Intensive Study Abroad at the Paris Research Center
May Intersession

This year, students campus-wide will benefit from unique opportunities for intensive study abroad lasting from one to two weeks. These innovative programs for intensive study abroad in Paris were expressly created to provide in-depth on-site international experiences. They include: 6 or 13 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 or 13 nights in hotels, numerous group meals, site visits, cultural activities and UF credit.

• Download 2010 May Brochure (PDF)
• Download Advisement Sheet (PDF)

Programs Offered May Intersession 2010

One Week Programs

• Commodities to Cafés: Agricultural and Food Markets in France
  (AEB 4931, 3 credits)
  Professor David Barber (1 week)
• The Legacy of Pasteur
  (ALS404, 2 credits)
  Professor Valérie DeCrécy (1 week)
• Rediscovering Dark Age Paris: The City’s First Millennium from the Perspective of Its Excavators (1789-present)
  (HIS 4956, 2 credits)
  Professor Bonnie Effros (1 week)

Two-week programs

• Readdressing the Classics:
  An Atelier, Recontextualizing the Masterpieces of Paris
  (ART 2930; ART 3807; ART 4930; ART 5905, 3 credits)
  Professor Richard Heipp (2 weeks)
• Dateline: Paris – Documentary Filmmaking 101
  (JOU 4930, 3 credits)
  Professor Boaz Dvir (2 weeks)
• The Architecture of Paris: Experiments of Place
  (ARC 3291/6911, 3 credits)
  Professor Nancy Clark (2 weeks)
• Americans in Paris
  (ENC 4956, 3 credits)
  Professor Andrew Gordon (2 weeks)
• Sociolinguistique dans la ville: Interaction et variation
  (FRE 3224, 3 credits)
  Professor Hélène Blondeau (2 weeks)

Course Descriptions

One Week Programs

Commodities to Cafés: Agricultural and Food Markets in France
(AEB 4931, 3 credits)
Professor David Barber (1 week)
dbarber@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 filières), 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!

The Legacy of Pasteur
(ALS404, 2 credits)
Professor Valérie DeCrécy (1 week)
vcrecy@ufl.edu

Although the discovery of the microscope at the end of the 17th century is considered the starting point of microbiology, it was the 19th century that truly laid the foundation of modern microbiology. During this one-week intensive program, students will explore how the work of key scientists such as Louis Pasteur influenced fields as varied as chemistry, medicine, public health, and food processing.

Based in Paris, The Legacy of Pasteur allows students to examine the evolution of science from the 1800s to modern times. Through a combination of lectures, site visits, interviews, and scientific literature analysis, students will not only study Pasteur's accomplishments, but will also learn how his legacy is carried on today at the Pasteur Institute. The program will also include a variety of cultural activities and enhancements in and around Paris.

Rediscovering Dark Age Paris: The City’s First Millennium from the Perspective of Its Excavators (1789-present)
(HIS 4956, 2 credits)
Professor Bonnie Effros (1 week)
beffros@ufl.edu

The origins of Paris date back more than two and half millennia, but it is easy to forget the oldest traces of the city’s past buried beneath its densely populated landscape. Although the nature and size of early settlements in what is today Paris and its surrounding territory are disputed by scholars, Gallo-Roman, Roman, and Frankish activities helped define the future of the Paris by establishing enduring sites for thoroughfares, river crossings, and sacred ritual. Why then are remnants of the city’s origins, in contrast to Rome or Jerusalem, nearly invisible today? In the nineteenth century, large-scale efforts were made to revamp the medieval city and create more open, modern spaces. Yet, in the course of industrialization, the early vestiges of Paris were not forgotten entirely – the very process of deconstructing the medieval city meant that traces of the past came to light on a regular basis.

Participants in this course will visit surviving traces and reconstructions of Paris’ first thousand years; we will also meet archaeologists and historians whose work it is to study these remains and interpret their significance. The course will also address the challenges faced by the pioneering individuals who first worked to preserve and study architectural and archaeological remains in Paris in the absence of protective legislation. Because ancient remains of early Paris first began to appear with regularity during the French Revolution and also were unearthed in periods of upheaval like the Franco-Prussian war and the Commune, the course will highlight the politicization of conservation and archaeological research. Visits and lectures will touch upon the themes of historical preservation, national identity, the history of archaeology and physical anthropology, and architectural history in France.

Two Week Programs

Readdressing the Classics: An Atelier, Recontextualizing the Masterpieces of Paris
(ART 2930; ART 3807; ART 4930; ART 5905, 3 credits)
Professor Richard Heipp (2 weeks)
heipp@ufl.edu

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 necessary. The class will allow student to experience the art of Paris in a very intimate and direct way, creating art from art.

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 places such as; The Louvre, Pompidou Center, Musse d’Orsay, Museum of Modern Art, 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.

Dateline: Paris – Documentary Filmmaking 101
(JOU 4930, 3 credits)
Professor Boaz Dvir (2 weeks)
bdvir@jou.ufl.edu

Documentaries are increasingly becoming a vital, vibrant part of new media. As the birthplace of Cinéma Vérité movement, France has played a pivotal role in global documentary filmmaking for decades. This May, you have a rare chance to explore this craft in Paris with a veteran journalist and documentary filmmaker. You need no technical skills – just a passion for journalism, filmmaking and/or storytelling. The course will focus on documentaries that explore decision-making under crisis conditions, including “Shoah,” French director Claude Lanzmann’s groundbreaking Holocaust epic; “MicroCosmos,” the French close-up look at the world of insects; and “Waltz With Bashir,” the César Award-wining Israeli animated documentary. We will also converse with some of Paris’ most interesting documentary filmmakers and work on producing a nonfiction film about an Air France captain who made a heroic decision under crisis conditions. In 1976, Michel Bacos risked his life and career when despite being released by the hijackers of his Airbus, he refused to leave his Israeli passengers in Entebbe, Africa. We will study and tell his story.

The Architecture of Paris: Experiments of Place
(ARC 3291/6911, 3 credits)
Professor Nancy Clark (2 weeks)
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 Bibliothèque Nationale. The late 20th century has added the modern grands projets, including the Parc and Cité des Sciences at La Villette, the Institute du Monde Arabe, the Bibliothèque 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’s 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.

Americans in Paris
(ENC 4956, 3 credits)
Professor Andrew Gordon (2 weeks)
agordon@ufl.edu

Students enrolled in this course will study Americans' changing views of Paris as reflected in eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and in selected Hollywood films, such as An American in Paris. The objective is to gain increased understanding of American and French culture by studying Franco-American interaction in American literature and film. Through readings, films, and their own writing, students encountering Paris—perhaps for the first time—can compare their responses to the city to those of many generations of Americans who loved Paris. Course requirements include selected readings from Americans in Paris, ed. Adam Gopnik; viewing of selected films prior to departure; attendance and participation in class and on field trips; and keeping a journal. The field trips will be lecture tours, which will follow the routes described by Hemingway, and will visit Paris sites cafés and restaurants favored by "The Lost Generation."

Sociolinguistique dans la ville: Interaction et variation
(FRE 3224, 3 credits)
Professor Hélène Blondeau (2 weeks)
blondeau@ufl.edu

This course in French sociolinguistics focuses on interaction and variation in contemporary French. Using classical case studies in French sociolinguistics, the course invites students to observe the use of the language in its social context, with Paris as their laboratory. Distinguished French linguists adopting the sociolinguistic perspective will offer some of the lectures. Each lecture will be complemented by visits of unique collections, fieldwork experiments, and hands-on activities. Students will do their own observations, and develop their analytical skills in situ. The first part of the course will focus on interaction. Within this perspective the course will cover topics concerning the addressee forms, and the negotiation in public place in contemporary French. For example, after a lecture, the students will design an experiment, and observe how spoken French is used in public places like libraries, museums or bakeries. Students will also examine how people interact and negotiate in cafés and public markets. The second part of the course will address the notion of variation, and will cover topics concerning the various dimensions constraining the use of the language: region, social class, age, and gender. Using different types of data unavailable in the US the course will provide the students with the opportunity to observe variation in contemporary spoken French.

Course will be taught in French. Pre-requi

Previous Year's May Session Courses

• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2004

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