Bachelor 1

Mr Nicolas Wanlin, Humanities & Social Sciences Department

nicolas.wanlin@polytechnique.edu

Visit of 2 cultural places

among

- the Sainte-Chapelle à Paris

OR

- the Château de Versailles

AND
- the Musée National d'Art Moderne (Centre Pompidou)

OR

- the MACVAL (Museum of contemporary art in Vitry-sur-Seine: http://www.macval.fr/Institution)

Assessment

After having visited 2 different cultural places, you are required to write a paper (between 800 and 1200 words) in English about your visit. The paper should be a personal report, through which you will highlight all or some of these points:

* The comparison of cultural heritage and contemporary artistic production;

* The way historic monuments and works of art intertwine various dimensions (historical, scientific, artistic, political, religious, etc.);

* How these 2 places affected your perception of history (recent and distant)

Papers will be assessed on:

* The originality and precision of your point of view;

* Your understanding of the cultural issues explored throughout the visits;

* The clarity and relevance of your argument.

Due date: Monday, November 11th, 8 PM.

Accepted file formats: doc, docx, gdoc, odt, pdf, rtf.

Friday, 8:30/10:30, Amphitheatre Cauchy

Pr Nicolas Roussellier

Major Issues in Today’s World and the Place of France

The course is designed to give a broad and comprehensive view of the political and social place of France in today’s globalized world. Two themes will be addressed this year in order to understand the originality of French Politics. First, we will study the question of the French democracy and its difficulties. French Politics have gone through many different political regimes (Monarchy under different styles, two Bonapartist Empires, five different forms of Republic, Vichy’s Dictatorship) and recurrent upheavals from the Revolution of 1789 to the “Gilets Jaunes” of 2018. It is this “French instability” which is at the core of the First part of the course. Secondly, the course will address the issue of the French Secularism, the “laïcité à la française”. It was in the history and it is still today one of the great challenges of the French society and the French democracy.

Organization of the course

-          Two parts, one on the question of the French Democracy, one on the issue of French Secularism (“laïcité”)

-          8 Lectures on Part One with a Midterm exam

-          3 Lectures on Part Two (French Secularism)

-          Final Written Exam on both parts (Democracy and Secularism)

Sessions on ZOOM

Friday, 8:30 to 10:15

45 mn of Lecture on Zoom

15 mn of break

45 mn of discussion with questions by Zoom

This course is not open to International Exchange program students

The aim of the course is to approach a wide variety of subjects related to geopolitics and cybersecurity, cyber defense and cyberspace. To understand the intricate relationships between these concepts, the course studies their definition and the changing meaning of these words in both space and time. We will first address the question of the evolving nature of geopolitics as a method and as a historically changing field of study, but also a renowned tool of geopolitical studies: maps. We will then apply geopolitics to the complex concept of cyberspace through multiple case studies.

The course also reviews the many aspects of cyberspace and cybersecurity where States are not the central actor. The emergence of numerous private actors also raises questions in the political field (Internet giants and their relationships to governments or the EU) and in the military and defense domains (non-State actors including terrorist groups, and their role in cyber conflicts).

After this overview, the course will cover specific and detailed case studies in order to analyze the interactions between geopolitical conflicts and the specificities of cyberspace: disinformation, "geopolitics of infrastructures", and the geopolitical dimension of the so-called emerging technologies.

This course is not open to International Exchange program students