Is Europe a happy family of nations? Or have there always been unequal power relations, legacies of conquest, and postcolonial resentments, both within Europe and in relation to the wider world? This course explores the latter possibility, acting both as an introductory to postcolonial theory and dependency studies, and as an exploration of Europe’s internal and external colonialisms. Students will be introduced to classic postcolonial thinkers from the global South, such as Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, whose critiques of European imperialism and western discourse laid the foundations for further critical reflections on global colonial legacies. Debates around colonial relations along Europe’s east-west axis will also be studied in depth: is the very notion of ‘eastern Europe’ an ‘intellectual project of demi-Orientalization’, as Larry Wolff has argued? Moreover, was the Soviet Union a colonial empire, and how did the fall of state socialism in 1989/91 affect the region and its dependencies? The final part of the course will consider the past and present of the European Union as a political project: in what ways has it faced up to its colonial past, and can the EU be considered an empire?

What is – or was – post-socialist culture? Can the literature and cinema of the “new” Europe that emerged after the fall of the Iron Curtain be grouped together as “post-socialist” or “post-communist”? What possibilities and necessities did the end of censorship, a shift to a capitalist economy, the opening up of international borders, and the lifting of official ideology bring to the societies of eastern and east-central Europe? This course provides a critical introduction to the cultural shifts of the years after 1989/1991, with a focus on Polish and Russian literature and cinema. No prior knowledge of either Slavic language is required. Participants will study some key films and literary works from the 1990s and 2000s, including cult classics that helped transformed society’s self-image.