Home>"Looking for the meaning behind appearances"

18.08.2016

"Looking for the meaning behind appearances"

Sophie Rochefort Guillouet has been teaching history and art history on the Le Havre campus since it opened in 2007. Her classes are very popular, and given her infectious enthusiasm and the dozens of cultural references that pepper her conversation, it's easy to understand how two hours spent with her would make you more cultivated. Interview with a professor who makes ideas travel.

You teach at the Sciences Po campus in Le Havre and at the University of Rouen. What stands out about teaching at Sciences Po?

Sophie Rochefort-Guillouet: What makes Sciences Po's approach different is the goal of the course. It's not a question of training specialists, but rather of studying history so that students will have the tools to understand the present-day world in which they will live and work. That is what the famous two-part plan is for – even if it's more flexible than people say! The idea is to set out premises from which more contemporary subjects can be considered. We also focus a lot on the "problematic", that is, the ability to extrapolate a question from the assigned theme, and to answer it.

Like all the Sciences Po campuses, the Le Havre campus is home to a totally multicultural community. You teach courses in English to students from all over the world. What does this change for you?

S. R.-G.: You constantly have to find topics that speak to everyone and that the students haven't already studied. The start of my class is not very "academic". For example, it is perfectly possible to analyse Europe-Asia relations through Western operas that deal with Asian subjects, such as Madame Butterfly, Lakmé and Turandot. We also study European cartoons about the "Yellow Peril", followed by comical Japanese prints on Westerners. Starting with these materials, we then go into the chronology, bibliography and history.

What's great with our students is how open-minded they are. When you talk to them about imaginary creatures in art or along the Silk Road, they'll make a list of all the legendary beasts from the unicorn to dragons to the phoenix... which gives the class its rich, participatory character.

How would you define your teaching method?

S. R.-G.: These days, all knowledge is instantly accessible, in books and especially on the Internet. So my goal in class is to suggest approaches that reshuffle the cards and present things in a slightly different way. For our course on the comparative history of the nineteenth century in Europe and Asia, I use all the teaching aids I can: texts, paintings, caricatures, literature. I also use social networks a lot to organise cultural activities related to the lectures and methodology tutorials. I try to get all these elements working together, to cross-reference sources, to find links that students would not necessarily have thought of and shift their perspective. It often doesn't take much to catalyse the understanding of a subject.

So I suppose you also ask them for original ideas in their presentations?

S. R.-G.: Yes, a simple presentation on Impressionism is out but any angle that renews our understanding of the movement is welcome! To work comparatively, we start with the painters of the Exposition des Refusés, united behind Manet, and we see that in Russia the same year Ilya Repin was able to bring together a group called the Peredvizhniki (the "Wanderers"), who unanimously rejected academicism and the grand genre. I ask them to discover for themselves themes that are out of the ordinary. And that is also what interests them: travel, the flow of ideas.

To give you some recent examples, we've had presentations on Persian miniatures, madness in art, Tibetan medicine, and a type of carpet that is only made in Bukhara, Uzbekistan. These are students who have a real thirst for knowledge; it is often very lively in class and the research work never puts them off. We also prepare exhibitions together for the library, this year on kitsch, next year on "chinoiserie" and other exotic visions of Asia in the West. Each brings his or her own discoveries; the result is incredibly diverse.

You are a Sciences Po alumna (among other things). Returning here as a teacher, what have you found to be different?

S. R.-G.: It is quite simply not the same school! When I studied here, it was a small, fairly Parisian world, with some "foreign students" as we used to call them. Today the world comes to us. I have very good memories of my years at Sciences Po, but there was not this obligation to come out of your shell. At the time, we could each do our studies in our own "bubble". We didn't have a calligraphy club or "Bollywood" dance club like there is here in Le Havre.

What would you like the students to take away from your course?

S. R.-G.: I try to push them to search for themselves, to read, never to take anything for granted. I want them to make a habit of being wary of readymade opinions, of not taking the easy way out intellectually. In my classes, I try to show them that you must always seek the meaning behind appearances.

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