Art & Architecture    Art History | Architecture French    1: Beginners | 2: Intermediate | 3: Int./Advanced | 4: Advanced French Politics and History Writing and Literature

Art & Architecture

Art History

Art History

 

This course provided the basic framework for understanding the evolution of French art from the Renaissance (15th century) to the early 20th century, and placed both the artists and their works in their historical, social, financial and political context. It furnished the critical tools for an appreciation of art, as well as teaching basic notions of methodology and analytical approaches to works of art.

 

Most of the teaching was based on long hours spent together in Parisian museums of international reputation such as the Grand Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay. This "direct from the source" approach allowed the students to see and experience for themselves the impact of the works we focused on, by attempting to analyse, compare, reflect upon and interpret themes, styles and techniques of the famous masters and landmark works in order to understand better the evolution of the history of art. Progressively, the students were incited to try their hand at examining together some initially daunting paintings. They then prepared, either individually or in teams, their own presentations to the class.

 

Although we focused on the famous collections of the Louvre and the Orsay, we also made sure to complete our studies by including some of the smaller but equally important collections, such as the Museum of Medieval Art (Musée du Moyen Age-Hôtel de Cluny), the Museum of the History of Paris (Musée Carnavalet) and the Picasso Museum. As part of the optional cultural enhancement we regularly encouraged the students to try in their free time to visit the Rodin Museum, The Musée Nissim de Camondo and the Musée Cognac-Jay, asking them to bring back to us their impressions, appreciations and remarks.

 

There were 14 hours of formal class time, plus the many field trips to explore the splendours of the great chateaux, such as Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles, as well as Chartres and Giverny.

 

Regular required assignments consisted of drawings, photographs, and brief written presentations as well as alternative creative possibilities such as collages, poems, themed screenplays or short stories.

Architecture

Architecture

 

The section on architecture of the course "Art and Architecture" introduced students to the urban and architectural history of the city of Paris. Special focus was placed on the notion of social ritual and how it impacted architectural form. Through a series of seven presentations on site, from the Roman Thermes de Cluny to the twentieth-century Villas La Roche-Jeanneret, and with the help of comparative graphic documents, students learned about the evolution of Parisian architecture and the changing ideals of its patrons. Students learned about the notions of architectural typology, urban planning, and symbolic representation.

 

French

French 1

French 1: Beginners

 

The beginning French class was a small group of three students who had little to no previous experience with the French language. They launched into this endeavor with great energy, enthusiasm, and determination. Their first assignment was to go to a café to observe French people engaged in conversation and take note of their non-verbal communication - physical proximity during conversation, facial expressions, body language - and report their findings to the class the following day. This reinforced the fact that there are certain things one understands without knowing the language. The community service component of the ISS program plunges the students almost immediately into a total immersion environment for several hours per day, and they being to pick up words and phrases in a very natural way.

 

In class we began by learning a number of simple expressions of courtesy and memorizing the name and address of the Foyer and the telephone number of the ISS office. Then we set out to establish a rudimentary framework for the grammar and syntax of the language. We covered the present and futur proche of first conjugation regular verbs (with a cursory look at the second conjugation) and of six most frequently used irregular verbs (avoir, etre, faire, aller, mettre and prendre), several avoir idioms, prepositional phrases (especially ones that can be used with aller), numbers to 100 and telling time. There was considerable emphasis placed on French phonetics - quality and pronunciation of individual vowels and consonants, word groupings, stress, rhythm, and intonation - and methods for speaking French well.

 

Saturday morning classes were devoted to getting out and about in the city. We went to an open-air market, to the Guignol (marionette performance) in the Luxembourg Gardens and to the Rodin Museum. The final two days of class were devoted to reading simple children's stories, which we all especially enjoyed. This was a wonderful group of young people who never ceased to amaze me with their fearlessness in meeting the daily challenges of life in a foreign culture and the joy they expressed in each new little triumph.

French 2

French 2: Intermediate French

 

Ce cours s'adresse à des étudiants qui ont une connaissance des bases de la langue française et qui sont à même de pouvoir l'utiliser dans la communication écrite et orale élémentaire du quotidien, l'ensemble de ces acquis étant à consolider. Durant ce mois, dans le cadre d'un enseignement/apprentissage authentique de la langue, nous nous sommes attachés à développer la compréhension et l'expression orales afin de tirer parti au maximum des ressources de l'environnement français. L'ensemble du groupe a pu échanger ses impressions et ses points de vue dans une perspective interculturelle qui a aidé chacun à comprendre et à s'approprier son lieu de vie par une pratique active de la langue française.

 

Pendant l'heure de cours quotidienne, nous nous sommes concentrés sur l'enrichissement du vocabulaire et la révision/approfondissement des structures grammaticales adaptées au niveau du groupe (le genre, les pronoms, les prépositions, les temps du passé, le futur, le subjonctif dans ses emplois les plus usuels).

 

Notre travail était structuré autour des thèmes suivants:
• l'analyse croisée des cultures américaine et française au travers des rituels du quotidien et des fêtes. Nous avons également jeté un coup d'oeil sur la presse avec ses différents types de journaux.
• la gastronomie française avec la visite d'un restaurant biologique pour découvrir les plats et les produits. Nos avons également assisté à la fabrication du pain et des viennoiseries dans une boulangerie reconnue pour la qualité de ses produits. Enfin, tous les étudiants se sont retrouvés autour de l'élaboration d'un repas (courses, préparation et...dégustation).
• la découverte de patrimoine musical français avec des chansons célèbres d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. Cette activité s'est prolongée par une soirée «Karaoké» où les étudiants ont pu chanter les chansons étudiées.
• l'étude des formes spécifiques de la langue orale et de quelques tournures idiomatiques en vue d'un réinvestissement dans la pratique de la langue avec des natifs.
• le projet lecture-cinéma. Tout au long de ce mois, nous avons travaillé sur Le mystère de la chambre jaune de Gaston Leroux au travers d'une lecture progressive de l'ouvrage qui a débouche sur la découverte de son adaptation au cinéma.
• le projet final: au terme de ce mois, chacun a pu faire partager son expérience et ses impressions sur Paris en produisant un texte ou un poème que l'ensemble des étudiants du programme a pu apprécier lors de l'apéritif avant le dîner final.

 

Que tous les participants à ce cours soient remerciés pour leur travail et leur attention

French 3

French 3: Advanced Intermediate French

 

The goal of this course was to help students assess and improve all of their French language skills and their command of the basic grammatical points, while learning more about French culture. Object pronouns, all tenses and sequences of tenses were reviewed, based on the French placement test that indicated their strengths and weaknesses.

 

The students were asked to write a journal in French so as to improve their written skill, and they were encouraged to illustrate it and keep it as a souvenir.

 

They were introduced to many different aspects of French culture.

We listened to classic French songs like "Comme d'habitude" (the original French version of "My way") and "La vie en rose" that we then all sang during an evening out. We also went to the movies to see the recent cinema adaptation of a novel featuring the famous detective Rouletabille, "le Mystére de Chambre Jaune", after having read its abridged version for the class. During the Saturday morning classes, the students were taken to different places in Paris. First we attended an exhibition organized at the Paris City Hall to celebrate the Centenary of the Tour de France that allowed us to review French geography. Then there was a visit to the Grévin wax museum that served as a great introduction to French celebrities. Finally we saw an exhibition about the different neighborhoods of Paris that inspired the writer Georges Simenon who created another famed detective, "Inspecteur Maigret", whose adventures were adapted for cinema as well as a TV series. The students were offered one of his novels, "la tête d'un homme" as an incentive to continue reading in French.

French teacher Gustave and students at a boucainiste along the Seine

French 4: Advanced French

 

During this summer program, students had the opportunity to practice their language skills with their native French teacher. This Advanced French class was in accordance with the program's ideas of social consciousness and community service. The course focused mainly on cultural and social differences between Americans and French and Francophone people. We specifically focused on the listening and speaking aspects of the French language. Thanks to their journal, students had the opportunity to exchange experiences from their daily activities and contrast their own culture with the French culture.

 

Although the course did not implicitly highlight grammar rules, grammatical structures were introduced in context. Discussions regarding contemporary French culture as a melting pot, and the different communities living in and outside of Paris were the main topics in the class discussion. To improve their language skills and foster their cultural sensitivity, students explored articles from Le Monde, Liberation and le Parisien and literary texts from Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Breton and Baudrillard. These activities also provide greater opportunities for students to listen, speak, read and write and explore different Francophone cultures. The evaluation of each individual's progress is based on homework assignments, research and observations and the completion of a small project (a personal journal with collages) reflecting their own experience in France.

French Politics and History

French Politics and History

 

The course "French History and Politics" introduced students to contemporary French civilization. Special focus was placed on 20th Century French History (World War I, The "Front Populaire", World War II, The Vichy Regime, the IVth and Vth Republics) and on the study of the French political and social systems (executive and legislative powers, political parties, the health system, welfare and retirement systems, the educational system and immigration). the construction of the European Union was also studied as well as the French foreign policy and the relationship between the United States and France. Two visits to the French Senate and to a special exhibit on the Jews under the Vichy Regime, and a one-day trip to the D-Day beaches complemented the course.

 

Writing and Literature

Phil Holland with students

Literature and Writing
with Phil Holland

 

This course takes a close look at prose and poetry from a number of American, British and French writers who lived and worked in Paris or who wrote about Paris: expatriates, tourists, native Parisians and those who adopted Paris as their home for greater or lesser periods of time. At the same time, the course leads members of the class to become "writers of Paris" in their own right through work done in a traditional "writers' workshop" fashion, sometimes using the work of writers studied as models. Readings are from a photocopied anthology assembled by the instructor, drawn from Americans in Paris (ed. Adam Gopnik, 2004) and other sources: Hemingway, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, May Sarton, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Proust, Queneau, Georges Brassens, with a glance at Edith Piaf, Josephine Baker and Jim Morrison. Most readings are in English; some are in French accompanied by English translations. Class often involves field trips to sites in Paris associated with the authors studied.