Ages. Gallantry and chivalry, a penchant for the grand passion, courtesy and the importance of form in manners, recognition and cultivation of subtle class differentiation, a problematic view of marriage, a secular response to Christianity, and adulation of the work of art – these traits often ascribed to the French are all to be found in medieval literature. This course will focus on the structure and functioning of the new cultural entities and on the "romances" in which they flourished. Medieval romance, the dominant narrative genre of the time predates and leads up to our modern novel. We shall scrutinize the relationship of literature to historical reality (the mindset of a feudal-aristocratic and classical-Christian culture, attitudes toward women, etc.) and the workings of the literature itself, applying modern critical approaches.

Beginning French Language & Culture

FRE 1182, 3 credits
Instructor TBA

This course, which constitutes the basic sequence in French for the development of skill in the language, is a student-centered, communicative language class that integrates the experience and impressions of students living in Paris. Emphasis is placed on the development of language proficiency and cultural awareness. The student will work on all language skills and is asked to take his or her learning outside the traditional learning environment. Class includes many outside activities. Combines FRE 1130, FRE 1131.

Previous Honors in Paris Programs

• See the Honors in Paris 2009 course listings
• See the Honors in Paris 2008 course listings
• See the Honors in Paris 2007 course listings
• See the Honors in Paris 2006 course listings

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