Key Challenges for Europe: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Full course description
Since at least the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, we have become accustomed to thinking about Europe in an alarmist tenor. To many, the last two decades have witnessed nothing but a seemingly never-ending series of upheavals: from the financial crisis through to the migration crisis, the rule of law crisis in Eastern Europe and the surge of populist movements across the continent, the Brexit vote, the environmental crisis, the Covid pandemic, and more recently the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In light of this, it would be easy to conclude that Europe, or perhaps the project of European integration, is reaching its terminus. Rather than resigning in front of such calamities, however, for students of European Studies the main task is to understand the challenges faced both by those living on the continent as well as by those around the globe affected by the choices made in Europe.
Key Challenges for Europe: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives is intended as a course that will allow you to do just that. It explores major political, social, and economic challenges in contemporary Europe by tracing their long-term genealogy and their global contexts. Rather than simply treating such challenges in a presentist manner as the immediate expressions of recent political choices and the ups-and-downs of party politics, we shall take an emphatically historical approach to understand the long-term gestation of these problems since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the so-called ‘post-war’ era. In doing so, our aim will be to approach what scholars now call the ‘history of the present’ through understanding the underlying causes, dynamics, agencies, and structures that have fused to produce the present we inhabit today.
Course objectives
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Demonstrate advanced knowledge of major challenges in contemporary Europe and their historical gestation, including knowledge of major political, social, economic, and international developments in Europe and the world since 1945 and the ways in which they impact contemporary Europe
- Demonstrate knowledge of academic concepts and frameworks from the fields of history, political science, international relations, and sociology aimed at understanding the process of European integration and its relation to other major trends in post-war European and global history
- Apply knowledge and understanding of the process of European integration, within its historical, political, societal, and global contexts, to academic and societal questions
- Analyse, understand, differentiate, and critically assess how scholars of European Studies have studied the historical origins and evolution of major contemporary challenges
- Evaluate, compare, and develop scholarly arguments in the field of European Studies in view of forming a judgement on the state of the art in the field
- Appraise, contextualise, and judge past and ongoing developments in Europe and in the process of European integration, including its historical, political, societal, and international context
- Identify, retrieve, synthesise, and critically appraise various source materials to build evidence-based arguments; and to use ethical rules related to scholarly work, including styles of acknowledgement, use of the sources of others, and the proper use of referencing
- Participate in scholarly and policy debates on European history and integration, within the international PBL classroom, with an awareness of the requirements of intercultural communication
Recommended reading
- Patel, K. (2020). Project Europe: A History. Cambridge University Press
- Dinan, D. (2014). Origins and Evolution of the European Union. Oxford University Press (2nd edition).
- H. Zimmermann, & A. Dür (eds.) (2012), Key Controversies in European Integration. Palgrave.
- Judt, T. (2005). Postwar. A History of Europe Since 1945. London: Penguin.
- Börzel, T. A. (2018). Researching the EU (studies) into Demise? Journal of European Public Policy, 25(3), 475–485.
- Gilbert, M. (2008), Narrating the Process: Questioning the Progressive Story of European Integration. Journal of Common Market Studies, 46: 641-662.