Intensive Study Abroad at the Paris Research Center
May Intersession

This year students campus-wide will benefit from unique opportunities for week-long intensive study abroad. These innovative programs for intensive study abroad in Paris were expressly created to provide in-depth on-site international experiences. They include: 7 activity-rich days in Paris with meetings at the Paris Research Center, classes given on-site at the cultural, historical and political institutions you are studying, 6 nights in hotels, numerous group meals, site visits, cultural activities and UF credit.

• Download the 2008 Program Brochure
• Download the 2008 Academic Advisement Sheet

Programs Offered May Intersession 2008

Weeklong programs

• African Americans in Paris
  (AFA 3930, 2 Credits), Professor Stephanie Y. Evans
• Commodities to Café – Agricultural and Food Marketing in France
  (AEB 4931, 2 Credits), Professor James A Sterns

Two-week programs

• Readdressing the Classics: An Atelier, Recontextualizing the Masterpieces of Paris, through Drawing, Photography and Collage
  Professor Richard Heipp
• Personal Geographies: Sketching Paris
  Professor Lauren Garber Lake
• The Architecture of Paris: Experiments of Place
  (ARC 3291 - 3 Credits), Professor Nancy Clark
• A Writer's Tour of Paris for the Five Senses
  (IDH 3931 - 2 Credits), Professor Vikram Rangala

Course Descriptions

Weeklong programs

African Americans in Paris
(AFA 3930, 2 Credits)
Professor Stephanie Y. Evans (African American Studies)
drevans@ufl.edu

This course will explore the African American presence in Paris. Since the mid-1700s scores of African Americans have visited, lived, and worked in France. Students will research the experiences and perceptions of Black Americans and study why and how a sustained pattern of visitation has occurred. Students will look at African Americans in Paris through their own academic lens and make connections from their own scholarly disciplines to the topic of African Americans in Paris.

There are many disciplinary approaches that will facilitate learning about African Americans in Paris. For example, political science, performing arts, English and creative writing, sociology, history, and economics all offer a point of entry to this topic. The course will be designed to approach topics chronologically, but will mainly be organized thematically to show the various reasons African Americans have continued to engage in Parisian life.

The course will introduce students to three groups Black Americans who have traveled to Paris: 1) political persons, 2) academics, and 3) culture bearers. These themes will be explored via geographic visitations to the arrondissements where Black Americans experienced world wars, Pan-Africanist movement, study abroad, writer's life, café culture, and Jazz Age club life.

Commodities to Café – Agricultural and Food Marketing in France
(AEB 4931, 2 Credits)
Professor James A Sterns (AG-Food/ Resource Economics)
jasterns@ufl.edu

Through an intensive seven-day program, students in this course will be presented with an overview of the agricultural and food marketing system of France. Discussions, presentations and assigned reading materials will include the following topics – the French approach to supply chain management (i.e., les filieres), food quality signaling in French foods, the tradition of fresh markets in France, European grocery retailing, and international agricultural trade and its relationship to economic development.  Through these activities, students will be introduced to a wide range of perspectives about food marketing, and how agricultural producers and food processors are able to meet the strident, quality-focused demand of their customers.  Time in Paris will be balanced across types of activities so that cultural events, tours and visits will be incorporated into the overall program. Students in this course should anticipate a very demanding experience that will require them to be open-minded, flexible, curious, hard working and sleep deprived!

Pre-requisites – AEB3300, Principles of Agricultural and Food Marketing, or by permission of instructor.

Two-week programs

Readdressing the Classics: An Atelier, Recontextualizing the Masterpieces of Paris, through Drawing, Photography and Collage
Professor Richard Heipp (Art and Art History)
richardheipp.com

“I look at things with different eyes than I did before I began to draw.”
Vincent Van Gogh (in a letter to his brother Theo regarding copying from masterworks.)

The term atelier comes from old French meaning, a workshop or studio, especially for an artist or designer. This atelier will immerse the student in the viewing and study of many of Paris's artistic masterpieces. The course will subsequently involve the students in creating reinterpretations of the artworks via their choice of drawing (following the tradition of the French salon in executing drawing from sculptural masterpieces), collage (employing the processes of Max Ernst and others), photography (following Breton and Kertez) as well as digital imaging.  No previous art experience is be necessary.  The class will allow student to experience the art of Paris in a very intimate and direct way, creating art from art.

"Often times in order to advance one must look back. Like technology, art is built upon what happened before and influenced by what happened around the time of its creation. Each new technical discovery and stylistic invention paves the way for the next---generating either an affirmation of what has come before or a reaction against it.
Juliette Aristides

For hundreds of years an artist’s practical studio education consisted of a consistent pedagogical approach to the study of the human form.  The search for ideal beauty was rooted in the practice of drawing from, and studying classical sculptural masterpieces. For centuries artists traveled to Paris in order to engage in this activity.  It was a common practice of the academic training of the French Salon well into the twentieth century.  Students honed their observation skills, copying masterpieces before being moving on to work from life.  This course attempts to resurrect and expand this practice working from, and reinterpreting the artistic masterpieces of Paris through drawing, collage, photography and digital media. Various conceptual strategies will be explored including: the classical aesthetic, Dada, collage, capturing photographic light and the decisive moment, as well as digital assemblage.

Organized excursions to many of Paris’s great art institutions will include; The Louvre, Pompidou Center, Musse d’Orsay, Museum of Modern Art, Picasso Museum, Rodin Museum, Monet Museum, Brancusi’s Studio, the Museum of European Photography as well as visits to Versailles, and Giverny.  The class strives to rebuild the links between masterpieces of the past and our artistic future.

Personal Geographies: Sketching Paris
Professor  Lauren Garber Lake (Art and Art History)
laurengarber@hotmail.com

"I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.”  – Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing.

A sketchbook is a container that holds ideas for artists, writers and all thinkers.  In this course students will use their visit to Paris to create ideas and imagery. Building upon students’ experiences such as metro rides, visits to the Louvre, visits to map collections and markets, and walking the streets of Paris and the gardens of Giverny, the students will collect information and formulate imagery using the city as their muse.  The process of living as artists in Paris (i.e., experiencing it, making meaning, finding meaning through seeing it in unexpected or divergent ways) will make the visual visible through their bookforms.  Students will essentially use Paris to draw and use drawing to view Paris.

Students will create mixed media sketchbooks and keep online journals, all the while exploring and examining the culture of Paris. Through inventive mapping of La Ville-lumière, students will create vignettes of information and personal geographies suited for the creative mind. Students will gain instruction in a range of two dimensional techniques.

This course is open to students from all majors.

The Architecture of Paris: Experiments of Place
(ARC 3291 - 3 Credits)
Professor Nancy Clark (Architecture)
nmclark@ufl.edu

Paris is a uniquely layered landscape of historical and modern architectural monuments.  Historic structures include the Louvre Palace, the Viaduct Daumesnil, the Eiffel Tower, and Labrouste’s Bibliotheque Nationale.  The late 20th century has added the modern grands projets including Parc and Cite des Sciences at La Villette, the Institute du Monde Arabe, the Bibliotheque de France, and the new design proposals for Les Halles as well as lesser known but equally important projects that have emerged out of PAN (new architecture programme), a critical component to understanding the modern fabric of the city.  This course will examine the architecture of the city of Paris as a layered artifact, constructed out of the collective social, political and economic influences embedded in its history, with a specific emphasis on Paris’ modern city image. Students will participate in several guided tours of the city and building interiors; meet with prominent Parisian architects who will discuss their work and ideas about the city; and take part in daily discussion sessions.  Course participants will be responsible for keeping a journal in which they will study and record Paris based on their own city theme.

A Writer's Tour of Paris for the Five Senses
(IDH 3931 - 2 Credits)
Professor Vikram Rangala (Honors)
vikrama@ufl.edu

Travel sharpens the senses and travelers note details large and small which they would pass over at home. Writers attend with similar ardor to the details that matter to the stories they wish to tell. This course will use this heightened sensory awareness to help student-travelers, with notebook and pen always at the ready, to note the details which they alone are fit to record. We will write, speak, and amuse ourselves in and around Paris seeking stimulation and over-stimulation to one sense at a time. And we will consider how great writers, mainly American and French, have written about such stimulation. Likely locations include several musées and jardins, the gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny, a jazz club, a parfumerie, a marché (which we will browse on empty stomachs if possible) and Montmartre. You will learn and practice fundamental writing principles which apply across genres. At the end you will write an essay on what you took in.

Previous Year's May Session Courses

• 2007
• 2006
• 2004

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