University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis

The University of Paris VIII or University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis (French: Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis or Université de Vincennes à Saint-Denis) is a public university in Paris. Once part of the federal University of Paris system, it is now an autonomous public institution and is part of the Université Paris Lumières with Paris Nanterre University and Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Most undergraduate degrees (except modern languages) are taught in French.

For the similarly named university in Indiana, United States, see Vincennes University.
University of Paris VIII
Université Paris-VIII
MottoUniversité Monde
Motto in English
World University
TypePublic
Established1969
Endowment€113 million (2013)[1]
ChancellorAnnick Allaigre
Undergraduates14,070
Postgraduates6,259
Location
Saint-Denis
,
France

48°56′41″N 2°21′48″E
AffiliationsUniversity of Paris, UNIMED
WebsiteWebsite (English)
Paris 8 University

It is one of the thirteen successors of the world's second oldest academic institution, the University of Paris, and was established shortly before the latter officially ceased to exist on 31 December 1970. It was founded as a direct response to events of May 1968. This response was twofold: it was sympathetic to students' demands for more freedom, but also represented the movement of students out of central Paris, especially the Latin Quarter, where the street fighting of 1968 had taken place.

Entrance of Paris 8 University

History

Founded in 1969, the new experimental institution was named Centre Universitaire Expérimental de Vincennes (CUEV) in Vincennes. In 1971, it gained full university status, thus allowing it to award its own degrees, and renamed "Université Paris VIII".[2] Since moving to Saint-Denis in 1980, the university has become a major teaching and research centre for humanities in the Île-de-France region.

Tumultuous years

As soon as it opened, Vincennes became the venue for a continuation of 1968, being occupied almost immediately by student radicals, and being the scene of violent confrontations with the police. One incident, in early 1972, involved a janitors' (travailleurs du nettoyage) strike. The radicalized janitors invaded classrooms, accused the professors of being scabs, and demanded solidarity. Meanwhile, there was so much radical leafleting, some university hallways were clogged with ankle-deep crumpled leaflets.

It became particularly notorious for its radical philosophy department, assembled and then headed by Michel Foucault, who in this stage of his career was at his most militant, on one occasion participating in a student occupation and pelting the police outside the building with projectiles. The scandal of this department emerged not around this incident, however, but around one of the philosophy professors, Jacques Lacan's daughter Judith Miller, who was not only a committed communist, like most of the faculty, but indeed a Maoist as well. The department had its accreditation withdrawn after it was revealed that Miller had handed out course credit to strangers she met on a bus.[3] (Miller was subsequently fired by the French education ministry after saying in a radio interview that the university was a capitalist institution and that she was trying to make it function as badly as possible.)

Recent reforms

Since the turmoil in the late 1960s, the University has endorsed a far more mainstream academic life and has brought in new departments, new professors, and national rules to effect this change. In 1980, the University was relocated to the suburb of Saint-Denis. The University's capacity of 24,000 students per year makes "Paris VIII" an important university with internationally recognized departments in Philosophy, Political Sciences, Cinema Arts, Communication Studies, and Feminist Studies.

Academics

The university offers over a hundred undergraduate, graduate and diploma courses.[4] It is particularly well known for its political science programme as it is the only public university in France to offer this subject at undergraduate level.

The University of Paris VIII also offers some distance-learning opportunities for a select number of subjects such as Law and Psychology.

Affiliations

Paris-VIII is well-connected and has over 250 partnerships with universities around the world. They include the UC Berkeley, the Beijing Film Academy, Boston University, the Free University of Berlin, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Vienna as well as since 2016 the University of Rojava.[5]

Students are encouraged to spend one or two semesters at a neighbouring institution in the US, Canada, Latin America, Asia or Europe in order to develop their language skills and cultural understanding. Alternatively, students also have the possibility to teach French in a high school abroad or to complete an internship.

Notable academics

Philosophy

Psychoanalysis

Politics and international relations

Economics

Communication sciences

Psychology

Hypermedia, new media and cyberculture

  • Ghislaine Azémard
  • Jean-Pierre Balpe
  • Claude Baltz
  • Jean Clement
  • Pierre Lévy
  • Imad Saleh
  • Jean-Louis Weissberg

Anthropology

Sociology

Semiotics

  • Denis Bertrand
  • Jean-Claude Coquet

Arts

Ethnomusicology

Linguistics

University Presidents

Royalty

See also

References
  1. "Info" (PDF). www.letudiant.fr. 2013.
  2. "Paris VIII: History". www.univ-paris8.fr.
  3. Miller, James (2000). The Passion of Michel Foucault. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674001572.
  4. "Paris VIII: Educational Programmes". www.univ-paris8.fr.
  5. "Rojava university seeks to eliminate constraints on education in Syria's Kurdish region". ARA News. 2016-08-15. Retrieved 2016-08-15.
  6. (in French) Info archive on musicaitalia.free.fr (DOC file)
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