| Course Info | Class Number: 1266
The European Union is one of the most ambitious experiments in international cooperation ever attempted. Despite the EU’s many successes, sources of conflict between and within European countries have persisted. With the recent Greek financial crisis ("Grexit"), the Syrian refugee crisis, Britain's departure ("Brexit"), and the rise of far-right nationalist parties in many member countries, the union is starting to look frayed around the edges. In fact, each move toward European unity has dropped barriers for some while raising them for others. In this course, we will explore European politics from the edges, from the borders separating the included from the excluded. These borders may be geographical, political, socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, or cultural in nature. Our focus will be on political initiatives from the bottom up and the outside in. From this perspective, we will try to make sense of the interactions that produce cross-cutting pressures toward European unification on the one hand and toward dissolution of the European experiment on the other. We will cover issue areas such as migrant labor, housing and urban quality of life, immigration and refugee policy, climate, pandemic response, education and collective memory, defense and security, and information politics.
Approach: Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC); Haverford: B: Analysis of the Social World (B), Social Science (SO)
Enrollment Cap: 25; 15 reserved for 360 students. If the course
exceeds the enrollment cap the following criteria will be used for the
lottery: POLS Seniors, POLS Juniors, Sophomore, Freshmen. This course
is available to non-360 students. Established narratives of Europe
tend to be Western European and focused on high politics. This cluster
changes the focus from structures to stories, using an
interdisciplinary approach (incorporating political science, history,
and German studies) to critically examine Europe’s past and present
from the margins. What does Europe look like from the perspectives of
those whose voices are usually missing from mainstream narratives –
the disempowered, queers, migrant laborers, artists, refugees, and
people from Europe’s eastern and southern peripheries? By inserting
and foregrounding perspectives of the historically marginalized along
with an examination of their theoretical, cultural, and political
contributions to European society, this 360 aims to provide critical
analytical tools to not only foster greater understanding of the
broader context of modern Europe but to rethink what Europe itself is.
If you are interested in the 360 program, you must fill out the
application link here:
https://www.brynmawr.edu/360/spring-2022-application-europe-margins.
This 360 cluster includes enrolling in GERM B217 & HIST B238. |
|---|
