Core Module

Module Title : 'Europe and its Other(s): Ideas, identities and symbolic geographies in Europe'
ECTS Allocation : 20 credits (44 contact hours, plus student workload of 440 hours)
Module coordinator : Balázs Apor, MPhil Course Director
Teaching staff : Members of the SLLCS and some outside contributors

This 44 hour lecture/seminar course runs for 2 hours per week throughout the Michaelmas and Hilary teaching terms, with the exception of Study Week (Week 7 of each term). The final week of both terms will be devoted to a review of the course and a discussion of essay plans.

Aims

The aim of the course is to explore various aspects of the construction of Europe as an idea, a utopia and a political project as well as a form of identity. The main focus of the course will be on the construction of Europe as opposed to an imagined 'Other', perceived in cultural, geographic, ethnic and racial terms in different time periods over history. The aim of the course is to present the dynamics of exclusion-inclusion practices, and to investigate the way such practices shaped the development of the idea and representation of Europe in European culture.

Working methods

The course will follow a standard lecture-seminar format. Each week students will be required to read and discuss reading assignments and/or give a presentation on a given topic.

Learning outcomes

Students should be able to identify and evaluate the complexity of meanings attached to the concept of Europe. They will have an understanding of how the concept and the idea of Europe emerged in history as a result of exclusion-inclusion practices. They should also be able to assess how identities are constructed and culturally conditioned.

Syllabus

Part I. Imagining the Other

1. Introduction. Cultural and geopolitical interpretations of Europe
2. Mapping Europe: Cartography and allegory
3. The concept of civilisation, and the constructions of Europe in antiquity
4. The Ottoman Empire as the other of Europe
5. The 'invention' of Eastern Europe and the rise of East-West dichotomy
6. Catching up with the West: Perceptions of the West in Russia and the Soviet Union
7. The Balkans as the 'other Europe'.
8. Fascist approaches to Europe
9. Polarised identities and images of the Other in Cold War Europe.
10. The construction of 'Central Europe'

Part II. Ideas of Europe

1. From Christendom to Europe: the Renaissance and Reformation
2. Confessional Europe
3. Enlightened Europe: Europe as civilization; Colonialism and representations of the Other
4. Enlightened Europe: Europe as a political utopia
5. Concepts of the nation and Europe in the 19th century
6. America as a new ‘Other’?
7. From empires to nation states: Borders, nationalism and ethnicity in 19 th century Europe
8. Europe in disarray: fragmented Europe and ideas of integration after World War I
9. Homogenising Europe: minorities, majorities and ideas of ethnic cleansing in modern Europe
10. Myths of integration and the problem of European identity

Bibliography

• Francis Barker (ed.), Europe and its Others, Vols. 1-2, Essex, 1985. (PL-131-319, PL-120-503)
• Norman Davies, Europe: A history, London, Pimlico, 1997. (LEN 940 N62)
• Alan Dingsdale, Mapping Modernities: Geographies of Central and Eastern Europe, 1920-2000, London, Routledge, 2002. (HL-253-943)
• Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2005. (ARTS 320.54 N56)
• Jan van der Dussen, The History of the Idea of Europe, London, Routledge, 2005. (PL-244-352)
• Robert English, Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, intellectuals and the end of the Cold War, NY, Columbia University Press, 2000. (327.47 P01)
• Stephen R. Graubard (ed.), Eastern Europe...Central Europe...Europe, Boulder, Westview Press, 1991. (LEN 940.5 N13)
• Denys Hay, Europe: the emergence of an idea, Edinburgh, 1957 (LEN 940 J7*1;2)
• Tony Judt, Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945, London, Heinemann, 2005. (LEN 940.55 P5)
• Stanislav J. Kirschbaum (ed.), Central European History and the European Union: The Meaning of Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2007. (HL-311-242)
• Mikael af Malmborg, Bo Stråth (eds.), The Meaning of Europe. Variety and Contention within and among Nations, Berg Publishers, Oxford 2002. (940 P23)
• Anthony Molho, Diogo Ramada Curto, and Niki Koniordos (eds.), Finding Europe: discourses on margins, communities, images ca. 13th - ca. 18th centuries, New York, Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2007. (HL-295-923)
• Alan S. Milward, The European rescue of the nation-state, London, 2000, (LEN 338.94 N2999*1;1)
• Brian Nelson, David Roberts and Walter Veit (eds.), The Idea of Europe: Problems of National and Transnational Identity, New York and London, 1992. (ARTS 301.59 N26)
• Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the idea of Europe: a study in identity and international relations, London, Routledge, 1996. (LEN 327.47 N6)
• Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the other: the "East" in European identity formation, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999. (PL-309-382)
• Peter O’Brien, European Perceptions of Islam and America from Saladin to George W. Bush: Europe’s Fragile Ego Uncovered, New York, Basingstoke, 2009. (HL-316-386)
• Anthony Pagden (ed.), The idea of Europe: from antiquity to the European Union, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002. (ARTS 321.04 P2)
• Noel Parker (ed.), The Geopolitics of Europe’s Identity: centers, boundaries and margins, New York, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2008. (309.14 P8)
• Jacques Rupnik, The Other Europe, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989. (ARTS 320.947 M99)
• Menno Spiering and Michael Wintle (eds.), Ideas of Europe since 1914: the legacy of the First World War, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. (940.5 P2)
• Bo Stråth (ed.), Europe and the Other, Europe as the Other, Multiple Europes No. 10, P.I.E.-Peter Lang, Brussels 2000. (940 P04)
• Michael Wintle, The Image of Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. (Being purchased)
• Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: the map of civilization on the mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford, Calif., London, Stanford University Press, 1994. (PL-297-684)

Assessment

Students will be required to give two presentations (one in each term) in class, and to submit two essays of 3500-5000 words (one in each term) on a selected topic. Students' presentations are not assessed for the purpose of determine their grades for the course.