The course entitled "Research Methods" aims to introduce students to the stages of developing research work, in its epistemological / ethical aspect and in its practical dimension. This course emphasizes the design, writing and presentation of research work through the appropriation of quantitative and qualitative techniques, necessary for its realization in a scientific manner. The course offers a methodological kit: a selection of tools, resources as well as written exercises (dissertations, detailed plan, essays, reading notes, summary notes, etc.) and oral exercises (presentations, debates, etc.) which objective would be to help students prepare for their multidisciplinary work and consolidate their methodological learning.

This course, intended for students following different circuits in human sciences (social sciences, psychology, literature, history, etc.) is divided into three parts: the first part deals with culture, of its constituent elements, of the difficulty in circumscribing it, of its relationship to identity and of transculturality. The second part concerns myths, their structure, their functions, their importance, their topicality. The third part focuses on the Sacred as founding phenomena of any culture and its multiple cultural and social expressions. The objective of the course is to raise the awareness of the student to the universality of the Sacred and myths as inscribed in the history and the life of all the societies and constitutive of the immemorial cultural fund of humanity and to make them discover their countless expressions in behavior, language, arts and letters. In addition to reading authors’ texts (Herskovits, Jung, Eliade, Girard, Lévi-Strauss, Otto…) and the analysis of myths or travelers’ stories, work can be conducted on audiovisual documents. As for the assignments, written or through oral exposition, that they will present, students are encouraged to develop themes derived from the issues addressed during the course.

This course presents principles and key tools to develop appropriate and effective communication in one-to-one and small group communication settings. The content focuses on analyzing and assessing communication skills to create and sustain effective communication in personal and professional relationships. Learners will explore various dimensions of verbal and nonverbal communication in human interaction. They will have the opportunity to learn and practice communication skills, examine and research the functions of verbal and nonverbal means of communication while discovering how different nonverbal cues affect human communication. Besides, students will be able to utilize the power of persuasion, with different types of people and in multicultural contexts.

This course grounds the process of appreciating the 7 arts from a connoisseur’s point of view. The focus will be mainly on paintings theatre/cinema and music. The timeline covered by the course would be ‘the modern era’, so the major movements from 1920 till 1970. We will also discuss and debate contemporary art (performance, conceptual art, digital art, animation, mapping etc..) The fundamental pillars of the course would be: Different types of methods of analysis (of a Painting/Theatre play/film/music etc...), Synoptic approach/comparative analysis and correspondences between arts, The classification of art through history, Sensibilization to the technical vocabulary.

The aim of this course is to explore the role and scope of mediation today in private life - between individuals, within the family - and in public life - in companies, and in intra- and inter-state relations. The need for mediation is becoming increasingly apparent as conflicts and individual and social tensions multiply. Between realities and aspirations, philosophical theory explains and clarifies some of the major concepts at the heart of the mediation process, such as the person, power, communication, values and so on. In this way, it helps to advance the practice, confirming it as a form of philosophical reflection. To what extent does mediation, as a theoretical-practical instrument, succeed in weaving, knotting and/or re-establishing links between the individual and himself, between the individual and others, between members of a city, between states, at a time when globalization is imposing its lofty institutions of collective identification, paradoxically generating withdrawal, mistrust of others, and the proliferation of fundamentalism?

Based on the conviction that self-awareness would allow the construction of a coherent and robust life project (personal and / or professional), this course aims, through psychology and various theories of development, to familiarize students with the mechanisms specific to each individual, allowing them to meet a desired future. Moreover, the course will highlight the way of accepting these different mechanisms as components, not only of a personal "algorithm", but even more, of a base of potentialities to be implemented for the benefit of an individuality to be modeled and concretized in order to better understand the intrapersonal and the interpersonal and to better live in society and within the world.

The course contains a general over-view of the historical development of political thought and a historiographical survey of the perception and usage of the concept of ideology. It offers to the students to be more familiar with the typology of the political ideologies, their differences and their trends, such as: communism, socialism, anarchism, liberalism, capitalism, conservatism, libertarianism, fascism, Nazism, nationalism, ecologism, feminism… On another hand, students will apply these theories in order to understand the process of State-building and social organization in the modern period.

Geography is a science, which is interested in the inhabited earth. It analyzes the natural facts in relation to human beings, their distribution, their movements, their activities and their actions. Beyond the influence of the natural mechanisms on life, geography studies the great contemporary problems: social and economic globalization, inequalities of development, ecological risks, and the overcrowding of cities, etc.

This course introduces students to the history of Egypt in ancient times, focusing on the chronology of the Pharaohs and their power in the Near East. Students will learn how to read and even to translate hieroglyphs. Students should be able to use primary sources and contextualize the topic in drawing a comparative chronology between Egypt and the rest of the eastern world.

This course focuses on the history of Mesopotamia in ancient times. This is a fundamental course which enables students to understand the context of the establishment of the first state-cities in the world. Students will use classical methods of learning, such as chronology and scale analysis. They should be able to establish the link between the history of Mesopotamia and the history of Egypt and other countries during the same period

This course intends to focus on the idea that ancient Syria has never been a centralized and strong state. Students will use methods of contextualization to understand that throughout history its cities have been influenced by empires and neighboring kingdoms: the Hittite Empire in the North, Assyria in the East, and Egypt in the South. This course will also consider the geography of Syria and its geopolitical situation. Finally, it will refer to archeological fields in order to enhance the importance of Syria at a certain time of History.

Greek history lives on thanks to its rich heritage, especially in the Mediterranean area. The course will present the constitutive elements of this long history since the emergence of the Minoan and Mycenaean “palatial” civilizations up to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. Students will study the cultural aspect of the Greek civilization, which reached its apogee with Hellenism. The course will help the students to analyze the process of diffusion of Christianity all around the Mediterranean coast, realized by the foundation of the Byzantine Empire and the uniqueness of the Basileus. A political approach will be adopted, analyzing the different regimes in the Greek and Byzantine world, from democracy to the powerful Empire, through tyranny. Attention will be given to the evolution of the city of Constantinople.

The course examines, through the history of the roman entities, the different factors which enhance the role of Rome as a Mediterranean power. The development and enlargement of the roman influence will be explained during both periods: period of the Roman Republic and then the period of roman imperialism. Students will use a comparative approach to examine the roman influence during these two periods and in different areas. Students will furthermore be able to define the process of Romanization and to develop a critical approach concerning the heritage of the Romans.

Gathered under the leadership of the prophet Mahomet, in the 7th century, the Arabs dominated the Near­East within a few years and continue the conquest in Africa and in Europe. The Caliph Rachidoun (632­661) yielded power to dynasties, which governed Dar­el­Islam of various capitals. Students will closely follow the stages of the expansion, the moments of the transfer of power, the organization of the administration and the governmental institutions of the Arab community from social, economic, cultural and scientific perspectives.

The course describes the western Middle Ages period with a social, political, military and cultural approach. Students will be introduced to the first theories of modern states, which contributed to transform Europe from the 5th to the 14th centuries. Primary sources and works of art will help the students to understand the different representations of the societies, their leaders and the new-born states. A comparative approach is necessary to understand the different evolutions in the European areas.

The interest in writing about the Ottoman period in history was renewed when local archives were made accessible in the second half of the 20th century. The image of a tyrannical and fanatical power, which made Europe tremble, was sweetened and the emphasis was put on the internal organization of the Empire. Defeated in Lepante in 1570, stopped in Vienna in 1683, and overruled in the Treaty of Kaynardji in 1774, the Empire weakened and became “the sick man of Europe” throughout the 19th century and had disappeared by the end of World War I.

This course deals with the history of Europe from the Renaissance until the end of the Monarchy. Students will examine financial and economic questions, the political regimes, religious reforms, the Industrial Revolution, as well as the psychological and social structures of the period.

This course will focus first on the interwar period of the 20th century. It will then deal with the main reasons that disturbed the world order during the second half of the 20th century: bipolarization, positive neutrality, decolonization, the European construction, the end of communism, the role of the USA as a superpower, globalization, international organizations, etc.

The expression “Middle East” concerns the area including the states of the Fertile Crescent and those of the Arab Peninsula, and Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and sometimes India. The course limits the study to states of the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Iraq. Students will examine themes dealing with the political and economic evolution, social mutations, demographic dynamics and some geopolitical questions focusing on contemporary issues, such as conflicts related to water management and the Arab Spring.

This course focuses on the inauguration of the New Alliance by Jesus, and the New testament which records the words and actions of this period. When Apostles proclaimed the good news by the kerygma it validated the evangelic mission of the Church, and from it, the first Christian communities were developed and organized. Their emergence caused different reactions and they were attacked by the upholders of Judaism and adherents of paganism. The course focuses on the dialectic of the integration of the Christians. The account of the genesis of Christianity is examined in this course along with the elaboration of the corpus of the first texts, and by minutely questioning the essence of the message that it brings to its understanding, its transmission, its evolution and its interpretation.

This course presents the different theological and legal schools, and considers mystical currents, brotherhoods and different contemporary movements in search of an ideal. The works of certain Muslim intellectuals living abroad will also be studied.

The course introduces students to the methods of museology, including conservation, restoration, and publishing. They are trained to substantiate the heritage of the Near East by using traditional tools and new technologies during excavations. They will conduct field work at the national museum of Beirut, and compare theories of different methods of conservation used and deployed by international museums, such as Le Louvre in Paris, or the Pergamon museum in Berlin.

In this course students will study the period before history, known as prehistory, and consider all the events which marked human beings before the invention of writing. This course is a multidisciplinary science, which includes geology, anthropology, climatology, zoology, etc..

This course presents art in Lebanon since its origins until the present day. By conducting comparative studies, students explore its sources, its interactions, the influences it has undergone, its originality and its geographical, historic characteristics and close and distant cultural context.

The course covers the period from the 14th century up to the first half of the 18th century. It studies the transformations in art throughout the centuries within the sociocultural context, from early antiquity in the West, until when paintings and sculptures began to illustrate real characters in real places. Students will learn how to analyze a work of art (painting, sculpture, drawings, etc.) and how to compare the techniques used by the artists in different periods of time.