Course Catalog

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Course Catalog

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS (PY3035)

Studies the psychological processes involved in the acquisition, understanding and use of language. Provides an overview of the following research areas: speech perception, word recognition, sentence and discourse processing, speech production, first-, second-, and third-language acquisition, bilingual and multilingual acquisition, and language processing in the brain. PY 1000 is recommended as a prerequisite.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY (PY3040)

Psychology and philosophy have a long history in common. The course addresses philosophical dimensions and implications of psychology – concerning our understanding of cognition, action, emotion, imagination, mind, body, and brain. It also deals with central issues in philosophy that reflect and elaborate our understanding of human psychology and the way it is scientifically investigated: consciousness, thought and language, identity, and other forms of human subjectivity and its social, cultural, and historical fabric.

PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING & MEMORY (PY3065)

Students discover the classic and modern theories on classical and operant conditioning and the application of these in such phenomena as drug addiction, marketing and the formation and treatment of phobias. The second part of the course explores the concept of memory and the application of theory and research in understanding everyday memory phenomena, such as autobiographical memory, childhood amnesia, flashbulb memory, false memories and eyewitness testimony. The course also focuses on memory loss and memory training.

LIFE STORIES (PY3066)

This course will introduce students to the basic tenets, methods of study and controversies of narrative psychology. Particular attention will be paid to narrative analysis, identity and the influence of social interactions and culture on how we talk about the past. Students will apply narrative research and theory to the interpretation of life stories.

SOCIAL MEMORY (PY3067)

This course inquires into the nature and dynamics of how groups (families, institutions, countries, etc.) reconstruct and represent the past together. The problem of social memory is approached from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Students will have the opportunity to explore various places of memory in Paris and examine how these historical events are constructed in the present.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROCESS (PY3068)

This course explores autobiographical remembering as an issue of neuroscientific, cultural, and narrative psychology, while also considering it as a subject of other memory studies. It draws particular attention to how scientific, psychological, social, technological, artistic, and conceptual changes in various cultural fields have transformed the traditional idea of memory as an archive of the past.

SOCIETY, ILLNESS, & HEALTH (PY3069)

This course examines health and illness in a social, cultural and historical context. The first part of the course focuses on physical or behavioural 'symptoms' without any apparent organic aetiology (e.g. sick-building syndrome), appearing in members of specific groups or localities (socio-genic illness). The second part of the course considers socio-cultural shaping and experience of other more prevalent disorders.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IMMIGRATION AND RACISM (PY3070)

This course explores the psychology of immigration and racism within social, cultural and political contexts. It guides students to explore how our lived experience of immigration and racism is embedded in social relations,national governance, and global affairs. This course approaches these topics in light of major theoretical schools as well as interdisciplinary
methods.

TOPICS IN LITERATURE & PSYCHOANALYSIS (PY3090)

Topics change every year. The course uses French literary or cinematographic material in order to introduce and illustrate important psychoanalytical notions which will help students understand the complexity of the human psyche and its cultural constructions. Course subjects have included: Fairy Tales and the Complexity of growing up, Psychoanalysis as Detective Story, Scandal as a cultural pathology, Islam and the invention of the Self... Taught in French.

TOPICS IN PSYCHOLOGY AND FRENCH (PY3090)

Topics change every year. The course uses French literary or cinematographic material in order to introduce and illustrate important psychoanalytical notions which will help students understand the complexity of the human psyche and its cultural constructions. Course subjects have included: Fairy Tales and the Complexity of growing up, Psychoanalysis as Detective Story, Scandal as a cultural pathology, Islam and the invention of the Self... Taught in French.