Rice Global Paris Summer Program
Summer 2027 Courses
APPLY NOW: RICE GLOBAL PARIS SUMMER PROGRAM 2027 APPLICATION
To learn more about the program logistics and cost, visit our Paris Summer Program Information and FAQs page. If you cannot find the answer to a question on our website, email us at globalowls@rice.edu.
ENGL 305 Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Writing
In this course, students will translate the visual, historical, and sensory realities of Paris into compelling prose. Rather than viewing the city as a passive backdrop, students will use Paris’s specific neighborhoods, archives, and cultural layers to investigate multiple approaches to writing nonfiction. The course will look at how the physical architecture and diverse subcultures of Paris shape the authorial voice, testing how a writer’s perspective shifts when navigating unfamiliar geography.
KINE 301 Human Physiology
This course is for anybody with a body who wants to know a bit more about how it works! KINE 301 addresses fundamental and advanced principles of how the human body works at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, and organism levels, with emphasis placed on mechanisms of function and homeostasis as achieved through the coordinated function of homeostatic control systems. This special "Paris" offering of the course will also investigate the impact of French physiologists on anatomy, art, and medicine.
HART 358 Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
Impressionism is by far the most beloved art movement in the Western world. It was also, at its core, a deeply Parisian phenomenon. As we look at artists like Monet, Degas, Morisot, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh, we will visit the places that they lived, worked and immersed themselves in the rapidly changing, dynamic urban fabric of the city as well as going museums with unparalleled collections of the art of this period. We will also ask what lies behind Impressionism’s often sunny surfaces? How did the artists react to issues of race, class, sexuality and colonialism in the late nineteenth century?
ANTH 309 Culinary Crossroads: Globalization, Food and Identity in Paris
This course explores the historical, cultural and political factors that have shaped French culinary traditions and practices and their transformations in the contemporary context of globalization. The course will cover such topics as: the production and consumption of symbolically and economically significant foods; the impact of postcolonial migration on the culinary landscape of Paris; the role of food in constructing personal and national identity; the emergence of innovative and sustainable approaches to urban food production in Paris, such as rooftop gardens, permaculture and vertical food cultivation as alternatives to industrial food systems.
PHIL 108 AI Ethics
This course is designed for students who want to better understand the historical, cultural, and political forces that today shape AI usage and development. Students will trace the influence of 20th-century Paris-based scholars, activists, and artists—such as Benjamin, Debord, Baudrillard, Foucault, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty—on contemporary discourse on AI ethics and policy and explore the many sites—including coffee shops, shopping arcades, museums, music halls, and public spaces—that today carry on their legacy.
THEA 252 Paris in the Spotlight: French Dramatic Literature
In this course, students will explore Paris' rich history, tradition, and active practice of theatrical performance. Students will attend performances, tour theatres, and visit the sites that inspired many artists over centuries. Along the way, the course will examine a wide range of theatrical styles and genres and deepen students' understanding of how the French theatre tradition is intertwined with English language theatre and European theatre more broadly.
PSYC 353 Emotion and Motivation
The primary objective of this course is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the intricate relationship between emotion and motivation from a psychological science perspective. Through a combination of classroom learning and field excursions throughout the city, students will gain a deeper perspective on how emotion and motivation intertwine to affect real-world change and gain an applied understanding of how human behavior can be shaped.
ARTS 230 Comics and Sequential Art
Called "the 9th Art," comics are incredibly popular in France. Learn the primary language, tools, and materials of comics, as well as drawing techniques and concepts, while making your own comics. This course will combine critical analysis of essential graphic novels, the basics of comic making, and excursions to visit museums and visits with significant French artists.
MATH 115 The Art of Math
MATH 115 is intended primarily for students majoring in non-STEM fields seeking knowledge of the nature of mathematics as well as training in mathematical thinking and problem-solving. The goal of the course is to demonstrate that math is not necessarily about formulas, but is rather a process of thinking which is relevant to them on a daily basis. Students will understand the continued impact of mathematics in shaping history, culture, logic, philosophy, and knowledge, as well as its role as a humanistic and aesthetic discipline.
FREN 360 Street Art: Hip-Hop, Graffiti, and Photography
This three-week intensive course explores street art as a form of cultural expression, political intervention, and urban storytelling in Paris and across the Francophone world. Students will examine how graffiti, rap and hip-hop, photography, murals, and other forms of public visual and sonic culture challenge boundaries between art and vandalism, center and periphery, visibility and erasure, and authorized and unauthorized uses of public space. The course also considers what happens when cultural practices associated with streets and marginalized communities enter galleries, museums, festivals, and other institutions, exploring tensions between transgression and recognition, ephemerality and preservation, and artistic autonomy and commercialization.
ASIA 275 Languages of Paris: Migration, Identity, and the Multilingual City
What can we learn about a society by paying attention to the languages of its streets? Arabic, Tamazight, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Tamil, and many other languages are visible in particular neighborhoods, businesses, institutions, and forms of public communication in Paris. Their presence is uneven, and that unevenness gives us a way to study migration, colonial history, citizenship, class, neighborhood identity, and ideas about who belongs. The point is not to catalogue every language in Paris, but to ask how languages change in visibility, status, and meaning when communities move and settle elsewhere.
HIST/ASIA 320 Imperial Pleasure Gardens: Paris, Landscape and Power
This class focuses on landscape and power, emphasizing the complexity and dynamism of the historical pleasure garden tradition. Parisian parks and gardens are explored as evolving expressions of political power, aesthetic ideology, social reform, and environmental practice. Students will analyze how gardens functioned as spaces of power, leisure, and artistic expression but are also encouraged to think about gardens as lived spaces.