find and assess current event and scholarly sources pertaining to the study of contemporary Europe, justifying their pertinence and quality with references to today's research norms.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Scholars often claim that "Europe does not exist." Yet the continent is there, home to a bewildering puzzle of
many different histories, nations, cultures and languages, with more than 450 million people now living in the European Union -- a Union that argues whether it can stay together as part of the "Eurozone" or even expand eastward to include supposedly "non-Christian" countries like Turkey. As the political, social and economic relationships among the member states of that European Union shift on an official level, Europe and European identities have constantly to be (re)defined and renegotiated, and "average Europeans" seek to understand the relationships between official accounts of "their" situations, the histories they were taught in school and by their families, and their everyday experiences.
What, then, does it mean to study a Europe that is in flux this way? This course cannot answer that question straightforwardly, because US scholars in the social sciences and humanities who claim allegiance to "European Studies" all use different disciplines' strategies for understanding "Europe."
To resolve that problem in another way, this course will start by introducing several earlier attempts to make a more united, and presumably more peaceful and prosperous, "Europe" out of the nation-states on the continent. Each "imagined" Europe, as we shall see, was proposed to correct problems with the nation-states -- to change politics and everyday lives in particular ways.
A recent history of post-World-War-II Europe by Tony Judt will anchor the class' original work on Europe and its member nations. Judt tells the continent's story from the point of view of the era's global power politics, and then situates individual European states within them. Judt's text, then, provides accounts of Europe from the top-down and points to moments when those official accounts diverge for particular states and when they place individuals and groups who do not fit the national stereotypes under pressure.
The historical account of Europe as seen from the point of view of world politics is an interesting counterpoint to the evolution of European government since World War II, as realized in the Council of Europe and the European Union. The next part of the course will introduce the evolving structure of European governance as a precursor to discussion of case studies about what this "Europeanization" does to individuals, groups, and nation-states.
In the transition from official Europe to Europe's culture, the class will present resources and desiderata for researching issues in the European Studies context. The largest section of the course is devoted to a workshop on issues in contemporary Europe. In each case, readings form official sources are juxtaposed with news sources, writings from think tanks, and academic writing. The purpose of using official sources is to give students a springboard for juxtapositions between the "European" points of view and national ones that they research as the semester goes on.
Assignments in this course are designed to introduce students to the materials, research strategies, and forms of professional communication that they will encounter later in specific disciplines' versions of European studies. The assignments build on each other to help each learner acquire a body of skills and knowledge that will aid in their personal studies of Europe and in their major courses.
This course is the introductory core course for a concentration or major in European Studies at UT, but it requires no prerequisites except for the willingness to work in collaboration with others and to engage in a discovery process rather than seeking "right" answers.
ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING:
