Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis (french: Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) is a

public university A public university or public college is a university or college that is in owned by the state or receives significant public funds through a national or subnational government, as opposed to a private university. Whether a national universi ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

, France. Once part of the historic

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

, it is now an autonomous public institution. 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 Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events, which ha ...

. 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 The Latin Quarter of Paris (french: Quartier latin, ) is an area in the 5th and the 6th arrondissements of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne. Known for its student life, lively atmosphere, and bistro ...

, where the street fighting of 1968 had taken place. UnivP8

History

Founded in 1969, the new experimental institution was named ''Centre Universitaire Expérimental de Vincennes'' (CUEV) in

Vincennes Vincennes (, ) is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is next to but does not include the Château de Vincennes and Bois de Vincennes, which are attache ...

. In 1971, it gained full university status, thus allowing it to award its own degrees, and renamed "Université Paris VIII". Since moving to Saint-Denis in 1980, the university has become a major teaching and research centre for humanities in the

Île-de-France The Île-de-France (, ; literally "Isle of France") is the most populous of the eighteen regions of France. Centred on the capital Paris, it is located in the north-central part of the country and often called the ''Région parisienne'' (; en, Pa ...

region.

Tumultuous years

As soon as it opened, Vincennes became the venue for a continuation of 1968, being occupied almost immediately by

student radicals Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. Although often focused on schools, curriculum, and educational funding, student groups have influenced greater political e ...

, 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 Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...

, 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 Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...

's daughter Judith Miller, who was not only a committed

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...

, like most of the faculty, but indeed a

Maoist Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...

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. (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 Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

Political Sciences Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and l ...

Cinema Arts Cinema may refer to: Film * Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ...

Communication Studies Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in different ...

, and

Feminist Studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppressi ...

Academics

The university offers over a hundred undergraduate, graduate and diploma courses. 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 University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

, the

Beijing Film Academy Beijing Film Academy (BFA; ) is a coeducational state-run higher education institution in Beijing, China. The film school is the largest institution specializing in the tertiary education for film and television production in Asia. The academy ...

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...

, the Free University of Berlin, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Vienna as well as since 2016 the University of Rojava. 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 *

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

* François Chatelet *

Alain Badiou Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Fouc ...

* Etienne Balibar *

Daniel Bensaïd Daniel Bensaïd (25 March 1946 – 12 January 2010) was a philosopher and a leader of the Trotskyist movement in France. He became a leading figure in the student revolt of 1968, while studying at the University of Paris X: Nanterre. Life and ...

Pierre Cassou-Noguès Pierre Cassou-Noguès (born 1971 in Tunis) is a French philosopher and writer. Biography He was admitted at the École Normale Supérieure in 1991. He obtained the agrégation in mathematics in 1995 and wrote his PhD in philosophy under the ...

Luce Irigaray Luce Irigaray (born 3 May 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examined the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most well kn ...

Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næs ...

Sylvain Lazarus Sylvain Lazarus (born 1943) is a French sociologist, anthropologist and political theorist. He has also written under the pseudonym Paul Sandevince. Lazarus is a professor at the Paris 8 University. Life and work Sylvain Lazarus worked out a the ...

Jean-François Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...

Antonio Negri Antonio "Toni" Negri (born 1 August 1933) is an Italian Spinozistic-Marxist sociologist and political philosopher, best known for his co-authorship of ''Empire'' and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political p ...

Jacques Rancière Jacques Rancière (; born 10 June 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis. After co-authoring ...

* René Schérer ;Psychoanalysis *

Bruce Fink (psychoanalyst) Bruce Fink is an American Lacanian psychoanalyst and a major translator of Jacques Lacan. He is the author of numerous books on Lacan and Lacanian psychoanalysis, prominent among which are ''Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely'', ''The La ...

* Serge Leclaire *

Jacques-Alain Miller Jacques-Alain Miller (; born 14 February 1944) is a psychoanalyst and writer. He is one of the founder members of the École de la Cause freudienne (School of the Freudian Cause) and the World Association of Psychoanalysis which he presided from ...

François Regnault François Regnault (; born 1938) is a French philosopher, playwright and dramaturg. Also a university instructor and teacher, Regnault was maître de conférences at Paris VIII before his retirement. Among his various writings he is the author, wi ...

* Éric Laurent *

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New ...

;Politics and international relations *

Gilbert Achcar Gilbert Achcar ( ar, جلبير الأشقر; 5 November 1951) is a Lebanese socialist academic and writer. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University ...

* Josué de Castro * Masri Feki *

Jane Freedman Jane Freedman (born 21 September 1968 in London) is a British–French sociologist and international relations scholar. She is known for her research on issues relating to gender, violence, conflict and migration, including sexual and gender-ba ...

;Economics *

Bernard Maris Bernard Henri Maris (; 23 September 19467 January 2015), also known as "Oncle Bernard", was a French economist, writer and journalist who was also a shareholder in ''Charlie Hebdo'' magazine. He was murdered on 7 January 2015, during the shooti ...

;Communication sciences *

Armand Mattelart Armand Mattelart (born January 8, 1936) is a Belgian sociologist, known as a leftist French scholar. His work deals with media, culture and communication, specially in their historical and international dimensions. Life, experience, and academi ...

;Hypermedia, new media and cyberculture * Pierre Lévy ;Anthropology *

Alain Bertho Alain Bertho is a French anthropologist, professor at thUniversity of Paris 8 His fields of research are urban anthropology, political anthropology, anthropology of globalization and alter-globalization. Works The globalization of riots In his ...

;Sociology *

Jon Elster Jon Elster (; born 22 February 1940, Oslo) is a Norwegian philosopher and political theorist who holds the Robert K. Merton professorship of Social Science at Columbia University. He received his PhD in social science from the École Norma ...

Michael Löwy Michael Löwy (born 6 May 1938) is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research) and lectures at the ''École des hautes ...

* Jean-Claude Passeron * Nicos Poulantzas * Henri Laborit ( behavioral biology,

systems thinking Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective actio ...

) ;Arts *

Maurice Benayoun Maurice Benayoun (aka MoBen or 莫奔) (born 29 March 1957) is a French new-media artist, curator, and theorist based in Paris and Hong Kong. His work employs various media, including video, computer graphics, immersive virtual reality, th ...

* Christine Brooke-Rose * Christine Buci-Glucksmann *

Hélène Cixous Hélène Cixous (; ; born 5 June 1937) is a French writer, playwright and literary critic. She is known for her experimental writing style and great versatility as a writer and thinker, her work dealing with multiple genres: theater, literary a ...

Edmond Couchot Edmond Couchot (16 August 1932 – 26 December 2020) was a French digital artist and art theoretician who taught at the University Paris VIII. Life and work Couchot was a Doctor of aesthetics in the visual arts. From 1982-2000 he headed the depar ...

* Frank Popper ;Ethnomusicology *

Giovanna Marini Giovanna Marini (born Giovanna Salviucci; 19 January 1937) is an Italian singer-songwriter and researcher of ethnomusicology. Biography She was born in Rome in a family of musicians. In 1959 she obtained her diploma in classical guitar at the C ...

Info archive on musicaitalia.free.fr
( DOC file) ;Linguistics *

Martine Abdallah-Pretceille Martine Abdallah-Pretceille is a French scholar who has contributed to renewing thinking on interculturality Interculturalism is a political movement that supports cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cult ...

* Nicolas Ruwet * Maurice Gross * Jean Dubois * Richard S. Kayne ;University Presidents * Joseph E. Aoun

Notable alumni

;Royalty * Elia, Crown Princess of Albania

References

External links

Official website (english)

Papers and documents related to Paris VIII University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paris VIII, University University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis Educational institutions established in 1969 1969 establishments in France Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis Universities descended from the University of Paris