Michaele Ferguson

Associate Professor, Political Science
Global Intensive: Playing Politics: Violence, Institutions, & Memory (Paris, France)

What is your international experience?
I actually lived in Europe for ten years when I was growing up, so that was my real study abroad experience! My father was in the US Army, and we were stationed in different parts of West Germany and the Netherlands. We used to take trips on the weekends to visit castles and museums, and I loved it! I had the amazing opportunity to study French starting in 5th grade – for two years I was in an immersion program. So everything was in French: science, history, gym class, even recess! French is my strongest foreign language, but German is the next best: I was in a German kindergarten for two years, and they say I was fluent for a 4 year old! I didn’t have the chance to travel abroad during college, but I have been making up for it ever since. This year, for example, I will visit six countries besides the US!

Why should first year students take a course with an international travel experience?
Whether you’ve been abroad many times or you’ve never been out of the state of Colorado, spending time in another country is an incredible educational opportunity. The United States is a huge country, and here in Colorado we are relatively insulated from what happens in other places: we don’t get much news about what is happening around the world, and we don’t get a good perspective on how people around the globe perceive the US government and the American people. Education is all about broadening our perspectives: spending time abroad means seeing the world beyond our own community, and seeing our community through the eyes of others. Getting to do this in the first semester of your first year of college is a way to jump start the whole education process.
 
Why is Paris such an excellent location for your Global Intensive?
Well, we are going to be studying the French Revolution, so it seems obvious that we should go to France! Paris of course is the center of the action: it’s the seat of government, and the site of many of the most important power struggles of the Revolution. We will be right down the street from the Bastille – the prison that the revolutionaries famously stormed on July 14, 1789. You can’t get any closer to history than that! We’re going to walk the same streets the revolutionaries marched along, see the palaces where King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette lived in luxury and later were imprisoned, and trace the evidence of the revolution in the deliberate vandalism of art and architecture throughout the city. Since we will be role-playing the French Revolution, what better place could there be to do it?
 
What is your favorite French food?
Wow – this is a cruel question. How do I pick just one thing? I love the more than fifty flavors of jams you can taste at La Chambre aux Confitures, or a good steak frites enjoyed while sitting at a sidewalk table in a neighborhood bistro, or the Mara des Bois (wild strawberries) you can only get in June at the Marché d’Aligre, or the crunch of a “tradition” baguette, or the chocolates at Henri Le Roux, or the flakiness of the award-winning croissants at Blé Sucré, or the marvelous merveilleux cakes, or … well, you see my problem. If I really have to pick just one French food, it would have to be cheese: whether it’s the one-day-old goat cheese that tastes like you are eating a fluffy, white cloud, or a good stinky, creamy Camembert – there are over 1600 French cheeses to enjoy, so trying them all could keep me busy for a long time!
 
What aspect of the program do you look forward to the most?
I’m really looking forward to showing off Paris when we go on some walks through the city. Most of the buildings in Paris today were not standing in the late 18th-century, so it can be hard to find evidence in the city of the revolution … unless you know where to look for it! I’m designing a couple of walking tours for us through different quarters of the city where we can still see the evidence of revolution in the architecture: the aristocratic emblems that were defaced, the sculptures that had to be replaced after the revolution because the originals were destroyed, the foundation stones of the Bastille (all that remains of the medieval fortress), the bullet holes in the walls of older buildings – all marking the aesthetic, political, and religious struggles of the revolution. It’s like finding a hidden city within the city!
  
Is there anything else you would like to add?
We will be staying in my favorite district of Paris: the 11th Arrondissement. This is such a fun neighborhood! First off, it’s the revolutionary neighborhood: where many of the great uprisings in Paris have had their start. That’s because it was traditionally a working class neighborhood, with lots of factories and a high concentration of poor, urban workers. Today, it has gentrified quite a bit, and it has become more of a foodie mecca. That’s in large part because of the Marché D’Aligre – a gourmet market open 6 days a week where many of Paris’s top chefs go to shop for their restaurants. And since the 11th is a little out of the center of the city, we will be in an “authentic” neighborhood – not one overrun by tourists. But it is also easy walking distance to many of the main sites, and we will be right near a major Metro station that can get us to anywhere else we’d want to go. I’ll be sure to give you a “taste” of the district, too, by taking you to my favorite bakery and (of course) my favorite cheese shops!