Here are a sample of previous Centenary in Pairs Courses. Courses may vary year to year and there is something for everyone!

 

Beliefs and Values

Start your college experience as an enquirer!

Develop a strong core of beliefs and values to start your college experience. We engage in personal, in-depth discussions about the most important questions arising from philosophy, religion, ethics, and politics. We visit various religious sites, read about the French and American existentialists, and carefully examine how different people answer questions about work, death, love, and suffering. Students will find the class personally challenging, but they will leave the course with a stronger sense of their own beliefs and values and the skills and community support needed to thrive in a diverse world.

View photos from 2023 Beliefs and Values course

 

Food and Culture

Explore the connection between what we eat, how we eat, and who we are.

This course explores the connection between what and how we eat and who we are. By looking comparatively at French and American food cultures, we will examine how food shapes society, culture, and identity. Throughout this experience, we will engage in contemporary political, social, and cultural conversations around food and eating.

Best suited for those without significant dietary limitations.

View photos from 2023 Food and Culture course

 

Her Words, Her City: Women Writers of Paris

This course invites students to explore women’s voices throughout history that have shaped the intellectual and literary landscape of Paris. Students will read the works of influential writers who defied societal norms, examining the intersection of literacy, agency, education, and liberation. From abbesses and poets to scientists and philosophers, students will learn from these women in their own words. In Paris, we’ll visit the sites of their important discoveries and artistic contributions while exploring the city they called home. Through group discussions, guided tours, and interactive seminars, students will gain a profound understanding of the cultural and historical contexts that inspired these luminaries.

 

Historical Scenes in Paris

 

Why do humans establish cities? How did cities develop in modern western Europe and spread to the New World?

This course has been designed to meet the challenges of expanding one’s circles through new social and cultural interactions. History has shown us that people do not always share the same values or experiences, but we are increasingly more aware of our interdependent relationship to the world around us. Our challenge, then, is to expand our understanding to promote respectful engagement with a broader world. Learning how the people of Paris experienced the city around them as it changed and modernized from roughly 1600 to the present can give us great insight into how modern western cities as we know them today came to exist. Our task is to relate to their experiences and to try to understand them better and to respectfully engage with a broader world today.

View photos from the 2023 Historical Scenes in Paris course. 

 

Paris by Library

They’re more than book repositories! Libraries collect materials meant to preserve and convey information, and they also show people how to find the information they need. They are also vital social sites, where people from different backgrounds meet, exchange ideas, and encounter life-changing ideas. This class explores and celebrates the role of libraries and information sharing in human society by focusing on the development of Paris as a city through the lens of several historic library (and library-adjacent!) institutions, people, and ideas. What are libraries for? This short course tries to give an answer to that deceptively simple question by looking at the history of the city of Paris, its libraries, and its media culture more broadly.

 

Paris Noir 

Why did African Americans flock to Paris in droves between 1750-1960?

This course examines the achievements of a few of the countless African-Americans who sought refuge in Paris because their own country did not share or value their experiences and denied them the very human dignity and opportunity they found so abundantly in France. Their experiences can help us learn to appreciate the common ground we share so that we can build mutually beneficial relationships through respectful engagement with a broader world.

View photos for the 2023 Paris Noir course.

Paris Places: Making Meaning and Identity

Why do people mark and promote places and spaces as important? How do these places help us make sense of the world we see and our place in it? What kinds of stories do historical sites and monuments tell? Do these sites have one meaning or several meanings? How do we learn about and understand these meanings? These questions will guide us as we visit iconic Paris places and learn how the people of Paris have experienced and narrated the city around them. Analyzing how and why Parisians marked certain sites as important (and recording our own impressions of these sites) can give us great insight into questions of history, memory, and identity.

 

Writing Paris, Writing Home

Look outside the box... and outside the book! Take a snapshot of You.

Writing Paris/Writing Home" is an introductory, immersive course in creative writing. Through the close reading of short poems and literary nonfiction and through the creation and group critique of your own work, you will discover and put into practice basic techniques of creative writing drawn from the sensations of home and the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch of Paris. You will draw from both your past experiences of home (memory) and the present experience of living in Paris for several days (walking the city, eating the food, absorbing the history, art, and general beauty of the world's most exciting city).  By the end of the course you will have a portfolio of short writings that chronicle your thinking about "home" and "travel" and what both mean to you.

View photos from the 2022 Writing Paris, Writing Home course.