Summer 2014 Program
French Language and Culture
We at the UC Paris Study Center look forward to welcoming you here in person on June 16. For the seven weeks you are here, your mornings and afternoons will be spent in language classes taught by resident Parisians and in lectures and activities related to your culture course. All courses are designed to give you ample opportunity to take advantage of being in Paris.
Throughout the summer, you'll have many opportunities to use the French you're learning in class in everyday situations, and you'll gain a real familiarity with some of the basic issues of French society and culture.
Again, we look forward to spending time with you here in Paris. A bientôt!
French Language Courses
Intensive Track
Each student will be enrolled in an intensive language class, which is made up of two sequential courses worth 5 UC quarter units each. Students will leave the program with the equivalent of two quarters/one semester of lower-division French.* Students will be placed in one of six levels (French 1 & 2; French 2 & 3; French 3 & 4; French 4 & 5; French 5 & 6; French 6 & 101) based on the French they have had on their home campus and the results of an online language assessment they will have taken prior to their arrival in Paris. At the end of the summer program students will have completed 10 UC quarter (6.6 semester) units for their French language course.
Semi-intensive Track
Each student will be enrolled in a semi-intensive language class. This track is currently limited to students with no previous experience of the language. At the end of the summer program students will have completed 5 UC quarter (3.3 semester) units or the equivalent of 1 quarter of lower-division French.
Pre-ILP Track
Each student will be enrolled in an intensive language class, which is made up of two sequential courses worth 5 UC quarter units each. Students will leave the program with the equivalent of two quarters/one semester of lower-division French.* In lieu of taking a Culture Course, students will also be enrolled in a Methodology Course worth 3 UC quarter (2.0 semester)units which meets two times per week.
*Students placed in FR 6/FR 101 will leave the program with the equivalent of one quarter of lower-division French, and one quarter of upper-division French.
As part of their French language class, all students regardless of their track will have the opportunity to undertake a personal project that will allow them even more immersion possibilities as they explore Paris as a living laboratory.
Upper Division Culture Courses
The culture courses meet 2-3 times per week for a total of four hours/week. The individual/group visits, special conferences, film screenings, etc. meet for 1-2 hours each week. At the end of the summer program students will have completed 4.0 UC upper division quarter (2.6 semester) units for their culture course.
Paris Landscapes: Literary and Visual Constructions of the City
Paris is a city that has been constructed as much by the writers, philosophers and filmmakers who have inhabited, filmed and written about it as by the architects and city planners who collaborated with politicians to build it. This course will explore the interactions between the city of Paris and the ways it has been represented in art and in literature. Emphasis will be placed on the fact that the poems, books, paintings and monuments we will be studying not only portray these interactions, they are themselves also the products of the kinds of interactions they portray. Paris is a city where interactions between art and society have been extremely rich and we will be touching on several key moments in their history. The course will begin with readings of poems by Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin's discussion of these poems in the context of the history of capitalism. This introduction to Paris as a volatile palimpsest of different histories will help guide us through the rest of the course.
The course will be taught principally in English, and will meet twice a week for two hours sessions. Additional required excursions and visits, as a class or on individual assignment, will enhance classroom discussions. [Suggested subject areas to which this course transfers over: History/Comparative Literature/Art History]
Paris as Palimpsest: A Perpetual Dialogue Between Past and Present
In France, the past is always present. This class is designed to provide students with an understanding of the intellectual framework and historical references that inform the most volatile issues debated in France today. Thorough study of the history of Paris from political, economic, and social perspectives will equip the student to analyze and evaluate current issues and events from both the French and the American perspective.
The course will be taught principally in English, and will meet twice a week for two hour sessions. Additional required excursions and visits, as a class or on individual assignment, will enhance classroom discussions.[Suggested subject areas to which this course transfers over: History/Sociology/Political Science]
Paris Scenes: Cinematic Representations of the City
The city of Paris has long served as muse to foreign and domestic filmmakers. Cinematic representations have framed and reframed not only how we see and understand many of the ville lumière’s most famous monuments and districts but also how we comprehend aspects of French history and culture. This course, therefore, will take an interdisciplinary approach to cinematic representation by relying on methodologies from comparative literature, philosophies of aesthetics, film studies, history, and urban studies. Throughout the course, students will study the ways in which cinematic representations attribute meaning to monuments and districts. They will analyze how these representations constitute scenes of re-presentation; that is, how they provide interpretations of cultural, historical, and socio-political events. Through a combination of viewings, related readings, and site visits to scene locations, students will engage in discussions about how the meanings of such sites become manifold depending on how they are framed and thus seen/scened. The course will be organized around case studies of both well-known and lesser-known sites, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Montmartre district, and the Latin Quarter district.
The course will be taught principally in English and will meet twice a week for two hour sessions. Additional sessions will be held for film screenings. [Suggested subject areas to which this course transfers over: Film/Comparative Literature/Urban Studies]
Tastes of Paris: The Anthropology of Food
Human food systems provide a unique window on culture. Eating is not only a biological need; it also reflects forms of human co-existence. Human food systems and ways of eating reveal traditional techniques, values and rituals, as much as they display significant social roles of hierarchy, power and authority.
In this course we will review the general principles of social anthropology and then come to understand them through the exploration of food as an object and reflection of culture. We will investigate the link between the biological, economic, and cultural aspects of human food systems, as well as how they determine the way we eat today. We will analyze the concept of Foodways, a social-cultural process leading to the construction of the self, collective identities, gender, and ethnicity. And we will consider how changes in foodways both reflect mutating social environments and challenge our capacity for social adaptation.
To this end, we will visit traditional open-air French markets, both comparing them to “ethnic” markets in the Asian and African quarters of Paris and sampling the wildly different foods on display. We will use and profit from our presence in Paris to test and evaluate French culinary history through on-site study excursions, tasting experiences, readings and discussions with food professionals.
We will learn how in reality so-called “authentic” foodways are always dynamic processes that integrate elements from different cultural encounters, ways of life and social trends. Indeed, through a study of the history of food in France and its empire and this as a counterpoint to that of the United States, eating will be studied, in the words of anthropologist Marcel Mauss, as a “total social fact”. [Suggested subject areas to which this course transfers over: Anthropology, History, Sociology]
Attendance Policy for the Summer Program in French and Culture Studies
In the "Student Conduct and Discipline Agreement" our students have made a commitment to conform to standards of conduct including "regular attendance in all classes for which Student is registered."
There is a strict attendance policy in place at the UC Paris Study Center by which students must abide. Students are expected to attend classes and participate actively in their education through their coursework at UC Paris. It is, therefore, the student's reponsibility to attend all classes, arrive punctually, and participate actively and respectfully in class activities and discussions.
Click here to read the Summer Program in Language and Culture Academic Handbook, which outlines the attendance policy [PDF]
Excursions, site visits and activities
All language and culture courses use the city of Paris as their classroom. You'll be visiting museums, historical monuments and other only-in-Paris places. Site visits are an integral part of students' coursework and are required course meetings. Students will be required to complete assignments for their French language courses related to the mandatory excursions.
Planning on traveling during your weekends? Please note there are four mandatory excursions/activities, two of which take place on Fridays:
1) Friday, June 20: the beautiful renaissance château of Chantilly
2) Students will participate in a French cuisine cooking class in week 2, 3, or 4 depending on group
3) Students will attend a ballet performance of Dances at a Gathering and Psyché in either week 3 or 4 depending on group
4) Friday, July 25: the awe-inspiring château of Versailles
Be sure to plan accordingly!
"My experience studying abroad in Paris (as cheesy at is sounds) undeniably changed the course of my life." - Former program participant