08-31-3-M7c-1 | Europe and its Colonialisms: Facing up to the Past? (in English)
Seminar (Teaching) ECTS: 6
Dates: weekly (starts in week: 1) Wed. 10:00 - 12:00 SFG 2010
Additional dates: Wed. 08.12.21 12:00 - 14:00 SFG 1010
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. We will also explore the imperial legacies of individual western European nations and their dominant representations of imperial history, as well as the implication of the EU as a supranational body in the legacies of imperialism.
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?
Overall, the course will offer a multiperspectival overview of postcolonial approaches to European identities and cultures.
By the end of the of the course, students should be able to:
- discuss critically the foundational ideas of postcolonial theory; - apply postcolonial methods of analysis to works of literature, film and art, historical sources, political acts and speeches, etc.; - critically examine Europe’s past in relation to the history and legacies of imperialism; - analyse east-west divisions in Europe in terms of historical and present-day tensions.
N.B. Students studying for IES Module M7c should sign up for BOTH seminars in the module, i.e. also "08-31-3-M7c-2: Jüdisch-europäische Geschichte und Kultur".
| Simon Lewis
|