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 2008 Program Brochure (PDF)
• Download the 2008 Academic Advisement Sheet (PDF)

Programs Offered Spring Break 2008

• International Women’s Activism in Paris: Challenges and Empowerment
  (2 Credits), Professor Agnes Leslie
• The Saxophone in Paris: Then and Now
  (2 Credits), Professor Jonathan Helton
• Sex, Scandals and Violence in Contemporary French Film
  (ENG 4956, 2 credits), Professor Amy Abugo Ongiri
• "An Appetite for Paris": Asian/American Diaspora and the Politics of Consumption
  (2 credits), Professor Anita Anantharam

Course Descriptions

International Women’s Activism in Paris: Challenges and Empowerment
(2 Credits)
Professor Agnes Leslie (African Studies Program/CLAS)
aleslie@africa.ufl.edu

This one-week course in Paris will focus on women in international organizations based in Paris, examine women’s struggles and successes and investigate how women through the international organizations overcome these challenges. Paris hosted the first International Woman's Rights Congress in 1878 and continues to be the central site for global women’s empowerment and activism.  This course will highlight international organizations based in Paris and include site visits to these places of women’s empowerment. The course will also spotlight women in politics including female ambassadors, female activists, female artist/producers who promote the cause of gender equity, and UNESCO personnel engaged in women’s empowerment.  (2 Credits).

The Saxophone in Paris: Then and Now
(2 Credits)
Professor Jonathan Helton (Music)
jhelton@arts.ufl.edu

Since its invention in Paris in the early 1840s, the saxophone has had a very colorful history. From its earliest uses in French opera and military bands, through its role in jazz and popular music, to its place on the contemporary avant-garde music scene, the saxophone has always been both celebrated and reviled. This course will examine the many roles of the saxophone in France from 1840 to the present. Adolphe Sax’s contributions in musical instrument making, past and present teaching practices in France, and the state of the performing saxophonist in France will all be examined through interaction with French professionals and inspection of primary source materials available in Paris.  Guest lectures will be given by French experts on 19th Century instrument making, 21st Century instrument manufacturing, the history of the saxophone, and teaching in the French conservatory system. In addition, opportunities will be available to perform and critique concerts in Paris.

Prerequisites: Interest in the saxophone. Ability to play the saxophone and to bring one to Paris is helpful, but not required.

Sex, Scandals and Violence in Contemporary French Film
(ENG 4956, 2 credits)
Professor Amy Abugo Ongiri (English)
aongiri@ufl.edu

We will begin with the scandal of the nouvelle vague movement and Jean-Luc Goddard’s film Breathless to explore the interconnection between violence, scandal, and cinematic innovation in French film.  The film uses Paris as a locale to explore the relationship between urbanity, outlaw culture and failed romance and manages to invent a new cinematic language along the way.  We will explore Paris as the site of some of modernity’s most important scandals in relationship to aesthetic and cultural practice.  Beginning with the scandal caused by plans to erect the Eiffel Tower for the Universal Exhibition of 1889 we will explore Paris scandals from the Pigalle district and the controversy surrounding audacious nightlife of the Moulin Rouge and nearby clubs with Karen Dridi’s 1994 film Pigalle.   At the Centre Pompideau we will explore the scandal created by the daring outrages of the surrealist movement, the insistence on absurdity of the Dada movement and of Marcel Duchamp’s urinal.  We will continue to examine the theme of modernity through the highly aestheticized version of urbanity found in the dark futurism of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s 1995 film City of Lost Children.  We will visit the section of Paris dubbed “Little Africa” as we explore “the headscarf controversy” and changing conceptions of French identity with Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 film Hate.  We will end with the highly controversial 200 film by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, Baise-Moi, which was banned for a time in various countries throughout Europe, including France.  The film employs a controversial strategy of hyperviolence to explore the relationship between representations of women, violence, and eroticism.  We will explore the challenge that this strategy poses to conventional aesthetic and cultural practices.

“An Appetite for Paris”: Asian/American Diaspora and the Politics of Consumption
Professor Anita Anantharam (Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research)
aanita@ufl.edu; aanantha@wst.ufl.edu 

This course will focus on France’s relationship to former colonies in South and Southeast Asia and the complex ways in which multiculturalism and ethnic identity in France today find expression in the contemporary French social landscape. These former colonies have inflected the French landscape in a variety of ways through literature, cinema, culinary arts, and politics. In colonial constructions, the “East” is often portrayed as unknowable, dangerous, and exotic. Post-colonial representations of Paris while working within these very categories nevertheless represent their communities and their histories in unique ways. Our readings will explore the colonial construction of the “East”, and this will be supplemented by ethnographic research in some of the ethnic venues and Asian neighborhoods in Paris. Specifically, this course is interested in exploring Parisian spaces where the “East” and “West” come together in dialogue. This course will include numerous site visits, pre-departure required readings, and a final research paper based on an aspect of gender and identity in colonial France OR on the contemporary Asian diaspora's relationship to Paris.

Spring Break Course Archive

• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006

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