2007 Intensive Week Long Study over Spring Break

This year students campus-wide will benefit from unique opportunities for week-long intensive study abroad over spring break. 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 2007 Program Brochure (PDF)
• Download the 2007 Academic Advisement Sheet (PDF)

Programs Offered Spring Break 2007 (March 11-16)

• African Americans in Paris
  (2 Credits, AFA 3930), Dr. Stephanie Evans
• Americans in Paris
  (2 Credits, ENC 4956), Dr. Andrew Gordon
• Verne’s Paris in the 21st Century
  (2 Credits, ENC 4956), Dr. Terry Harpold
• International Leadership: Adapting Businesses and Governments to New Realities
  (GEB 4930, 2 Credits), Dr. Mark A. Jamison

Course Descriptions

African Americans in Paris
(2 Credits, AFA 3930*)
Dr. Stephanie Evans
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Since the mid-1700s, scores of African Americans have visited, lived, and worked in France.  This course will explore the African American presence in Paris, introducing students to three groups Black Americans who have traveled to Paris: 1) political persons, 2) academics, and 3) culture bearers. Walking in the footsteps of those who were drawn to the City of Light, students will research Black Americans' experiences and perceptions of Paris and study visitation patterns over time. A cross disciplinary approach will facilitate learning about African Americans in Paris, the fields of political science, performing arts, literature, sociology, history, and economics all offering points of entry to this topic. Students will approach topics chronologically, but also thematically to see the various reasons African Americans have continued to engage in Parisian life.

Students are required to complete course readings before the trip. On-site assignments will include attending lectures, cultural events, and significant sites such as the cafés, monument and institutions linked to the rich heritage of Black American expatriate Paris. After the trip, students will submit a final paper that brings together their disciplinary interests with political and cultural analyses.

Some of the most famous African American visitors to Paris include Sally Hemmings (enslaved by Thomas Jefferson), Frederick Douglass, Carter G. Woodson, Josephine Baker, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. Du Bois, Billy Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Marian Anderson, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey, Nina Simone, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Toni Morrison, Cornel West, and Maya Angelou.

Americans in Paris
(2 Credits, ENC 4956)
Dr. Andrew Gordon
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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 walking tours, following the routes described by Hemingway, and visiting Paris cafés and restaurants favored by "The Lost Generation," such as the Closerie des Lilas and Café Select, and 27 Rue de Fleurus, where Gertrude Stein held her literary salons, and some sites mentioned by Saul Bellow, such as the Hotel Crillon and the Café de Flore.  There will also be a guest lecture by Professor Patrick Badonnel, Université de Paris 3.

Verne’s Paris in the 21st Century
(2 Credits, ENC 4956*)
Dr. Terry Harpold
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A week-long “Vernian” tour of Paris – above and below-ground – focusing on architectural, social, and cultural changes produced by the city’s massive rebuilding between 1853 and 1870 under the leadership of the Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Our “guidebook” will be Jules Verne’s unpublished 1863 novel, Paris in the 20th Century, in which Verne envisaged a post-Haussmann Paris of the 1960s: rational, hygenic, and prosperous; freed of medieval squalor but stripped of its artistic soul. The course will also include a visit to nearby Amiens, where Verne lived and wrote during the last four decades of his life, and home to the Notre Dame Cathedral of Amiens, the largest and one of the most beautiful gothic cathedrals of Europe.

International Leadership: Adapting Businesses and Governments to New Realities
(GEB 4930, 2 Credits)
Dr. Mark A. Jamison
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The world is becoming a more complicated place economically and politically. How will you help shape the world for your generation and generations to come? Join us for an in-depth learning experience about adaptive leadership and how it can be used to address two interrelated forces that are shaping your future–world energy markets and international terrorism. By studying how international energy businesses address issues of terrorism, you will examine how adaptive leadership can be used to help organizations adapt to new realities and shape those realities, all the while developing your own leadership skills. We will use case studies, discussion, a group project, and presentations from international business leaders, government officials, and international media on terrorism to focus on how countries, organizations, and individuals understand terrorism and respond to it.

Paris is an ideal place for these studies. As a major international city in a country that has different views on international issues, Paris provides students with an opportunity to see international business and terrorism from the viewpoint of another culture and in the context of geopolitics, and not just U.S. domestic politics. Exercising adaptive leadership—which is leading people through changes that challenge long-held beliefs and demand new ways of doing things—is particularly challenging in the international context because of the differences in cultures, world views, interests, and experiences.

The course will be demanding and intense but well worth the effort. Students will be required to read Senator Bob Graham’s book Intelligence Matters on the 9-11 experience prior to arriving in Paris. In addition, students will be required to read and discuss six case studies relating to world energy markets, terrorism, and leadership.

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