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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.
Programs Offered May Intersession 2008
Weeklong programs
Two-week programs
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
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