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Campus Spotlight: NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies
Pushing the Boundaries of Europe – NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies’ academic interests extend around the globe and to worlds beyond, from energy and climate policy, to far right politics, to sovereignty in maritime search and rescue, to outer space and extraterrestrial life.
CEMS Alumni Profiles: Daniel Ortiz Few graduate programs give master’s candidates the chance to expand their academic training alongside an opportunity to develop and hone their professional workplace skills, but NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS) offers the rare opportunity to do both in one of the world’s greatest cities. It is my firm belief that the best scholars, researchers, and academics possess skills that go beyond disciplinary training. Extensive knowledge in methodology
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Energy and Climate: My CEMS Experience As a PhD candidate in the Department of History at NYU and an advisee of Dr. Stephen Gross, the Director of the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS), I am a participant in the CEMS network. I have had the privilege of participating in multiple events focused on global energy transitions from both a historical and contemporary perspective. From workshops in New York City to
Europe comes to New York through the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS) CEMS offers interdisciplinary degrees for undergraduate and graduate students, which allows students, faculty, and visiting scholars to explore the varied issues, histories, societies, and cultures of the continent. The study of Europe is as complex and exciting as the continent itself. By providing a forum for faculty fellows, visiting scholars, and research affiliates to delve into the past and present of
CEMS Programming The Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS) annually hosts three lecture series led by members of the faculty. These series are a cornerstone of the Center’s faculty programming, central to fostering academic dialogue and intellectual exchange. For the fifth consecutive year, Professor Alexander C.T. Geppert’s “NYU Space Talks: History, Politics, Astroculture” highlights research on outer space in the humanities and social sciences. Meanwhile, the CEMS European Seminar Series, led by Professor Stephen
Discovering the Mediterranean at NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies The Mediterranean has long been a meeting point of civilizations, a space where cultures intersect, and ideas traverse borders. At NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS), this dynamic history and contemporary reality are examined through interdisciplinary research, faculty expertise, and diverse learning opportunities. Through classroom discussions, collaborations with global scholars, and study-abroad programs, students explore the Mediterranean as both a historical region
What is Europe? What has Europe historically meant as a concept, as an identity, and as a challenge to the nation-state? What have the boundaries of Europe been, and how has this changed over time? How and why have European leaders and citizens fashioned an integrated, democratic continent, and how have the obstacles to integration evolved over time? How have Europe’s recent crises—from refugees to the problems of the Euro—led people to reevaluate European integration,
EuropeNow is proud to publish this interview with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, Polish scholar, musician, poet, and activist.
Interview by Katarzyna Świerad-Redwood
By Christos Tsirogiannis
Hundreds of rare and unique ancient objects have been repatriated over the past two decades (e.g., Watson and Todeschini 2006, 298) to the countries from where they had been looted post-1970, in violation of the UNESCO 1970 Convention.
By David P. Baker and Justin J. W. Powell
Europe has twice played a pivotal role—at critical junctures—in the development of what can fittingly be described as global mega-science, without which the world’s STEMM knowledge would be significantly less advanced than it is now.
By Sophia Rockwell, University of Notre Dame Class of 2025
The Nanovic Lublin Program highlighted the collaboration and cross-cultural exchange between American Catholic and Polish Catholic universities through religion, politics, art, literature, architecture, history, and museum curation.
By Keith Sayer
Building on a 20-year partnership with Ukrainian Catholic University, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies launched the Ukrainian Studies Hub in September 2023.
By Jun Wei Lee, Notre Dame, Class of 2026
For the village of Les Milles in Aix-en-Provence, France, the question of how to remember World War II is a thorny one.
by Rory Finnin, University of Cambridge
In 2024 the Laura Shannon Prize in European Studies offered me something precious and even unexpected: a sense of community. Its greatest reward is a closer relationship with the students and scholars at Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute.
By Abigail E. Lewis
This campus spotlight features the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.
By Cecelia Swartz, University of Notre Dame It is a bright October day on Inishbofin, an island with a population of about 200 off the west coast of County Galway in Ireland, and the community has gathered at the local library branch to celebrate the opening of a new repository housing copies of archival documents. At this launch, copies of historic tax, census, birth, and marriage records are made available for attendees to examine, and
By Alan Matthews
The rightward shift in the center of gravity in the Parliament and Council may favor farm income over environmental objectives.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
Stunning artworks trigger a reflection on the implications of biometrics collection for human autonomy and personhood.
By Nicole Scicluna
Long dismissed as “second order” elections, of little consequence to Europeans let alone anyone else, the EP elections will play a key role in shaping the EU’s trajectory over the coming years, including in foreign policy.
By Craig Willis and David Smith
In some member states, governance at national or regional levels has already threatened the rights of national and linguistic minorities.
By Metehan Tekinırk and Dylan Irons
The question of how Erdoğan’s immigration and naturalization policies relate to his party’s domestic objectives deserves more attention. We explain the Turkish government’s logic in attempting to absorb a massive immigrant population amidst mounting economic challenges and increasing public opposition. How did Erdoğan-led administrations respond to a mass migration phenomenon that quickly transformed Turkey into a major transit and destination country?
Translated by Anne Milano Appel
“Either it isn’t a secret but I don’t know what it is; or I know but it’s a secret; or it’s a secret and on top of that I don’t know what it is.”
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Luke Johnson, Hélène B. Ducros, Brianna Beehler, Nick Ostrum, and Edina Paleviq.
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
I’d never experienced the comfort of hearing a familiar language’s soft rumble within a crowd, the warmth of feeling at home amid strangers.
Reviewed by Brianna Beehler
Women run away from ruinous temptations, patriarchal confinements, sexual violence, rape.
By Illia Ponomarenko
Morning comes to Kyiv again. That was indeed a dramatic night. Not only in the sense of a giant death army standing at the gate.
By Lora Sariaslan and Claske Vos
Artistic practices are indispensable in addressing queries about what and who constitute “Europe,” because they express feelings of belonging and can make visible what the dominant consensus obscures and obliterates. Through their art, visual and performance artists in the former Yugoslavia invoke new transnational and transitional spaces of belonging in Europe.
Reviewed by Anne Milano Appel
Why would a man firmly rooted in the literary world of his time never write a word of his own? This is the question Daniele Del Giudice’s debut novel Lo stadio di Wimbledon sets out to answer.
By Veronika Ichetkina
The film is saturated with psychoanalytic meaning, illustrating not only the theory of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, but also theories by present-day psychoanalysts of the French and British streams.
Interviewed by Elizabeth B. Jones
The difference between the tree and the forest is the same as that between the individual and society.
By Pierre Haroche
I propose a three-phase periodization of the relationship between Europe and the world that could serve as a basis for future research into the global history of Europe. They correspond to three paradigms in the Europe–world relationship, three levels of the centrality of Europe in the world, and highlight the fundamental reversal by which Europe made the world and the world made Europe.
By Tomasz Kamusella
The history of the Habilitation degree is connected to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s tertiary education reform in the Kingdom of Prussia.
By Oksana Ermolaeva
Before the great purge, changes in the legislature had already prepared the Soviet justice system for the Terror. In particular, various extrajudicial bodies were created to investigate “political crimes,” in complement to the existing Soviet legal structures. In the USSR, political—or “counter-revolutionary”—crimes were defined as those against the state and outlined in Article 58 of the 1922 Soviet penal code.
Reviewed by Abraham Boxhoorn
The book highlights NATO’s template for multi-domain operations (MDO) and the complex Alliance-wide multi-domain integration (MDI), an integration of both non-military and military instruments into one single strategy.
By Nick Ostrum
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly material on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
By Victoria Harms
The project serves as an example of how small changes in the curriculum can provide considerable experiential learning opportunities that deepen students’ understanding of Europe and can substantiate otherwise often abstract debates about transatlantic relations.
Reviewed by Henry Carey
Ludmila Isurin considers three processes of collective memory construction, including the deliberate or subconscious reorientation of accepted historical facts, different interpretations of the causes of past conflicts, and the understanding of who should be blamed for these conflicts.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
Beyond offering a light, playful, and enchanted spatial experience, these works embody the will to foster communication and propose a pause in the flow of urban life.
By David Smith and Craig Willis
European frameworks made space for transnational activism focused on stronger rights and protections for national minorities.
By Mikko Rask
Imagine a Europe where cities compete not for wealth or resources but for the title of most democratic city.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros, Edina Paleviq, and Oksana Ermolaeva.
Reviewed by Stephen Milder
How two competing ideas about the relationship between energy use and economic growth have influenced politics and society.
Translated by Daria Chernysheva
She places Théodore conspicuously in the center of her stand…Théodore received special treatment. He has a label, and on that label is his name in big letters, THÉODORE…
By Onorina Botezat
This course explores how urban planning, architecture, and the neighborhood are portrayed in literature.
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly material on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
Reviewed by Jane Freeland
Cold War tensions infiltrated the minutiae of life in divided Germany. Women’s rights in the family were not marginal issues but were pivotal to the construction of East and West Germany.
By Matej Nikšič and Nina Goršič
Placemaking contributes to the creation of vibrant public spaces that serve as focal points for community interactions and cultural exchanges in rural areas. It fosters social connections, boosts civic pride, and enhances the overall attractiveness of rural areas.
Translated by Sonia Alland
This poem is not a true poem
it is a refuge for the wounded approaches of evening
for conquered partisans
a bed for rivers that are doomed
an open space for deer that contemplate the waterfall
for the men behind the walls’ saltpeter
and those trees weighed down in the album of memory.
Translated by Zenia Tompkins and Nina Murray
I faced a very tall man, dressed in camo and holding an AK‑47. He grabbed me by the neck and held me up against the wall while closing the door with his other hand. He was so massive that I wondered why he bothered with the machine gun at all.
By Paul O’Keefe
In recent years Europeans have increasingly voiced concerns about the high levels of migration their respective countries are experiencing. In 2015, almost a decade ago, the European Commission’s Eurobarometer poll indicated that 58 percent of Europeans thought of immigration as the most pressing issue for the European Union.
By Aleksandra Đukić, Jelena Maric, and Branislav Antonic
The concept of placemaking is approached from the perspective of the benefits to local communities and the ways in which students in architecture and planning learn about it. At the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Belgrade, students learn about placemaking and urban design through theoretical courses, studio projects, seminars, and workshops.
By Pekka Tuominen
Helsinki can feel quite desolate on winter mornings. It is in January 2017 that I started conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Kontula, a district on the urban periphery of Helsinki with a notoriously negative reputation.
By Tatiana Ruchinskaya, Carlos Smaniotto Costa, Bahanur Nasya, and Dov Winer
Placemaking endeavors to enhance the quality of life of residents, promote social cohesion, and foster a sense of belonging. Academics, practitioners, and policymakers recognize the need to equip individuals with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives necessary to engage effectively in placemaking processes.
Reviewed by Sophia Kalashnikova Horowitz
The book addresses major historiographical questions, including that on the relationship between the purges of 1937-1938 and the Great Patriotic War, the transition away from Stalinism, and the nature of de-Stalinization, based on newly opened political police archives from across the former Soviet space.
By Zsuzsanna Varga
The literary genre of travel writing has been increasingly used in the social sciences. In this course, students focus on selected travel texts emanating from of concerning East-Central Europe, Russia, and London.
Interviewed by Zsuzsanna Varga
An architect and a filmmaker trace their respective journeys to placemaking activism.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
Helen Zughaib and Houda Kassatly are attentive to the everydayness of refugees’ experiences and to how families who have been forced to migrate attempt to cope.
By Ani Gjika
In Albania in the nineties … men in their twenties and thirties are hungry to align themselves with what they perceive as power … harassing girls and women wherever…
Translated by Peter Sherwood
Miklós was no longer a real being, just a sender of letters with news not from real life but rather as evidence of some sophisticated fiction, as if he were writing to and for himself, to prove that the body that existed in her imagination was not just a doppelgänger of her desires.
By Alexander Leistner
This year will determine whether the political shift to the right can still be halted and the tipping points in democratic culture prevented.
By Kirsten Wesselhoeft and Sam Cavagnolo
In 2023, an estimated 117 million people were displaced from their homes worldwide. Europe alone received more than 1.1 million asylum applications in 2023, 80 percent of which were still pending at the end of the calendar year.
Reviewed by Julie Sedivy
Encountering the world’s lesser-known languages reveals radically unfamiliar modes of expressing human experiences.
By Majbritt Lyck-Bowen
The foundations for Goda Grannar were laid when a Christian pastor from the Södermalm congregation knocked on the door of the local mosque and asked if any assistance was needed to serve people who had fled from war and poverty and arrived at Stockholm’s central train station.
Reviewed by Prudence Gibson
The entanglement of humans and plants is part of a developing concept I have termed “dark botany,” which entails critically engaging with the violence and extractivism of botanical history.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Edina Paleviq, Aslihan Turan, and Nicholas Ostrum.
Interviewed by Kirsten Wesselhoeft, Sam Cavagnolo, and Arlene Chen
Secular and religious organizations should partner in the resettlement system.
Translated by Tess Lewis
Everything breaks, everything becomes wrinkled,
everything is defeated,
we are born to see others fall and bleed,
he flatters who calls us wisps,
but as I crumble, I will make daylight reign.
Interviewed by Kirsten Wesselhoeft, Janus Wong, and Sam Cavagnolo
The program directors discuss the origins and trajectories of their pedagogical initiatives, key points of comparison between Switzerland and Malaysia as sites of research and teaching, and the ongoing impacts they have observed coming out of this work.
By Nicholas Ostrum
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly material on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
Reviewed by Henry Carey
The central claim of the book is that although public discourse, rhetoric, and other arguments articulated by leaders, mass media pundits, and policy makers have increasingly restricted the human rights and opportunities of migrants, refugees, and diasporic communities, these groups are not immobile victims of these newly expressed policies.
By Özge Savaş and Lara Solis
What does it mean to belong to a place? What must people have in common to belong together? What is the relationship between being at home and being a citizen? Who is excluded from frames of citizenship and nationhood?
Reviewed by Tomasz Kamusella
The volume opens a vista on a polity that was a fixture of European politics and economy for four centuries, also serving as a corrective to the national but anachronistic view held in Poland that Poland-Lithuania was the “First Republic of Poland.”
By Paul D’Anieri
Western leaders have sought to keep Ukraine on the periphery of European affairs for many years. It is now at the center of European concerns.
By William Glenn Gray
“The world afterwards is not the same as the world before,” intoned Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the Bundestag on February 27, 2022. In Berlin, the Russian assault on Ukraine reversed fundamental assumptions about the nature of international politics.
By Carl J. Strikwerda and Ruud van Dijk
Scholars of Europe from both sides of the Atlantic assess some of the impact of the war between Ukraine and Russia on NATO, European institutions, and individual European countries. Will NATO get stronger or weaker as the war persists in a stalemate and populist and isolationist political parties assert themselves in member countries? Will the renewed unity among EU members persist in the face of the obstacles lying ahead in Europe?
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
In their treatment of shapes, contour lines, or colors, artists appropriate the cartographic instrument to give life to new forms and new meanings that elicit emotions.
Translated by Zenia Tompkins
You’re…moved by the welcoming calm and serenity of provincial Ukraine…suddenly you realize that from under a kiosk…the barrel of a machine gun is aimed at your chest.
Translated by Mira Rosenthal
that color once existed here. And dust gets in./ The nests of ants and mice now totally exposed./ A moving out, an exodus. This once was home./ Once light and heat and fire. Now so much wind.
By Christopher Miller
We passed several colorful messages now scrawled across the traffic signs. One appealed to the enemy’s humanity: “Russian soldier, stop! How will you look into your children’s eyes? Leave!”
By Abraham (“Bram”) Boxhoorn
The impact of the Ukraine war on the transatlantic relationship and Euro-Atlantic institutions (EU and NATO) can be only conditionally assessed at this time. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked a number of consequences in European international affairs. Some European countries suffered more than others due to the self-imposed sanctions.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros and Nicholas Ostrum.
By Oksana Ermolaeva
This suicide note was written in Finnish from a Petrozavodsk prison in September 1937 by nineteen-year-old Atto Liesi, a native of Finland and a resident of Vyborg.
By Jordan T. Kuck
The political leadership in Baltic countries is an antidote to the patriarchal propaganda emanating from the Kremlin. In addition to rebuking Putin’s machismo culture with examples of steady woman leadership, the Baltic states have also advanced on support for LGBT rights.
By Marc Jansen
The war between Ukraine and Russia can best be understood as the result of a profound shift over the last thirty years in the relationship between Russia and Europe, particularly the European Union (EU).
By Emilian Kavalski
From providing armaments and diplomatic support to hosting refugees and pushing their counterparts in Western Europe, North America, and beyond to offer more advanced weapons systems and include Kyiv in European and Euro-Atlantic organizations, the CEE states have been at the forefront of the Ukrainian support network.
Reviewed by Nathan Bracher
Jackson exposes the flaws of a legal case that placed the blame for France’s faults squarely on Pétain’s individual shoulders.
Reviewed by Elizabeth B. Jones
Many of the poems in Eccentric Days, with their juxtapositions of pain and confusion, hope and comfort, are emblematic of Ukraine’s present catastrophe.
Reviewed by Alyssa Culp
The social dimensions investigated by Hausse help depict the true complexity of amputation in the early modern Germany.
Reviewed by Richard Overy
The use of poison gas in war has long been part of the grimier side of World War I history, but it could have been part of World War II as well, when the use of chemical weapons was never far below the surface of Western strategy but restraint proved paramount.
Translated by Julia Conrad
For a Sicilian, understanding Sicily means understanding oneself. It means choosing to be absolved or condemned. And it means resolving the fundamental tension that plagues us, the oscillation between claustrophobia and claustrophilia, between a hatred and love of seclusion.
Interviewed by Carl J. Strikwerda
The reaction to the war in Ukraine has done the opposite of what Putin intended, moving the EU and NATO toward greater unity.
Reviewed by Nicholas Ostrum
This volume examines numerous historical case studies to show how energy transitions have unfolded, faltered, and succeeded in the past in order to give insight into the many possibilities that lay before our own energo-environmental predicament.
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly material on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
By Djordje Popović
Difference may reside in the ecstatic essence of Dasein, in the arbitrary nature of language, in the interstitial space of hybridity and ambiguity, or in other equally abstract receptacles in which difference is supposedly spared the ravages of history.
By Amy Bridger, Uta Gaedeke, Thomas O. Haakenson, Christine Menand, Michael A. O’Neill, Frank Peters, Christian Schäfer, and Angela K. Wilson
While the focus of the “informational tour” was on institutions in Germany, the insights gained from these first-person encounters and the ensuing development of partnerships have significant implications for European Studies more broadly.
By Matvei Yankelevich
Konstantinović poses the parochial spirit as a reactionary provincialism that shields itself from the world-at-large, as well as from linguistic creativity and history itself.
By Edin Hajdarpašić
Radomir Konstantinović published The Philosophy of Parochialism in 1969. I read this book twice: first in Sarajevo around 2002, in its original Serbian, and again in Chicago in 2022, just after it was published in English translation.
By Suzana Vuljevic
Penned in the 1950s and published at a time of rising nationalism in Yugoslavia, Serbian philosopher and writer Radomir Konstantinović’s (1928-2011) The Philosophy of Parochialism (1969) remains a keystone of Serbian and South Slavic literary-philosophical scholarship.
By Branislav Jakovljević
One of the key insights emanating from works on parochialism in Serbian culture is that the province and the empire constitute a dialectical couple. The empire is at once a negation of palanka and a full realization of the spirit of palanka.
By Manuela Achilles and Peter Debaere
In the early hours of October 7, 2023, militants of the Islamist group Hamas and a few other armed Palestinian organizations struck Israel across the security border surrounding Gaza.
Translated by Monica Cure
Our house has become a shelter for kids whose parents beat them. Everyone knows we’re home alone, because we’re almost never visited by an old person, I mean an adult.
By Hélène B. Ducros
The EuropeNow editor’s favorite literary translations of 2023 from or concerning Europe.
Reviewed by Leora Eisenberg
Scarborough examines the intersection between economic collapse, destabilization, and violence in Tajikistan during and after the Soviet period.
By Andreea Mosila
Romania provides an excellent example of how nationalist and populist messaging significantly threatened the pandemic response.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
By creating spatial continuity and playing with light, volumes, and temporalities, the artists fashion atmospheric moments and prompt unexpected place-based experiences.
By Oksana Ermolaeva
The Gulag has demonstrated a remarkable continuity based on the cultural foundations of pre-revolutionary Russia. This continuity is seen not only in the “serfdom syndrome” repeatedly cited by memoirists but also in the way inmates have lived. The tragedy of Russian history lies in the fact that numerous inherent features of the repressive Soviet system have been resurrected on a massive—if openly unarticulated—scale in present-day Russia.
By Benjamin Bernard and Matthew McDonald
The exhibition moves beyond earlier models by offering the public a comprehensive survey of early print that places Gutenberg in his historical and geographic context. The visitor could easily forget that print would soon propel an upheaval within European Christendom.
Translated by Jessica Moore
Next come the irreversible rails, laying out the countryside, unfolding, unfolding, unfolding Russia, pressing on between latitudes 50° N and 60° N, and the guys who grow sticky in the wagons, scalps pale beneath the tonsure, temples glistening with sweat, and among them Aliocha, twenty years old.
By Patricia Chiantera-Stutte
Since the 1990s, the increasing success and diffusion of dystopian literature and allo-histories have attracted the attention of political scientists. This “genre-blurring” literature offers new political and ethical perspectives on human relations.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Jennifer Ostojski, Aslihan Turan, Hélène B. Ducros, and Oksana Ermolaeva.
Reviewed by Lauren Stokes
The women who organized the first domestic violence shelter in West Berlin consciously distanced their project from the women’s movement. When these founders sought state support for their shelter, they muted their larger critique of women’s inequality within patriarchal society to instead deliberately present images of vulnerable women and children the state could save.
By Holger A. Klein and Alain Duplouy
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, with Columbia University.
By Paul O’Keeffe
The European Union has led the way in terms of integrating art into teaching practices at schools to better enhance the integration and mental well-being of refugee children. Various projects provide learning opportunities and resources for teachers to enable their students to better cope with the realities of their lives in exile.
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly material on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
By Nicholas Ostrum
The first half of the course introduces students to Jewish life in early twentieth-century Europe, Germany’s interwar embrace of Nazi fascism, the hardening of the Nazi state, and the early Nazi and allied prosecution of the racial war in Germany itself and in Eastern Europe. The second half of the course focuses on Holocaust as it unfolded in the Second World War, with a special focus on the Final Solution to the Jewish Question as prescribed at the Wannsee Conference.
Reviewed by Biz Nijdam
Undesirables offers a corrective to our understanding of prewar and wartime Jewish-Muslim relations. The literal picturing of these relationships and visual acknowledgement of the shared humanity of Jews and Muslims complement the historical facts contained within the pages.
Translated by Sorcha de Brún
This day, forever framed by briny gorse / A queerness hangs in the shoreline air / Looking back to Ballythaidhg and a summer day there
By David Berridge
During art book fairs, book launches, readings, talks, and performances are programed elsewhere in the building, further emphasizing the importance of sociality, which arguably often trumps actual book sales.
By Alain Duplouy
From 1924 to 1931, Paul Bigot built an astonishingly audacious building made of steel and concrete behind an envelope of red bricks mirroring Venetian architecture. In its conception, the Institut d’art et d’archéologie was not only a facility for teaching but also a laboratory, a place for “science in the making.”
By Pierre Haroche
When the world was young / Places did not exist / Earth heaven ocean / Stood side by side / In every direction / Humans lived all together…
By Guido Antinori
At the Institut d’art et d’archéologie, the collection of ancient Iranian seal impressions not only offers the students of the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne direct access to a large corpus of Oriental iconography but also allows them to train in the creation of relational databases.
By Vincenzo Capozzoli
The collections of the Department of Art History and Archeology have been at the center of a project aiming at establishing an inventory of, studying, and disclosing the department’s cultural heritage. The VERGILIUS portal stands as an example of digital management for archaeological heritage, offering promising prospects for the future of research, education, and cultural preservation.
By Alain Duplouy
The objective of the seminar was to bring a historiographical dimension to the training of students enrolled in archaeology and art history of the ancient world or Classics, by providing them with the keys to various readings of ancient Greek societies and their material culture and the way these have been constantly renewed since the nineteenth century.
By Mariana Silva Porto and Mathilde Castéran
Jean Deshayes was a respected scholar of Near Eastern archaeology, who played a central role in the establishment of the Department of Art History and Archaeology after the creation of the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1970.
Interviewed by Luke Forrester Johnson
Shield focuses on the tensions and ambiguities that plague attempts to mediate race and sexuality in Europe.
By Vanja Petricevic
The fragmented character of asylum policies in European countries—coupled with a sustained lack of recognition of their specific need for protection—makes women more likely to become poor and homeless.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
Artists cross-examine Kazakh pasts and presents, positioning post-Soviet identities at the juncture of different timelines and questioning agency, resistance, and potential.
By Barbora Valockova
The BRI and MiC 2025 are emblematic of China’s rise and have placed Europe in the middle of a geopolitical confrontation.
By Arina Rotaru
Beyond religious and economic divisions, the question of the differences between Asia and Europe has remained constant in attempts to define Eurasia. While warning of the reactionary potential of Eurasianism, this feature looks into possibilities of convergence between Europe and Asia.
By Chris Hann
For those who insist on classifying Europe as a separate continent, Eurasia has come to mean a fuzzy interface covering more or less any expanse eastwards of the territories where Western Christianity has spread. For people in the political West, such a Eurasia has strongly negative connotations: it is authoritarian, and its prevailing values are incompatible with liberal freedoms.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Taylor Soja, Elizabeth B. Jones, and Hélène B. Ducros.
By Adrianna Hlukhovych
Because they are not mass produced, poetic films convey an aura of exclusivity that shakes ideological and political norms under certain circumstances. In the 1960s and 1970s in the Soviet Union, such exclusivity was remarkable both in terms of film aesthetics and film plots.
By Noriaki Hoshino
This paper explores how Japanese intellectuals have discussed the notion of the “New Middle Ages,” foregrounding the trans-regional, inter-disciplinary implication of the theme of Eurasia as it derives from debates implicating the connection between Europe and Asia, which I refer to as “the Eurasian intersection.”
By Holger Briel
For many decades, twentieth-century SF was arguably an Anglo-American cultural project, although works emanating from other national contexts had certainly participated in forging the foundations for much of SF before that time.
Reviewed by Oksana Ermolaeva
Russian state policies towards expatriates, repatriates, and forcibly deported people in the Eurasian space are especially relevant today.
Reviewed by Julie Rugg
Migrants and minority groups can experience acute spiritual and emotional pain if their funerary needs are not met.
Interviewed by Arina Rotaru
Kim’s work invites us to imagine European studies from non-western angles.
Translated by Brendan Freely
“Corpses,” said the man, “the corpses of soldiers who don’t want to be buried in Europe, who want to have their eternal rest in Asia, on Muslim soil…”
Translated by Hiroaki Sato
The green of the cypresses being so dark. . . . The island of death, is, that, the island of poets? / The noble (poet’s) fury. Just when the evening glow enwraps the world in darkness
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly material on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
Translated by Anca Roncea
on the first day we were met by a dying child. basking in the sun, sitting
on a manhole cover. around, there were three other children: one with
a torn eye, one with dermatitis and an ear torn off and another very
pale, soaked in blood.
By Christoph Butterwegge
What does it mean to be unhoused or unsheltered in a prosperous country that defines itself as a social welfare state?
By Hélène B. Ducros and Elizabeth B. Jones
While policymakers rightly blame the COVID-19 epidemic, the war in Ukraine, and persistently high levels of inflation for the lack of progress in alleviating homelessness and for the dire shortage of safe and affordable housing in many places, these factors have exacerbated rather than created a complex problem that touches a wide array of people at different life stages and under various socio-economic conditions.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
The artists succeed in making the urban poor and the homeless visible by challenging social indifference and mobilizing the public’s awareness.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
This photography project places homelessness at the heart of a global network of cities.
By Dion Kramer
The vast majority of EU citizens experiencing homelessness originally left their home country with the aspiration to find (better) work abroad and improve their quality of life. This fact helps us to connect homelessness to the very raison d’être of the freedom of movement principle in the European Union.
By Katalin Ámon
When teaching about homelessness, the risk is to present homeless people as passive subjects.
By Jörg Dittmann and Matthias Drilling
Until a few years ago, there were no data on homelessness in Switzerland, and homelessness was hardly researched there. Homelessness did not rank high on the social policy agenda or in poverty research either.
By Lindsay B. Flynn
Inequality is one of the defining issues of our time, and social scientists have consistently confirmed that housing is a key driver of contemporary inequalities. How then, should we talk about housing as part of a constellation of economic and social inequalities plaguing contemporary Europe? There are at least three ways to probe this question.
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly materials on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
By Anastasia Paparis
This article addresses how the European Capitals of Culture program has engaged the urban question and what the implications for the city of Eleusis are.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee member Hélène B. Ducros.
Interviewed by Anastasia Paparis
Culture always reflects what occurs in the world, and sometimes art and culture even function as a “seismometer” for future development. It is unimaginable that future European Capitals of Culture not embody Europe’s disillusion about never engaging in war again.
Reviewed by Molly Walker
Nation-building wove together smaller ethno-national groups and cast out the outliers to manufacture a unified Georgian identity.
Interviewed by Anastasia Paparis
In all our cultural development activities, networking, or educational projects, we have striven to support the inhabitants in their initiatives and to improve their skills and capacities.
Reviewed by Duygu Yıldırım
Despite the growing number of ambassadors at the Porte, the first Ottoman diplomatic residency in Europe was only established as late as 1793. This asymmetrical relation in early modern diplomacy was not uncommon since residential diplomacy was a European exception.
Interviewed by Anastasia Paparis
Culture is not an EU “competency.” Arts and cultural policies and related topics are the prerogative of national governments. The EU can only intervene in cultural affairs by linking them to other EU policies.
By Nick Ostrum
This course examines themes of resistance and rescue, escape and survival, and perseverance and dignity in the face of the very worst that fascism, industrial modernity, and humanity had to offer.
Translated by Nina Bogin
In immense rooms, straw mattresses are spread out on the floor. There are collective showers and a vast dining hall.
Translated by Hope Campbell Gustafson
When I ask my mother what happened to my father, she says that there’s been war in our country for fifteen years and as far as she knows he could be dead. She says it with a coldness that upsets me, so I immediately stop asking questions.
By Anastasia Paparis
The general objectives of the European Capitals of Culture program are to safeguard and promote the diversity of cultures in Europe, highlight common European cultural features, and enhance citizens’ sense of belonging to a common cultural area.
Reviewed by Michael Zryd
The gesture to revisit the canonical Lumière short makes Labour in a Single Shot a reflexive “metahistory” of cinema.
By Jordan T. Kuck
For all of modern history, the Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, fearing that they are not strong enough to stand alone in the dangerous geopolitical borderlands, have debated whether to ally with the powers of the East or West. This internal conflict has been the proverbial Gordian knot of Baltic politics.
By Pierre Haroche
Europe is a castle / Where the wide plains of Asia strangle, stand its chiselled outline, its inner moat, its ocean-backed dungeons.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
Whether migrants, refugees, descendants of migrants, or simply people from another place, the characters in these installations reveal their voids, fears, uncertainties, and hopes.
By Anita Rotter and Erol Yildiz
Viewing society from the perspective of postmigrantism means going beyond a binary understanding by re-interpreting the genealogy of people’s migration.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Nick Ostrum, Oksana Ermolaeva, Hélène B. Ducros, and Sorcha de Brún.
By Markus Hallensleben and Moritz Schramm
The concept of postmigration has allowed for a rethinking of migration studies, the political borders of Europe, and the ongoing history of colonialism.
By Moritz Schramm
Postmigration societies are conceived of as polarized societies where ambivalence and antagonism between different agendas and actors are at the center of the political discourse.
By Nick Ostrum
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly material on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
By Markus Hallensleben
I propose a methodological perspective in postmigration studies that takes a participant-centered approach into account and includes manifold, subjective, and intersectional narratives of belonging.
By Cristina Blanco Sío-López
Debates in the European Parliament sent an early warning about the threat of addressing asylum policymaking from a repressive angle focused on security concerns at the expense of refugees’ fundamental rights.
By Samina Hussain
It suddenly occurred to her that the tawa had been wrapped in a red and white cloth when it made its first journey to England with her all those years ago.
Translated by Sonia Alland and Richard Jeffrey Newman
To save me from the sea, / perhaps a verse, / perhaps some clear words, / are all I have. / Their value / is my entire life.
By Marc Hill
Public exchanges and expressions of solidarity are critical to strengthen the agency of vulnerable people to act.
Reviewed by Andrei Cusco
The intensity of the Russian military’s anti-Jewish worldview was unprecedented in the European context.
Reviewed by Leora Eisenberg
The rise of eugenics encouraged scientists and doctors to analyze Jews medically, in an approach that included racial overtones and culminated in twentieth-century Nazi race theory.
By Sonja Evaldsson Mellström
European migration studies have traditionally failed to recognize how empire and colonialism have shaped migrations to and within Europe.
Interviewed by Arina Rotaru
My interest in silent films has been nourished by their black and white aesthetics and interhuman communication beyond spoken language.
By Erica Lehrer and Joanna Wawrzyniak
In singling out the ECE museumscape for decolonial attention, we are mindful of the pitfalls of pathologizing, orientalizing…
By Katrine Sieg and Hélène B. Ducros
Academic specialists, artists, activists, and museum professionals have engaged for at least two decades in the project of “decolonizing” the memory cultures that shore up European identity.
Reviewed by Anjeana K. Hans
Hygiene became an organizing principle in Weimar society and culture and shaped the development of cinema in the era.
Reviewed by Chloé Roberts
Homza’s clear prose and detailed archival work weave a fascinating micro-history into the larger narrative of the early modern witch-hunts.
By Katrin Sieg
European museums have begun to respond to demands for repatriating parts of their collections, serve more demographically diverse constituencies, and perform new civic functions.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
Artists use archival photographs to confront histories of domination and cultural eradication from Saamiland to the Maghreb.
By Alexandra Birch
Saami coastal settlements were expropriated by premodern Europeans, who also eradicated Saami ecosystems, religion, and crafts.
By Laura Frey, Vincent Bababoutilabo, and Joel Vogel
People came to Berlin and had to act out the colonial fantasies of the exhibition’s organizers.
By Ana Sladojević
The anti-colonial aspect of the museum was mainly anchored in the prevailing socialist and nonaligned discourse of the time.
Translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi
The women of Totope treated Ada as though she had emerged from Mami Ashitey’s own loins. In their eyes, her daily floggings were glowing proof of familiarity and love.
Translated by Nhlanhla Maake
When you are standing on the bank of a river, you see yourself reflected twice, my friend.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Kim Vaz-Deville addresses the “making of” art exhibitions and the value of cross-cultural collaborations to confront difficult histories.
Interviewed by Katrin Sieg
Part of reorienting ourselves is to build spaces of care.
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
Reviewed by Nick Ostrum
The twentieth century was an age of promise and advancement as well as of destruction.
By Marie-Laure Allain Bonilla
Decolonial practices and thinking have been invented, experimented with, and promoted in Swiss art spaces for a couple of decades.
By Emilia Epštajn
The conference aimed to bridge the professional gaps between scholars, researchers, artists, and curators and use the museum as a meeting space for different experiences and expertise and for communication with the public.
By Cresa Pugh
Theft becomes a political act through which resistance to conventional modes of possession and ownership is performed. By inverting the logic of criminality, Diyabanza remakes the museum as a space of inclusion.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Oksana Ermolaeva, Arina Rotaru, Brittany Kennedy, Angela Cacciarru, Vanja Petričević, and Hélène B. Ducros.
Reviewed by Mary B. Vogl
Muslim women are marginalized in Britain’s creative industries where male, white, and secular features are maintained as the norm.
Reviewed by Azadeh Sharifi
Theater practitioners of Turkish descent are expected to perform a certain role on stage and in society.
Reviewed by Lucas René Ramos
The exploration of consent and complicity under fascism has intrigued historians of gender and sexuality for decades.
Reviewed by Olivia Landry
Cho explores the development of a discourse that addresses the ever-pertinent question of what makes cinema transnational.
Reviewed by Elizabeth B. Jones
Yakimchuk’s voice is most moving when she probes the tedium and small indignities of war and peruses the perimeters of language to capture those absurdities before they disintegrate.
Reviewed by Edina Paleviq
Representatives of the European Union declared at the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003 that the Western Balkans had a future within the Union.
Interviewed by Nicholas Ostrum
The topics chosen for our seminars are intended to fulfill our goal of teaching the Holocaust from a number of angles and perspectives.
Reviewed by Georgios Varouxakis
Mazower vividly shows the bewildering variety of motives among people on both sides of the conflict.
By Irina Trocan
Romanian cinema has recently entered a transnational or global phase and thus cannot be free of discernible codes of representation.
Interviewed by John Haberstroh
We learn about the continuing relevance of ancient myths, the power of opera, and the potential of virtual reality productions.
Reviewed by Sanja Tepavcevic
Tsygankov surveys some of the most prominent Russian realist thinkers and offers a warning.
Reviewed by Sebastian Wüpper
German-Americans, as any other immigrant community, cannot simply be pigeon-holed based on their ancestral origin.
Reviewed by Jack O’Dwyer
Prior to the US’ prolonged dominance in the film industry, Denmark was a global leader in film production, largely due to Nordisk Film.
Reviewed by Giulia Giamboni
The book argues that Venetian foundational myths played an important role in forming and informing new civic cults.
Reviewed by Emily Steinhauer
Renaud’s carefully crafted thesis of a repeating life cycle of neoleftist movements naturally brings him to the present moment.
Reviewed by Elizabeth B. Jones
Applebaum describes the cycles of violence unleashed by Soviet authorities against Ukrainians and how lessons learned in the early 1920s were refined and amplified a decade later.
An Introduction to our special feature, Business in Politics and Society. Since the turn of the century, there has been a strong resurgence of scholarly interest in the role of business in European politics and society. After a period in which the study of business had been pushed to the margins in many disciplines, the role of individual firms and business groups as economic, political, and social actors has once more become a matter
By Christakis Georgiou
The drive to create the single currency in the late 1980s and 1990s is usually linked to the drive to complete the single market.
By Gabor Scheiring
While economic nationalism serves to pacify and incorporate national capitalists, populism works as a legitimation strategy.
By Niels Selling
This article proposes that companies are more likely to weigh in on morality issues in America…
By Beverly Barrett
In recent years, a global democratic backslide, as well as the actions of Russia in Ukraine, have shined a spotlight on national governance in Europe.
By Magnus Feldmann and Glenn Morgan
Businesses are important economic and political actors, and it is important to understand their role in resisting or underpinning populist rule.
By Astrid Hedin
There has been a tendency to assume that the relationship between business and the welfare state is unequivocally adversarial.
Translated by Niina Pollari
That spring you met with national mourning, and your capital turned gray. / You looked at your spouse in the coffin and understood
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
The trees up and down the esplanade are scraggly and bare. A few kids all bundled up are playing on a grayish stretch, with their au pair watching them. Plenty of Black girls in the mix.
By Xira Ruiz-Campillo
When questioning who should bear the most in facing environmental challenges, we tend to think about international organizations, states, or citizens. But what about cities?
By Maria Dolores Sanchez Galera
The new Green Deal shows how the EU is striving to update a wide range of instruments and adopt new policies to boost the transition towards a new economic system and an energy and industrial transition through four main pillars: carbon pricing, sustainable investment, a new industrial policy and a just transition.
By Joseph Daher
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022 has already had a severe impact on the global economy, particularly in commodity markets, with the price for oil and gas escalating rapidly.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee member Hélène B. Ducros.
By William Bowden
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
By Eliza Bourner
Bourner’s work is informed by our cultural and psychological landscapes and how contemporary society’s dysfunctional values of materialism are at odds with our basic human needs.
Translated by Yardenne Greenspan
Shauli came home that weekend. I was astonished when he appeared in the doorway with his uniform and rifle. I hadn’t seen him in two weeks…
By Elana Resnick
Images of the plant burning caused horror around the world. Many observers, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, evoked the specter of Chernobyl.
By Pauline Münch and Jörg Niewöhner
In the Anthropocene, more-than-human habitability on this planet is at stake. Societies must develop ways of existing within planetary boundaries.
Interviewed by Angela Cacciarru
Bieler analyzes how struggles for reclaiming a fundamental common good are carried out and unveils the thread that links these struggles.
Reviewed by Gerd Bayer
Rich Brownstein has strong opinions on the many films he discusses in this comprehensive coverage of Holocaust cinema, and he does not mince his words.
By Barry Trachtenberg
The January 10, 2022 decision by the McMinn County Board of Education in Tennessee to prohibit the teaching of Art Spiegelman’s graphic memoir Maus from its eighth grade (typically, thirteen-year-old students) curriculum set off a firestorm of media attention.
Interviewed by Maryna Lakhno
They highlight their motivations for and experiences with teaching the SDGs, as well as the challenges they have encountered when bringing the SDGs to the academic context.
By Larisa Kurtović
In the rugged and haunted lands of Bosnia-Herzegovina, rivers are places of extremes. Rousing of acute, aching love—the kind that inspires folk songs and popular devotion—rivers are often celebrated for their ability to ensure both survival and joy to the communities that live on their banks.
By Dominic Boyer and Maria Dolores Sanchez Galera
This special feature of EuropeNow offers a flavor of what the current European engagement with a Green transition is—its prides and less virtuous instances.
In this campus series, we feature pieces on teaching genocide.
Translated by Katie Whittemore
There is a small plastic horse in the corner of the modest fenced-in yard. It looks like it’s been there for eternity, yet it’s not actually old. That particular corner is the only part of the yard that has been conserved as a garden, that wasn’t sealed with cement and tile and made into a patio.
The SECUREU summer school in Amsterdam welcomed students from diverse research backgrounds and in this interview series, we would like to further introduce their perspectives and work. In this interview, we introduce Leslie Molina, PhD student at the University of Glasgow.
The SECUREU summer school in Amsterdam welcomed students from diverse research backgrounds and in this interview series, we would like to further introduce their perspectives and work. In this interview, we introduce Ngeti Zwane, Doctoral Candidate at Philipps Universität Marburg in Germany.
The SECUREU summer school in Amsterdam welcomed students from diverse research backgrounds and in this interview series, we would like to further introduce their perspectives and work. In this interview, we introduce Gülce Şafak Özdemir, PhD researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Jones
Time will tell whether recent Ukrainian victories, aided by European and North American allies, will vanquish Putin’s drive for a twentieth-first century Russian Empire and achieve Ukraine’s long-standing goals of joining the European Union and NATO.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
We talked with one of the founders of historical ecology, who is also trained in an array of social and Earth sciences.
By Jazmine Contreras
Baudet challenges the increased state attention on the Holocaust and Jewish victimhood…
By Heidi Hein-Kircher
“Security” is a very general, but often used catchword of political discourses.
By Lesley-Ann Daniels
The war in Ukraine has brought Europe together as a political project with countries opening their arms to fleeing migrants. Likewise, when the Libyan regime collapsed in 2011, the previous controls on migration failed and people smugglers took advantage of the chaos to send thousands out to sea in flimsy boats.
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe.
Interviewed by Taylor Soja
Mezistrano and Lee discuss their ongoing collaborative work.
Interview by Taylor Soja
The minds behind KRIA (The Icelandic Constitution Archives) discuss their efforts to preserve documentation of the different phases of Iceland’s constitutional reform process.
By Georgios Karyotis
Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a significant shift in the conception and perception of security as a political value and policy goal. New issues have been brought forward in the security agenda; issues largely neglected in the past due to the Cold War hostility.
By Şener Aktürk
Competing definitions of ethnicity and rival explanations for the emergence of nationalism are critically engaged. While covering the classical works in the field of ethnicity and nationalism studies, the course readings also incorporate the most recent and cutting-edge works in the field.
By Taylor Soja
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Princeton University.
Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop
They were men who did nothing but walk walk walk. They were big, they were bearded, they wore leather caps and long raincoats…
Reviewed by Ian Roberts
Like the filmic oeuvre of German director Werner Herzog himself, Kristoffer Hegnsvad’s study is difficult to categorize.
By Marcus Nicolson
In recent years, social inclusion processes of migrants have been at the forefront of political debates in the UK and beyond.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Temenuga Trifonova and Hélène B. Ducros.
By Simone Perolari
These are stories of migrants who dream of Europe, hoping to be welcomed, but who quickly understand that it will ultimately be an unwelcome.
By Georgia Dimari and Stylianos Ioannis Tzagkarakis
Research on the Greek migration experience has shown that new concepts are necessary in order to describe both the weaknesses of the current response mechanisms and the need to identify and formulate more specific solutions to the problems induced by massive migration and refugee flows since 2015.
By Andrea Carlà
Since the turn of the century, the concept of securitization has not only become a recurrent theme in scholarship on minorities in regard to both so-called “old” (national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious) minorities, as well as new minorities stemming from recent migratory flows.
By Taylor Soja and Laurie Marhoefer
The First and Second World Wars were human-made catastrophes that killed upwards of eighty million people, including tens of millions of civilians.
By Adrian Kane-Galbraith
On May 30, 1963, Katherine Jones, the tenant of a cheap one-room flat in London’s West End, was hauled before the Hampstead Magistrates Court on grounds that she “did unlawfully and knowingly permit [the premises] to be used for the purposes of habitual prostitution.”
By Geoffrey Turnovsky
It is no great insight to say that students today are increasingly reliant on the internet to do their reading and research for papers and projects. I measured the full scale of this trend in a 2019 class I taught on early modern French culture.
By Taylor Soja and Laurie Marhoefer
The digital revolution is changing the history profession. Vast amounts of archival materials are now digital, and digital search has both sped up and fundamentally altered many aspects of historical research.
By Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager and Evgeniya Pyatovskaya
Russia, which seemed interested in a cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration with once notoriously neutral Vienna, became increasingly critical of the country’s stance on the armed conflict in Ukraine.
Reviewed by Philip E. Phillis
The transnational turn in European filmmaking and film studies has given renewed currency to peripheral cinemas and the opportunity to circumvent the western Eurocentric understanding of European cinema(s) and the hegemony of Hollywood in popular discourse.
Reviewed by Andrea C. Mosterman
Reviewed by Anna Tito
Code—the written programming instructions that direct computers—is everywhere. It’s in our cars, our pockets, and it sits behind most aspects of our lives.
Reviewed by Richard F. Wetzell
After emigrating to the United States in 1941, the German Jewish lawyer Ernst Fraenkel published The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, a seminal analysis of Nazi Germany that he had drafted while practicing as a lawyer in the Third Reich.
By Catherine Guisan
It is not too early, even as Russian troops impose horrific destruction and suffering on Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, to think of the future place of Russia in Europe.
By Judit Hajnal Ward
Kafka’s Son––what a captivating title! It translates well into any language. Additionally, it sends an instant message about the book’s subjects and dimensions: paying tribute to an unparalleled author in East Europe, capturing the complexities of the father-son relationship, tracking an author’s path in creative writing through space and time, all in a posthumous, unfinished novel placed in a Kafkaesque world.
The European Studies Book Award shortlist has been announced. The award honors the work of talented scholars who have written their first book on any subject in European Studies published within a two-year period.
By Matthew Slaboch
Remembered by his compatriots as the “Russian Socrates,” Grigory Skovoroda (1722-1794) merits distinction as the founder of Russia’s autochthonous philosophical tradition.
In this series, we feature a spotlight on the Ukraine Crisis and its connections to European politics, society, and culture.
By Nicholas Ostrum
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has wavered recently on the question of Nord Stream 2, the controversial Baltic gas pipeline project connecting the Russian terminal at Ust-Luga to the German port in Lubmin and, from there, Western Europe.
By Thomas Henökl
Digital Transformation is advancing, virtually at light speed, and has a series of repercussions on people’s lives and livelihoods. Disruptive innovation is causing turbulence…
By Stuart P.M. Mackintosh
The history of the European Union is a remarkable story of war and desolation being replaced by peace and seventy-plus years…
By Luke Forrester Johnson
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Princeton University.
Reviewed by Jessie Hennen
The novel begins as Saga awakens to a bystander asking her name, which she cannot recall. She’s lying on a familiar sidewalk in…
Reviewed by Hayden Bytheway
There is a contradiction invoked by the concept of “guilty pleasure,” which entails both admonishment and amusement.
Interviewed by Luke Forrester Johnson
Christy Wampole discusses Princeton University’s Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities (IHUM).
By Emily Schuckman-Matthews
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Reviewed by Douglas G. Morris
The grand narrative behind much human rights scholarship is that the Nazi regime plumbed the depths of evil, but its defeat yielded the Nuremberg trials, which held that evil to account and ushered in a new era of international justice.
By Manuela Boatcă
As a cultural entity, political project, and military-economic power, Europe has played different roles throughout ancient and modern history.
By Andrew Cole and Brooke Holmes
When we think about the past, we contemplate “history,” and this in turn compels us to talk about “events” and assign them to a given “decade” or “century”—all of these, upon reflection, being hardly straightforward terms or processes.
By William Stewart
In 1913, the Austrian writer Robert Musil made an intriguing if not unsettling observation: among the mathematically inclined, there appeared to be two, diametrically opposed ideas about the relationship of mathematics to the “real world.”
By Hannah Stamler
In 1922, the Franco-Belgian journalist Clément Vautel published a dystopian story entitled Le dernier gosse (“The Last Kid”). Printed in the satirical journal Le Rire, it foretells of a 1950s France where there are no new births, save one—a miraculous “last child.”
By Jonathon Catlin
In her masterful 2002 book Evil in Modern Thought, the philosopher Susan Neiman traces an “alternative history of philosophy” from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake to the September 11 terror attacks, arguing that the greatest advances in modern philosophy have been driven by the problem of evil, or ways of justifying the suffering of the innocent.
By Christene d’Anca
Medieval genealogies rose out of the need to elevate one branch of a population…
By Félix Jourdan
In France, the question of animal slaughter has been largely publicized by the animalist association L214. Throughout the past ten years, they have frequently published online images of slaughtering taken by hidden cameras.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Emily Schuckman Matthews, Temenuga Trifonova, and Hélène B. Ducros.
Translated by Imogen Taylor
Let me start this story with a confession: I can’t pronounce my own name. For as far back as I can remember, I have felt uncomfortable introducing myself to people.
By Michele Chinitz
The most staged dramatist after Shakespeare, the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen is regarded as the father of modern drama. A Doll’s House is his most popular play.
By Barbora Šedová and Lisa Thalheimer
The number of forcibly displaced people has been steadily on the rise. In 2015, over one million refugees and migrants reached Europe, the largest fraction of whom were fleeing the civil war in Syria.
By Charlotta María Hauksdóttir
The physical space of landscapes can be closely tied to a person’s identity, sense of being, and infused with personal history. The composite, textured landscapes are a re-creation of…
Translated by Nermin Menemencioğlu
My mother was on a rampage again today. My father’s been fired, she carried on endlessly about it. “He crosses swords with the bosses, talks back to them, as if there’s some mansion…
By Isabel Hilpert
In spring 2021, events in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta dominated international headlines for a few days, presumably due to an upset over the behavior of the Spanish government in the context of the Western Sahara conflict in which the Moroccan government loosened border controls with the European Union.
Translated by Mauricio Ruiz
I sit alone at the airport in northern Norway to see my paternal grandmother before she dies. The bus rides on the new road, no one drives on the old road anymore. Just my dad. He will always drive on the old road, because that’s where his father used to drive.
By Brandon Edwards-Schuth and John Lupinacci
As educators engage in a critique of anthropocentrism, they can develop the…
By Hélène B. Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Reviewed by Yotam Tsal
Examines the nexus of environmentalism and decolonization to shed light on the political and economic interests behind the construction of…
By Sean Ireton
Ecosophy thus implies an “identification so deep that one’s own self is no longer adequately delimited by the personal ego or the organism…”
By Shira Shmuely
The plausible inclusion of cephalopods and crustaceans in animal welfare legislation reveals the central role of science in shaping the moral and legal obligations towards nonhuman animals.
By Prudence Gibson and Sharon Willoughby
Banksia serrata (B. serrata) is a species of native Australian tree that catches stories of colonial dominion, botanical naming controversies, and Indigenous knowledge in its branches.
By John Charles Ryan
In its radically-open otherness, lichens materialize more-than-human wisdom—the knowledge of the world expressed by intelligent beings other than humans.
By Vicente Raja
To show that (at least some) plants are able to exhibit goal-directed behaviors to cope with their environments may have dramatic implications for our understanding of plants as biological systems, but also as cognitive, or even sentient systems.
By Richard J. White and Hannah C. Gunderman
A fundamental cause of human neglect of, and violence toward, insects can be directly placed at the door of anthroprivilege, which, crucially, is learned behavior.
Reviewed by Nora Gortcheva
The anthology Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna (editor Noah Isenberg, translator Shelley Frisch) provides a long-overdue translation of Billy Wilder’s early writings in German (1924-1933).
Reviewed by Elizabeth B. Jones
Diary of a Young Naturalist brims with curiosity, heartache, and joy. Over the course of a year, Irish teenager and climate activist Dara McAnulty chronicles how the natural world both cushions him from the pains of early adulthood (he turns fifteen) and feeds his determination to protect it for future generations
By Matthew D. Miller
Part of the “Communities and Identities” component of an undergraduate Core Curriculum program, “Core Danube” explores Europe’s second longest and most interesting river: from its beginnings in the German Black Forest to the Romanian and Ukrainian shores where it meets the Black Sea, the Danube flows through and/or borders ten countries, while its watershed covers four more.
By Kay Sidebottom
The critical posthumanism of Braidotti and others differs from other strands (actor network theory, transhumanism, anti-humanism, and so on) in that it is not philosophy as such, but a “…theoretically-powered cartographical tool,” or a lens through which to read the world.
By Matthew D. Miller
A hydrocentric mapping of Europe’s rivers, seas, and watersheds yields a refreshingly defamiliarized continental cartography
By Kathryn Kirkpatrick
Our largely rationalist discourses leave us without tools for reciprocal forms of communication with the nonhuman. How do we go about opening ourselves to such exchanges? Poetry might be a better vehicle for exploring the uncanny.
Reviewed by Ervin Malakaj
Kenneth S. Calhoon’s exciting new study links the cinema of Germany’s Weimar era (1918–1933) to previous aesthetic traditions. Commonly referred to as “the golden age of German cinema,” the Weimar era is affiliated with various cinematic innovations underpinning popular and arthouse cinema cultures that influenced international filmmaking in various ways (Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg 1995, 617).
By Charlène Dray and Jocelyne Porcher
Through the lens of sociology and animal performance studies, we consider here the specific presence and work of stage animals.
By David A. Fennell, Bastian Thomsen and Samuel R. Fennell
Dark tourism, or thanatourism, is a complex subset of the tourism industry, which capitalizes on human death and suffering from human and environmentally induced events.
By Francesca Ferrando, Rohan Hassan, and Hélène B. Ducros
The first insight that Posthumanism gives us to understand what it means to be human…
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Emily Schuckman Matthews and Hélène B. Ducros.
By Nandita Biswas Mellamphy
Problematizing AI in light of posthumanistic critiques would be beneficial in confronting questions of whether nonhuman intelligences can be conceptualized in terms other than humanistic.
Interviewed by Elizabeth B. Jones
Botanical artists are positioned very well to mediate new conversations about plants and understandings, in particular the connections between natural sciences, the humanities, and the public
By Hélène B. Ducros
Non-human, more-than-human, other-than-human, posthuman, transhuman, anti-human, multispecies, transspecies—all are terms that have been circulating in the humanities and social sciences, but have lacked clarity in their definitions, interpretations, purposes, uses, and range of application.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
Three artists participate in the special feature to join the reflection on what it means to be human in a multispecies world.
By Adam D. Brown and Alexa L. Elias
Every year, millions of people are confronted with violence, environmental disasters…
By Parthiban Muniandy
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Sarah Lawrence College.
By Ava McElhone Yates, Maria Höhn, and Chase Estes
Across Europe and the US, large scale projects addressing the history and memory of displacement are underway. All of these efforts are concerned not only with rectifying the prevailing historical narratives but also with using design as a way to tell a more appropriate and inclusive narration.
Reviewed by Brittany Lehman
The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that at least 12 million people are either legally or effectively stateless. Given the increasing…
By Clarence Dodge
An environmental problem “threatens to tear Nigeria apart,” according to popular media outlets like the Telegraph (Blomfield: 2018). Local farmers in the Middle Belt region (a belt region stretching across Central Nigeria forming a transition zone between Northern and Southern Nigeria) have been engaging in armed conflict with pastoral herders migrating south from an expansive semi-arid area known as the Sahel.
Reviewed by Natalia Orasanin
Gordana P. Crnković’s work offers an enlightening path, filled with new possibilities, experiences, and discoveries.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee member Hélène B. Ducros.
By Susan Ossman and Olga Sezneva
Ossman made “Sources” with elements of her own experiences of crossing borders, making new homes and learning to live in new places.
By Nick Ostrum
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By Parthiban Muniandy and Valeria Bonatti
In 2019, Sarah Lawrence faculty Parthiban Muniandy led a group of undergraduate students from Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, and Bard colleges on an intensive field-research study abroad trip to Malaysia.
By Antonia Noll, Veronika Zaripova, and Ayham Dalal
Berlin Anhalter Bahnhof, 1938, children board a train to London. They wave goodbye to grief-stricken parents huddling on the platform. For many families, this was a last farewell; they would never see each other again.
Interviewed by Maria Höhn and Nicole Shea
After the collapse of Communism in 1989, the city of Berlin, just ten years later, again became the capital of a newly, re-unified Germany.
By Olga Sezneva
While the fate of the German population displaced in the former East Prussia, today’s Kaliningrad Oblast, has attracted considerable scholarly attention, less is known about the property and personal belongings left behind or “proprietary emotions,” and material feelings of Kaliningrad’s new occupants.’ What emotional responses did the forcibly acquired things produce in their new owners? How did these feelings initially form and gradually change, and under which conditions?
Translated by Alex Zucker
I had a suitcase, that’s it. My mother’s old suitcase with wheels, the one she used to take with her jetting around the Old World for work, till the doctor made her stop flying.
By Philipp Nielsen
In 1922, in response to a wave of refugees from civil war Russia, the League of Nations created a passport for stateless people: The Nansen Passport.
By James Francis Cerretani
With over 80 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide at the end of 2020 (UNHCR, 2021), there is an increasing need to understand how communities living across borders are staying connected.
By Parthiban Muniandy
The Migration and Mobilities working group at Sarah Lawrence College is a core group of faculty from across the social sciences and humanities who have been variously engaged in the interdisciplinary studies of human mobility, displacement crises, migration, and other related themes.
By Manasi Sinha
With continuous instability and violence engulfing Afghanistan, large numbers of Afghan women and girls are likely to reach Europe to seek protection from conflict and violence in their native land.
Interviewed by Sanders Isaac Bernstein
Rather than understand the growing strength of the so-called far right as a matter of political program championed by distant extremists, Strick argues that we need to consider how they transform the emotional climate of everyday life.
By Peter Verstraten
Traditionally, art cinema has been used as a term of endearment to pit European cinema as the “good” object against Hollywood as the commercial giant.
By Irina Herrschner and Benjamin Nickl
The blueprint of a house precedes its construction. That much is clear. With a European Project that started in 1950 as the European Coal and Steel Community, a common culture was that blueprint, and it was meant to construct a union of all and for all: in a shared culture that was alive and thriving.
By Anne-Marie Scholz
In 1992, Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau published an edited volume of essays entitled Popular European Cinema. The notion was new at the time, they argue in the introduction.
By Michael Gott
In recent years, borders and borderland settings have proliferated in European television, arguably making the “border series” a category of its own. HBO Europe’s Polish series Wataha (2014-) was translated as The Border for its 2016 UK release.
By Randall Halle
Already during World War II, leading European cultural figures oriented themselves toward a post-war future in which a federation of Europe would become a reality.
By Philip E. Phillis
Prospective audiences may be at a loss if they try to conjure in their minds an Albanian film, especially since production has gained momentum only in the last twenty years.
By Hester Baer and Jill Suzanne Smith
the fall of 2019, the European Film Academy announced its creation of a new award category, one that would allow the EFA to “remain relevant” in the eyes of younger viewers and in light of clear changes in visual media creation and distribution.
This is part of our special feature on European Culture and the Moving Image. “Precarity” and “the precariat” have become two of the buzz words in studies of neoliberalism’s restructuring of the global economy and of the human sensorium. Originally signifying a social condition linked to poverty, precarity now refers to the rise in flexible and precarious forms of labor, the growth of the knowledge economy, the reduction of welfare state provisions, the suppression
By Casey Harison
Vsevolod Pudovkin’s The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Jean Renoir’s La Marseillaise (1938) are beautifully filmed and timeless stories that continue to hold the attention of the viewer almost a century after they were made.
By Lora Sariaslan
The first section of Nilbar Güreş’s video Stranger (Yabancı, 2004-2006), titled “Person of Cloth” (fig. 1), documents a woman on the Vienna subway covered in blue and red floral cloth that wraps her body completely with a traditional Turkish black scarf (yazma) on her head.
By Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber
About halfway through Faraz Shariat’s debut film, No Hard Feelings, Banafshe is notified that her asylum claim has been rejected while her brother will be permitted to stay.
By İpek A. Çelik Rappas, Michael Gott, and Randall Halle
From the earliest days of film as a sideshow attraction to the present multiplatform mode of reception, moving images in Europe—in their broadest sense—have been imagining communities in various forms.
Curated by Nicole Shea
Each cinema hall is its own self-contained world with clearly defined boundaries, in colourful dialogue with the interior.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Temenuga Trifonova and Hélène B. Ducros.
Reviewed by Adam Cook
As sites of neoliberal formation, German’s national cinemas contain complex negotiations between societal and creative forces
By Temenuga Trifonova
In the first part of the course we will consider some examples of post-1960 European art cinema; in the second part we will turn our attention to questions of personal and…
Translated by Valerie Miles
The sudden commotion, the sound of the motor, they displace you, leaving me alone; I concentrate on the movement of my hands now, gripping the wheel…
By William Bowden
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Reviewed by Mariana Ivanova
Despite the Allies’ efforts for denazification and reeducation, East and West Germany have both been haunted by the shadow of their Nazi past and it has often been assumed that denial and silence prevailed in the early post-war years.
Reviewed by Leanna Lostoski-Ho
Exhausted Ecologies explores how the aesthetic efforts of British and Global Anglophone modernist authors contributed to scientific advancements, activist causes, and cultural critiques that exposed “the exhausting and exploitative conditions of modern life” in the early twentieth century.
Reviewed by Johannes M. Kiess
The volume Imbalance, edited by Tobias Schulze-Cleven and Sidney A. Rothstein, masterfully presents multiple imbalances of the German political economy and provides analytical insights into where they stem from and what they mean.
Translated by Yardenne Greenspan
I returned to Sobibor to dig. Really dig, with a hoe, and with my hands, on my knees, mining for bits of bone, collecting pins and buttons left behind by the dead.
Translated by Victor Meadowcroft and Anne McLean
Mothers stay with their children during the first years, and then, when the children can — apparently — defend themselves, they release them, they cast them into the naked tumult, and forget them. I’ve seen mothers who despair at having to provide for their children, letting out huge yawns while contemplating them.
By Magali Chesnel
After a difficult 2020 year, Chesnel reinforced her belief that going outside was regenerative and ever-inspiring.
Reviewed by Caroline DeVane
Povinelli situates family stories about place and blood told to her by her grandparents within the broader social narratives of European immigration to the US.
By Joseph Keady
German activists’ complicated relationship with the United States contributes to their capacity to foment a cohesive transatlantic far-right.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Rice Mattison
A reconsideration of a key publication on late medieval history, of interest to scholars…
Reviewed by Alessandro Giammei
Pier Paolo Pasolini was the most important intellectual of twentieth-century Italy. He was the very definition, in fact, of an intellettuale—this mercurial, out of fashion concept that Antonio Gramsci, one of Pasolini’s main political and poetic inspirations, lucidly placed at the center of any effective marxist strategy for revolution.
Reviewed by Boris Pantev
A somewhat unforeseen reawakening of the debate around the enfranchizing potential of political universalism has taken place in the past decade. Many theorists, such as Chantal Mouffe, saw this renewal as a valid antagonistic response to the surge of nationalist populism in Europe and the consolidation of liberal ideologies worldwide.
Reviewed by Chloé Vettier
“I don’t believe in the Amish model. And I don’t believe that the Amish model can solve the challenges of contemporary environmentalism,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in September 2020, after major French political leaders protested the environmental costs of 5G.
Interviewed by Elizabeth B. Jones
Germany’s military and police forces have come under scrutiny for their failure to root out right-wing sympathizers in their ranks…
Interviewed by William Bowden
It seems crucial to imagine “reparative” teaching practices that attend to students’ diverse learning needs through a relational framework.
By Elke Segelcke
The Second World War ended in 1945, but its epilogue lasted for nearly another half century. This course will focus on Tony Judt’s book, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, that is a comprehensive and detailed account of the political and economic, as well as social, cultural, and intellectual history of Europe since the end of World War II.
By Emily Schuckman-Matthews
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By Stuart P.M. Mackintosh
Europe’s ever-closer union began with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1955, which was followed by the creation of the European Economic Community (1957) and eventually the European Union.
Translated by Megan McDowell
She started to feel bad when her brother left. Her brother said he loved her, but it wasn’t true, because he left unapol-ogetically, claiming that he had to go. Had to?
Translated by Izidora Angel
Naya and I have been living together since we were born. First in the Home, then in the attic room we shared in the Reduta neighborhood. She was given up for adoption as a three-day-old baby.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Emily Schuckman Matthews, Temenuga Trifonova, and Hélène B. Ducros.
By Ida Sofie Gøtzsche Lange and Chrisann Neysa Rodrigues
The world’s population growth and migration to urban areas eat into global limited resources.
By Gregor Goetzl, et al.
A wide global consensus has been reached that it’s time to foster sustainable, just, and “green” transformations of society, irrespective of our cultural backgrounds and prosperity levels.
By Anna Louise Bradley, Clara Julia Reich, and Adam Curtis
Placemaking is far more abstract than simply making a place. It is not focused primarily on the end result, but rather the co-creative, democratic, and inclusive processes along the way.
Reviewed by Barbara Halla
For anyone who has even a fleeting familiarity with Ferrante’s fiction, the symbolism of such an introduction would need no explication.
By Holger A. Klein and Alain Duplouy
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Columbia University and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By Anita Savo
Those who know anything about the Cid, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1048–1099), imagine him as a crusader hero of Christian Spain. His popular image, on horseback with sword raised against a presumed Muslim foe, deliberately evokes the iconography of “Saint James the Moor-killer” (Santiago Matamoros).
Reviewed by Andrew Schumacher Bethke
In the global resurgence of the far-right and white supremacist ideology over the past two decades, the debate over the past, history, and History as an academic discipline, looms large.
By Kai Zosseder, et al.
As stated in part one of “how geothermal heating and cooling networks may support the green and livable urban transformation,” geothermal energy can be very efficiently used as a resource for district heating and cooling networks and can have the ability to be a key technology for a necessary heat energy transition.
By Pekka Tuominen, Mikko Rask and Titiana Ertiö
Participatory budgeting is a rapidly growing democratic innovation with promises to alter citizens’ participation significantly. In the last thirty years, it has spread to thousands of cities with around 11,000 reported cases around the world, and with very different models of collaboration, co-creation, and democracy.
By Joseph Woldman
An antefix discreetly rests face-down on a storage shelf in Columbia University’s Art Properties collection. The object is readily identifiable by its terminal imbrex, or cover-tile, which remains attached to the decorative roof tile.
By Maria Dimitropoulos and Roberto C. Ferrari
The initiative Parallel Heritages: Humanities in Action, led by professors Holger Klein (Columbia University in the City of New York) and Alain Duplouy (Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne), explores the history, development, and present state of University collections of classical antiquities at, respectively, Columbia University in New York and the Panthéon-Sorbonne 1 in Paris.
By Monica Bulger
In the storerooms beneath Columbia University’s Avery and Fine Arts Library, some 650 Greek pottery fragments dating from the Early Bronze Age to the Classical Period are sorted into individually labeled bags in sturdy trays.
By Alain Duplouy
The objective of this graduate seminar is to bring a historiographical dimension to the training of archaeology students, by providing them with the keys to various readings of ancient Greek societies and their material culture and the way these have been constantly renewed since the nineteenth century.
By Majdolene Dajani and Erhan Tamur
The modern discipline of Ancient Western Asian art and archaeology began as a colonial enterprise in the mid-nineteenth century. The European, American, and Ottoman expeditions in modern-day Iraq and Syria brought to light the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria.
By Nicole Shea and Zsuzsanna Varga
This feature offers insights into developing the sustainability of European cities through a number of case studies of recent social and technological practices, while also foregrounding the role of the digital in modernization.
By Various Artists
Works of art in civic space distribute clean energy and provide other sustainable services to buildings and the utility grid while beautifying the built environment.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Jean Beaman, Temenuga Trifonova, Nick Ostrum, and Hélène B. Ducros.
Translated by Sverre Lyngstad
This was how Bjørn Hansen’s existence had shaped up. This was his life. At Kongsberg. With Turid Lammers, this woman he had to live with because he feared he would otherwise regret
Interviewed by Benjamin Bernard
Stanford historian Andrei Pesic recently published an article in the leading historical journal, Past & Present, about how music might help us to rethink this question.
By Marius Turda
The real labor of education begins with a question and finding an answer to it. Regarding the Roma, education is also essential in the un-making of anti-Roma racism.
By Cristina Blanco Sío-López
Though largely neglected in recent studies about the European integration process, Salvador de Madariaga was a key forerunner and contributor to the “European idea,” as well as a highly influential Spanish diplomat, writer, historian, and pacifist at different critical junctures of the twentieth century.
Reviewed by Kathleen R. McNamara
Love and marriage are central to our lives, yet scholars rarely consider how they might matter for politics.
Reviewed by Jan Kühne
In the nineteenth century, Argentina was the country with the second-largest number of immigrants, behind only the United States.
Reviewed by Alexis Herr
The Guardians of Memory and the Return of the Xenophobic Right by Valentina Pisanty addresses the dramatic rise in racism and intolerance among countries where memory of the Holocaust is pursued with the greatest vigor and, in some cases, where Holocaust denial is a criminal offense.
Reviewed by James McSpadden
Who was the most important German left-wing activist of the nineteenth century? Readers of Jacobin and the Wall Street Journal could easily give you the same answer: Karl Marx.
Interviewed by Elizabeth Jones
Migration to the EU has created pressure on governments to ensure safe entry of migrants & establish the credentials of those in legal limbo.
By Francesca Pegorer
Even in these pandemic-ridden winter months, Hermannplatz, in Berlin’s North Neukölln, is bustling with activity.
By Alexandria Cogdill, Zach Kulstad and Jennifer Wargo
While these quotes are grounded in the philosophical teaching that food influences one’s state of mind, today, more than ever, we can appreciate the literal meaning of the words, “you are what you eat.”
By Sunnie Rucker-Chang
COVID-19 laid bare the health inequalities and gaps in access to care among marginalized communities in the United States and Europe.
By Manuela Boatcă
During the first three months of lockdown in 2020, the European Roma Rights Centre (ERCC) identified twelve countries across Europe in which Roma communities faced movement restrictions or disproportionate impacts from emergency measures despite the lack of evidence of higher case counts in those communities.
By Ioanida Costache
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and more specifically, the public lynching of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, sparked a collective investigation into the racial logics of white supremacy that supports racist systems in the United States.
Translated by Emma Ramadan
Concrete’s no job for sissies. Maybe that’s why our father decided, soon as we were old enough, my little sis and I, to educate us in cement, concrete, and casing.
By Àsìkò
The images in “Egun” are the manifestation of a long held desire to revisit formative cultural experiences from the artist’s childhood in Nigeria; encounters with the Egun masquerade.
Translated by Lytton Smith
I went out to the Kringilsárrani reserve while it still existed and was able to experience firsthand this magical world Helgi wrote about.
By Ioanida Costache
While across the Atlantic, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police sparked an unprecedented reckoning in America with the country’s racist past and the enduring legacy of this history through current manifestations of systemic racism, the pandemic served as a catalyst for anti-Roma racism to resurge.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Translated by Will Firth
Now, a year and a half after Alija’s funeral, I stood in the courtyard in front of the house where I grew up. I tried to sing Morrissey’s “Late Night, Maudlin Street” in my head…
Reviewed by Max Sater
A comparative study of the disease control policies in Britain and the US from 1793, when Philadelphia experienced an outbreak…
By Ioan-David Onel
The parliamentary elections organized in Kyrgyzstan on October 4, 2020, brought a new wave of social unrest and instability.
By Georgiana-Cătălina Marcu
In the last nine weeks we were witnesses to the thawing of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This is a decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which has escalated sharply in the last weeks.
By Dragoș Ioniță
In order to get a clear understanding of the political climate and the impact of recent developments on the country’s relationship with the EU, one must first delve deeper into Serbia’s democratic track record beyond 2020.
By Vlada Șubernițchi
Belarus, 2020 Presidential elections: What could have been another ordinary rigged election won by the unchangeable leader of Belarus since 1994, Aleksander Lukashenko, this time turned out to be a promising chance to remove the “last dictator of Europe.”
By Mario Love
In discussing race in America, author James Baldwin suggested that “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time.”
By William Bowden
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By Nicholas Ostrum
The course is based on a Postwar Europe course I had taught in the traditional classroom. Although I preserved the primary texts and films, converting the in-person course to a digital, the asynchronous format required rethinking the flow of the course.
Reviewed by Johanna Schuster-Craig
Czollek’s books fall neatly in line with a genre of political nonfiction that has steered German political commentary at least since the 1990s.
By Nancy Ruther, Sarah Rabke, and Alexa Jeffress
For over twenty years, virtual exchange (VE) has been a growing part of international higher education practice and policy, harnessing the power of increasingly user-friendly and low-cost technologies.
By Julia Fullerton-Batten
I felt numb but I knew that I couldn’t stand around and do nothing, I decided to document today’s existence as lived now by many people.
Translated by Sasha Dugdale
I must have been about twelve. I was hunting around for some-thing interesting to look at. There was plenty of interesting stuff: with every death a pile of new objects appeared in our apartment, deposited just as they were, trapped in a sudden end state, because their previous owner, the only person who could have freed them, was no longer among the living.
By Ana-Maria Anghelescu
In 2020, the European Union was supposed to take stock of its actions—looking both at the internal and external evolutions—in order to finalize and better prepare for the Multiannual Financial Framework of 2021-2027.
Reviewed by Vassilissa Carangio
Any discussion of feminist theory in both academic and activist feminist circles cannot exist without recognizing women’s differences.
By Carol Ferrara
It’s been nearly six years since the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo terror attack that killed twelve people working for the famous satirical magazine. Carrying out a coordinated multi-sited attack, another team of attackers also took sixteen hostages at a Hypercacher—a Kosher grocery store in the Paris suburbs—killing four individuals there, as well as a policewoman in Montrouge, and staging a second hostage situation nearby.
By Ali Meghji
The little Englander imagery of British history is an imagery that bifurcates the country from its unequal colonial relations.
By Audrey Célestine
It’s both an exciting and worrying time in French research. On the one hand, we’ve witnessed the multiplication of high-quality work on race in social science in the last fifteen years.
By Saskia Bonjour and Sarah Bracke
Throughout history, and across the globe, perceived threats to the nation have often been sexualized and represented in terms of a rape threat to “our” women. Such representations have been part and parcel of the gendered and sexualized constructions of the nation and its others.
By Esther Cuenca
COVID-19 has been the biggest crisis that has faced the modern academy since the last economic collapse in 2008.
Reviewed by Martin Rosenstock
She doesn’t shy away from pointing toward the bearings her work has upon the contemporary scene of German politics and culture.
Reviewed by Yao Lu
As the current pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement reveal, the issue of race has been one of the most salient global issues since at least the 1960s.
Interviewed by Laura Bartley
The recent events sparked by the murder of George Floyd, the disproportionate effect of…
By Lucy Barnhouse
In this course, we will study Europe from 500 to 1500 C.E., with an emphasis on social institutions. The thousand-year period often known as the Middle Ages (roughly 500-1500 C.E.) was a period of vibrant life and sometimes violent change.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros and Nick Ostrum.
By Esther Liberman Cuenca
Our goal this semester is to understand how people in the pre-modern world (that is, prior to 1800), particularly in Europe, discussed, reacted, and tried to remedy contagious diseases before the advent of modern medicine and scientific understandings of immunology and virology.
Reviewed by Tanvi Solanki
In today’s Europe, ruins present themselves both as timely and untimely. In cultural discourse, as materials, they are often associated with quaint tourist attractions. As metaphor and process, however, they are timelier than ever before.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
The history of eugenics intersects the history of racism from its inception. Most eugenicists, particularly the “founders” of the eugenic movements across the world, from England to Greece, and from Romania to the US, were also supporters of racial ideas of white/European superiority.
By Eugene Smelyansky
“It is a matter of humanity to show compassion for those who suffer,” opens Giovanni Boccaccio in the prologue to The Decameron. The prologue, and especially the first chapter of Boccaccio’s mid-fourteenth-century masterpiece, are well known to anyone who studies or teaches medieval history or literature.
By Judith Schalansky
In the evening they are hungry and restless. No meat for days. No hunting since they themselves were captured. Instincts worn down by captivity until they lie bare like gnawed bones.
By Carol Anderson
An advantage to teaching a medieval and early modern Western history survey course during a worldwide pandemic is that there is a corresponding historical event that is comparable to the present situation that furnishes a useful exercise for reflection on the human condition.
By Maria Americo
The pandemic had disastrous effects on New Jersey, a state hit hard early on in the crisis. Saint Peter’s University is a small, tight-knit Jesuit university in Jersey City, the second-most diverse city in the United States, catering to a demographic of mostly students of color.
By Lucy Barnhouse
“Isn’t it ironic,” asked a student in my Spring 2020 class on the history of western medicine, “that we’re studying this now?” Other students chimed in with agreement or additional observations.
By Christina Bruno
The Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrimage routes that extends from its endpoint in northwest Spain throughout Europe. It has experienced a surge of global popularity since the late twentieth century thanks in part to movies like The Way and high profile descriptions by writers as diverse as Paulo Coelho and Shirley MacLaine.
By Esther Liberman Cuenca
Our goal this semester is to understand how people in the pre-modern world (that is, prior to 1800), particularly in Europe, discussed, reacted, and tried to remedy contagious diseases before the advent of modern medicine and scientific understandings of immunology and virology.
By Esther Cuenca
Like many of our contributors to this pedagogy roundtable, I was caught rather flat-footed when my institution, the University of Houston-Victoria (UHV) in Victoria, Texas, announced that all classes were moving online in March 2020, just a few days after Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had caught the disease and the entire NBA season was postponed.
By Bianca Lopez
As a history instructor and researcher of medieval plague outbreaks, facing a modern pandemic with students in town has been both challenging and rewarding.
By Renata Dutrée
Black toxic masculinity is a unique beast rooted in white supremacy, internalized racism, internalized queerphobia, and misogynoir.
By Jean Beaman and Jennifer Fredette
Since the police killings of Breonna Taylor in March and George Floyd this past May, hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across the United States to call for an end to police violence—and, sometimes, the abolition of police altogether.
By Michelle D. Weitzel
The last century has seen growing ethnic diversity in France as immigrants from former French colonies and economic migrants from all over Europe settled, made homes, became citizens, and built lives across generations.
By Volha Charnysh
For nearly four months now, mass protests have rocked Belarus. Fall weather has not thinned the crowds demanding free and fair elections and the release of political prisoners.
By Siún Carden
Far from cities and geographically distinguished from mainland rural places, Scotland’s islands are varied in landscape, economy, and community make-up, yet share key challenges and are increasingly positioned to address these together in the context of national and regional government.
Interviewed by Dragoș Ioniță
Working for the last five years with professor Miruna Butnaru-Troncotă, a young researcher from Romania who specializes in this region and in EU’s foreign policy discourses, I managed to discover the less-approached ways of understanding and even problematizing the Balkan region, its people, its politics, and its passions, while mapping various stereotypes that all our lenses are formed of when approaching the topic.
By Stuart P. M. Mackintosh
Facing the ongoing pandemic, Johnson and his pals have handled the emergency in a manner Trump would also approve of, with friendship trumping competence and capability, and money flowing to toadies with no oversight or assurance on their ability to get the job done.
By Lucian A. Despa
In October 2015, former European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans stated, “the challenge (the migrant crisis of 2015) facing the European project today, is existential.” Five years later, the crisis could be repeated if coordinated measures on behalf of the EU and Turkey will not be taken.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Maastricht University.
By Victoria Leigh Brown
Authoritarian populism has emerged from rural spaces long ignored as “empty” and out-of-fashion within European academe.
By Twan Huijsmans
Scholars, pundits, and policy-makers frequently express concern about growing polarization between urban and rural areas, arguing that it could become the dominant conflict line in Western democracies.
By Tom Mordue, Oliver Moss, and Lorraine Johnston
Wind energy has not only been promoted as sustainable by officialdom across Europe, it has received broad public approval. In the UK, for example, a high of 76 percent support for wind energy among the public was recorded in a YouGov survey in April 2018.
By Corinne Geering
The image of rural Europe has been defined by local traditions that distinguish each locale from another. Hardly anywhere else is this idea as pertinent as in crafts, as reflected by the following assessment by a Hungarian official in an American magazine in 1908.
Reviewed by Bruce Hayes
Guynn’s book is intentionally polemical, seeking to redress supposed mischaracterizations of farce by scholars like me.
Reviewed by John R. Bowen
Through the many studies, stories, and films made about post-war Muslim migration to Western Europe, each major country projects its own dominant image. France has its North African immigrants, Germany has its Turks…
By José Duarte Ribeiro
Referring to the death of peasantry in the twentieth century as the “most dramatic and far-reaching social change of the second half of this century, and the one which cuts us off for ever from the world of the past,” Eric Hobsbawm (1994, 289) declared Turkey the last “peasant stronghold”
By Aris Anagnostopoulos
Two young urbanite Herakliots, an architect and a cinematographer, who both hail from highland Crete were deeply engaged in conversation following a recent spate of armed violence in a village back in 2012.
By Marisa Mori
Maastricht University (UM) is well-known for its Problem Based Learning (PBL) education system. Another feature that stands out in the European studies bachelor program is an elaborate skills training trajectory.
By Wyn Grant
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the European Union’s (EU) longest lasting policy. It is the policy that has arguably most greatly influenced European farmers’ decisions.
By Elizabeth B. Jones
No one knows when the uncertainties of the COVID-19 era will ease into more predictable rhythms. In Europe, as everywhere else, the pandemic has complicated even mundane tasks like grocery shopping.
Interviewed by Eline Schmeets and Akudo McGee
No stranger to crises, tough talks, and collaboration, the European Union is seeing a particularly eventful year. The anticipated economic ramifications of Brexit, troubling developments in Poland and Hungary, and declining relationships with China and the United States were the more predictable issues for 2020.
By Marie Labussière
Interdisciplinarity can be described as “a kind of sequential back-and-forth movement from one discipline to the other.” For this back-and-forth movement to take place between researchers from different disciplines, it seems to me that there are some basic prerequisites.
By Kirstin Herbst
Scholars in the field of international politics often point to climate change as an example of a problem more efficiently solved by delegating authority to international institutions.
By Johanna Hvalić
Women’s agency in British imperialism has often been neglected in the writing of history. Their experience, roles, and identities are often dominated by male perspectives, resulting in stereotypical representation as eroticized indigenous women and white “Memsahibs” following their husbands.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Ralph Lister is a man with a passion: to bring creative Europe beyond its usual metropolitan frontiers.
By Angela Cacciarru
The current Italian rural land tenure system is rooted in land reform that was implemented in the peninsula in 1950, known as the “Agrarian Reform.” The Southern Development Fund (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno) provided the funding that made carrying out this reform possible. Mezzogiorno is used to define southern Italy, which extends from Abruzzo to Sicily, and includes Sardinia.
By Arielle DeSoucey and Michaela DeSoucey
Nestled in the southeast corner of Czechia, South Moravia is located on the western tip of the Carpathian Mountains and at the foot of the Danube river.
By Evy Vourlides
I could not have anticipated my boots being layered with dirt for much of my eighteen months of PhD dissertation research. My initial project explored how young adults in Athens, Greece, navigated a precarious job market.
By Christine Neuhold
During the summer of 2020, academic staff and students alike have had to face various degrees of a COVID-19 lock-down.
Reviewed by Tracey Heatherington
The rich case studies in this volume explore distinctively European contexts of activism to challenge the dominance of industrial food systems.
By Elissaveta Radulova
Between Belgium and Germany on the most Southern border of the Netherlands is situated the historic city of Maastricht. Its citizens speak several languages by default, and the international atmosphere is a permanent feature in the numerous cozy cafés in the city-center.
By Jeremy MacClancy
La España vacia, “Empty Spain,” is the contentious, popular term summing up so much of the nation’s countryside today: thousands of villages left with no inhabitants or only a few.
By Ruth McAreavey
Migration to small towns and rural places, like those of my childhood in Northern Ireland, has been witnessed across many countries of the Western World, including Norway, Sweden, Greece, and Spain.
Reviewed by Michael Subialka
The European avant-gardes exploded onto the scene in the decade leading up to the Great War and imposed new visions of art and culture in the decades after it.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
The drawback of European studies, but also politics and international relations, is that we teach a moving target. You may teach something one day and the next day it has completely changed.
By Neculai-Cristian Surubaru, Caterina Di Fazio, Miriam Urlings,Catalina Goanta, Thales Costa Bertaglia Thales, and Mathieu Segers
Along the Maas River, in the far South of the Netherlands, one can find the city of Maastricht. One of the oldest cities in the country, it has been a Roman Empire military stronghold, a cultural and religious center, and the birthplace of the current European Union (EU)
By Patrick Bijsmans
Our students tend to look into a broad range of topics, from Euroscepticism in the European Parliament, to decolonization and its impact on contemporary societies in and outside of Europe. They draw from questions regarding the development of democracy in Europe or culture in Europe’s border regions.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this roundtable on “Changing Agriculture in Rural Europe,” EuropeNow wishes to convey a portrait of an agricultural Europe that shows its dynamism and adaptable capacity in the way it mirrors and incorporates the major concerns of our time and faces the historical legacies of past agricultural practices and policies.
By Camilo Erlichman
Present-day Europe is shaped by a number of highly complex political, social, economic, and cultural realities that escape any easy description.
By Pablo del Hierro
It might be hard to believe now, but debates about the dangers of fascism or the rise of far-right political parties were not very popular just over a decade ago.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros and Elizabeth Jones.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By Gesine Tuitjer
This story begins shortly after the Second World War and covers the tremendous changes, both economically and socially, that the rural areas of Germany have undergone until today.
By Dominik Schmidt
Greta Thunberg’s Skolstreik för klimatet in front of the Swedish parliament in August 2018 inspired people around the whole world. Thunberg became the most prominent face of the global climate movement and has been successful in establishing climate change as an essential topic on the public agenda.
By Magali Chesnel
Discover Chesnel’s photographs taken in the Camargue, above the salt marshes of Giraud and Aigues-Mortes, creating a confusion between reality and illusion, photography and painting.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this roundtable on “Changing Agriculture in Rural Europe,” EuropeNow wishes to convey a portrait of an agricultural Europe that shows its dynamism and adaptable capacity in the way it mirrors and incorporates the major concerns of our time and faces the historical legacies of past agricultural practices and policies.
By Diana-Andreea Mandiuc
Just two days after the virus spread was categorized as a pandemic, Europe recorded the largest number of cases outside of China (Ghebreyesus, 2020), testing the Union’s ability to cope with emergency health issues.
By Marcela Romero Rivera
When does a revolution triumph? Can we say that a revolution is victorious when strategic military objectives have been secured?
By John Hultgren
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Bennington College.
By Adedoyin Teriba
At times, architecture is a response to an existential crisis—especially if one is in dire straits in a European colony. All the more if, perchance, one had the ill fortune of being enslaved.
By Noah Coburn, Elbunit Kqiku, and Sitashma Parajuli
Landmine clearance is often approached as a technical problem: how do you remove a mine from the ground? Yet, landmines transform time, space, and people, as well as demonstrating much about life in the post-colonial, particularly the ways in which conflict uproots individuals and communities and reshapes their movement and sense of place, through both the presence of landmines and the act of landmine clearance.
By Soumya Rachel Shailendra, Sitashma Parajuli, and Ioanna Katsara
Since the onset of the virus, scholars and engaged publics have heatedly debated how the emergency measures adopted by governments across the globe—“shelter in place” orders, mask requirements, expanded welfare provisions, mandates for companies to produce more PPE, etc. —will impact the rights of citizenship and the machinations of democracy.
By Valeria Bonatti
Throughout much of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, most societies witnessed a steady growth in life expectancy. In much of the Global North, but also in wealthier parts of the Global South, this generated and continues to generate a growing demand for affordable elderly care workers—a demand that many societies meet through low-wage migrant labor from the Global South.
Reviewed by Sarah S. Willen
A nuanced analysis of the distinctive approach to “cultural competence” undergirding Centre Minkowska’s work.
By Valeria Sibrian and Sarah Lore
When we took the course, “In Translation: Lives, Text, Cities,” at Bennington College in Fall 2017, we were presented with a class that would allow us to study writers who live in translation —writers like us.
Reviewed by Justin Patch
The Beatles: what more is there to say about the band that transformed global popular culture? A casual survey of the Library of Congress reveals over a thousand titles.
By Elijah Appelson, Matthew Brill-Carlat, Samantha Cavagnolo, Violet Cenedella, Angie Diaz, Kaiya John, Naima Nader, and Haru Sugishita
In conversations about migration and forced migration, there are often more opinions than there are people in the conversation. In this climate of fear, xenophobia, hypermobility, and immobility, it is imperative that we move beyond knee-jerk reactions and use our capacity for critical thinking and reflection.
By Emily Mitchell-Eaton
This class examines geographies of death, dying, and mourning as experienced by migrants living in diaspora or exile.
By Joseph M. Alpar and Kerry Ryer-Parke
There are now more than 270 million migrants across the globe. This course used music to study critical issues of migration beyond statistical analysis and surveys.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Reviewed by Maria Mitchell
Short-listed by the American Academy of Religion for the Best First Book in the History of Religions and recipient of the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize, this beautifully written monograph deserves wide readership, especially by students and scholars of Europe and sexuality.
Interviewed by Nicole Shea
Migration has always played a major part in creating a European identity, derived from a thriving pluralistic space.
By Peter Rosenblum, Danielle Riou, Hattie Karlstrom, Giselle Avila, and Lily Chavez
Since the launch of the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education in 2016, it has been hard to avoid feeling overwhelmed by urgency. In the United States, the Trump administration has pried at the seams of an already troubled immigration system to impose extreme anti-immigration measures
By Hew Locke
A ship is a symbolic object; vessel of the soul, means of escape, both safety and danger. No crew are visible—the boats themselves stand for crew and passengers.
Translated by Geoffrey Brock
Behold a uniform man / behold a desert soul / an impassive mirror for the world / Sometimes I wake and join forces and possess / The rare good that grows
By Matthew Brill-Carlat, Ava McElhone Yates, and Maria Höhn
Even in the more prosperous countries of the Global North, poor communities and communities of color—be they Indigenous, Black, migrants, or another minoritized group—are being ravaged by COVID-19 to a far greater extent than white and more privileged communities.
By Rachel A Cohen and Catherine Butterly
Violence against women and girls is a ubiquitous and pervasive problem, affecting about one in three women worldwide. The psychological, social, medical, and economic consequences are deep and enduring.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Nick Ostrum and Hélène B. Ducros.
By Lauri Tähtinen
As of late April, eighteen of the twenty-six member countries of the Schengen Area were conducting internal border checks. In May, European Union institutions awoke to the need to “reopen” Europe before summer, the high season for the tourism industry which has been responsible for one tenth of Europe’s GDP.
By Răzvan-Victor Sassu and Eliza Vaș
The new coronavirus has drastically reshuffled both economies and societies in the past months. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has described the situation as being a “crisis like no other” with “an uncertain recovery” and a “catastrophic hit” to the global labour market, with more than 430 million jobs losses in the first two quarters.
Reviewed by Mohamed Amine Brahimi
Nadia Kiwan’s Secularism, Islam and Public Intellectuals in Contemporary France, addresses a topic that receives little attention in the social sciences: the position of Muslim intellectuals in France and their relationship to secularism.
Translated by David Colmer
The one who is addressing you here / is not the one who is writing this / the one who is writing this / not the one who is.
By Angela Cacciarru and Antonio Paesano
There are many factors intervening in a society’s ability to combat disease. While Italy was featured everywhere in global media as the place where COVID-19 was out of control and the situation desperately stark, the spreading of the virus was showing more and more its uneven impact.
By Ruxandra Paul
Migrants have always been both essential to modern economies and objects of suspicion, but the Coronavirus pandemic has brought this tension to a head both in migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries.
Reviewed by Alec Medine
Covers the history of Eastern and Central European nationalities from their inception as imperial subject-peoples in the 18th century.
By Jonathan Larson
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
By Agnes E. Venema
When Gabon experienced an attempted coup d’etat in late 2018, very few media outlets picked up on the fact that suspicion of a deepfake fuelled underlying unrest.
Reviewed by Hunter Bivens
Discussions of world literature often have little that is concrete to say about class. Recent scholarly interventions have attempted to address this lacuna by grounding theories of world literature in the dynamics of the capitalist world system and the uneven distribution of conditions of labor across the globe.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Reviewed by Geoff Hare
Footballing culture (men’s professional football/soccer) developed in the greater Manchester area from the mid-nineteenth century to the inter-war period.
By Tricia Thrasher
So, how exactly can VR benefit language learning? Is it just another fad? How complicated is it to actually use? Many educators may find themselves asking these questions in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has forced a vast majority of traditional face-to-face language teaching to transition online.
By Siraj Ahmed
Murderous Consent’s aim is, first, to critique political violence, whether hegemonic or revolutionary. The book’s aim is, second, to enunciate another politics that never legitimizes violence in any form. These aims could not be more profound, attempting, as they do, to overturn both Western political theory and contemporary geopolitical practice.
Reviewed by Pınar Odabaşı Taşcı
The experiences of Ottoman children and youth, an understudied segment of Ottoman society, open new venues of research that highlight this agency to deal with the enormous challenges of wartime.
Interviewed by Jonathan Larson
Virtual Exchange is a perfect opportunity for curricular innovation. At DePaul University, there is a lot of flexibility for faculty members to make adjustments to their classes in order to incorporate international virtual collaborations.
By Diana-Andreea Mandiuc
Presented as a plan for Europe to become “the first climate-neutral continent by 2050,” the European Green Deal has been the first priority for the new Commission.
By Megan Dixon
Even as we ask students to examine their individual environmental choices and to review broader-scale proposals for reduction of carbon emissions, it is important to help them appreciate the degree of material commitments embodied by the Capitalocene, so that they realize the full extent of the work necessary to reconceptualize the infrastructure of the future.
Translated by Ghjulia Romiti
I wander through paris, empty / of our laughter of our frenzy / absent from our absence / the spring sun / shines uselessly / stripped of our meanderings / of the lovers’ kisses
Reviewed by Emily Meneghin
The book analyzes five films and references even more academic disciplines, including history, industrial economics, oral memoir, acoustics, environmentalism, chemistry, geology, socio-economic politics, culinary studies, and more.
By Eda Derhemi
For thousands of years the Mediterranean Sea has been a place where important civilizations have met and where cultures and languages have intermingled and competed.
By Cristina Blanco Sío-López
This article aims to examine the origins and evolution of the dichotomy between liberty and security in the European integration process by focusing on the case of the historical construction of the EU’s Free Movement of Persons (FMP).
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Nick Ostrum and Hélène B. Ducros.
By Niloofar Sarlati
The global pandemic has simultaneously made visible and intensified longstanding economic and social inequalities across the world. Ethnic, religious, and racial minorities, people with disabilities, and the poor have been suffering at a much higher mortality rate and a more dreadful death. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have once again brought to light the systemic anti-black racism.
Interviewed by Juliane Mendelsohn
It can take a long time, if one is brought up in a place foreign to one’s artistic sensibilities to discover other artists that speak your language.
By Emanuel Rota
The American experience of the Age of Mass Migration in the first two decades of the twentieth century teaches us that, despite the documentable economic benefits for the host country, nativist politicians are very effective in mobilizing sectors of the local populations against newcomers.
By Cătălin-Gabriel Done
Between Romania and Hungary, for one hundred years, historical issues have impeded the development of consistent bilateral relations, even if the bilateral relations have the character of a “strategic partnership for twenty-first-century Europe.”
Interviewed by Friederike Eigler
We built an international network that includes some participants who have experienced displacement and some who have not but who collaborate at all levels in a multilingual and transdisciplinary manner.
By Seb Janiak
This series makes use only of the manifestation of unseen forces. The imaging of the manifestation of these unseen forces undergoes no digital transformation in the photographs.
By Michael Loriaux
It is true that dismantling myths of belonging presents no real challenge to the historian. All such myths labor to attribute some foundational homogeneity to collections of people that are very large and historically contingent.
In this series, we feature a spotlight on the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its connections to European politics, society, and culture.
By Jacob Levi
The formulation “murderous consent” is striking because it confronts us with an uncomfortable truth: while most of us would not actively consent to murder, just as we would prefer to think that we do not condone violence, we are all participants in a range of systems of violence which we generally accept with resignation, passivity, and silence. Murderous consent is the operating principle of the modern state, which on principle it must vigorously deny for its own legitimation.
Translated by Jane B. Greene
His path led him first through sparse woods where the tall grass, interspersed with clumps and clusters of gentians, came up above his knees, then over upland pastures.
By Thomas Henökl
During the second-longest summit session in the European Council’s history, in the early morning hours of June 21, 2020, and after almost four days of tough negotiations, the twenty-seven heads of state and government finally agreed on a €1,074 billion long-term budget and COVID-19 recovery fund.
Reviewed by Sarah Slingluff
One walks away from La Corte del Califa with a deep appreciation for the ability of the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus to manage resources, develop networks, and negotiate governance in the Iberian Peninsula.
By Alyssa Granacki
Reading these recent pieces, one might believe that the Decameron is mostly about the Black Death of 1348, but the plague takes up a relatively tiny fraction of the work. After the Introduction, Boccaccio’s brigata—the group of seven young women and three young men who narrate the Decameron’s tales—escapes ravaged Florence.
By Alexandru Pieptea
Although many EU countries have faced challenges brought on by the coronavirus, there are differences in the extent of required measures. Several countries have decided to take measures in terms of closing some or all educational institutions for varying time periods.
By John R. Bowen
Our views of European history and society ought to change as we pay greater attention to the long-term presence of Islam, especially in the Balkans and Russia.
By Hélène B. Ducros
As Europeanists ponder about the state of integration and disintegration of the European Union—under pressure from multiple crises and the “tensions and fractures” latent in the European project—it is only logical that they also interrogate their discipline and the ways in which “European studies” has been framed, as well as which “Europe” has been of concern to their field in practice.
By Nikolina Zenovic
The long history of peoples and movements throughout the Balkans has situated Yugoslavia in a particularly interesting position culturally, geographically, and politically.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Europa-Universität Viadrina.
By Mark I. Vail
The scholars in this roundtable explore, from a variety of substantive perspectives, the meaning and evolution of the concept of European integration and the tensions within it, interrogating an idea beholden to more than its share of conventional wisdoms, clichés, and airy nostrums.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
The immense project of the history of HIV/AIDS in Europe has largely been unwritten. While attempts have been made to make sense of the historical impact of the virus in Western Europe, most transnational, comparative studies were done in the midst of the crisis with the goal of informing policy, and before effective treatment of HIV/AIDS became widely available.
By Jeremy MacClancy
Instead of a standardizing policy to re-create long-term stable communities, we should accept variegated, patchy development, where settlements are occupied, but whose inhabitants are not necessarily lifelong, and where the high contrasts between the city and the countryside are drastically lowered.
By Neil Archer
British films, in short, need Europe. Celebrated British film companies such as Working Title, whose output ranges from Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary, to Atonement and Darkest Hour, may seem to exemplify a “British” success story, in terms of their settings, stories, and British stars.
By Sara McGeough
Is globalization creating a more interdependent and compassionate world, or is it galvanizing division and a fearful desire to protect our own?
Reviewed by Natalia Núñez Bargueño
The book describes the nature of ongoing tensions over their active role within the Church and within contemporary Italian society.
By Estela Schindel and Timm Beichelt
When it was first founded in 1506 on the banks of the river Oder under the name “Universitas Francofurtensis,” what is now the Viadrina became the first public university of the state (then principality) of Brandenburg.
By Milos Rastovic
The future enlargement of the European Union (EU) has become a critical question for debate among its members. Whether the EU maintains its existing boundaries or expands to the East is a concern that divides many.
By Angélica Szucko
On March 25, 2017, the European Union (EU) celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome, which established “an ever closer union” as a fundamental principle for regional integration.
By Hélène B. Ducros
This roundtable juxtaposes reviews of three recent books―two monographs and one edited volume―that delve into the role of Catholicism in influencing the social history of Europeans and Europe’s place in the world, and challenge the very conceptualization of European Catholicism as a hegemonic monolithic force in Europeanization and globalizing patterns since the seventeenth century.
By Rafael de Miguel González
Europe, thus, has played an important geopolitical role, in particular through the European Union from the twentieth century on, even though the latter faces two major challenges to become a one and only voice in the world: a lack of political cohesion among its member states and limited European citizenship.
By Vanessa Bilancetti
In front of the explosion of the financial crisis, between 2008 and 2011, European studies was completely unable to comprehend the unfolding socio-political and economic dynamics.
Reviewed by Michel Chambon
Throughout this edited volume, contributors explore how Catholic missionaries have engaged with Asian societies during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries and how, through these interactions, Catholicism became a local reality.
By Richard J. Golsan
Like other young academics entering their careers at that point in time, I anticipated a life of researching and teaching the beauties and subtleties of French literature and, with luck and hard work, of establishing myself one day as one of the world’s leading authorities on Montherlant, and who knew, perhaps even on modern and contemporary French theater?
By Mihaela Tofan
The financial crisis that took place during the first decade of this century pointed out that further financial mechanisms are necessary to emphasize the integration process of cooperation among EU member states.
By Esther Liberman Cuenca
Patrick Geary contended in The Myth of Nations (2002) that the rise of ethno-nationalism, as a response to the ascendancy of the European Union, was inseparable from the weaponization of the middle ages. Nationalism, in both its current and nineteenth-century iterations in Europe, has always paid homage to the ghosts of an imagined past, one that frequently collapses the medieval with the modern present.
Reviewed by Eilish Gregory
Against a backdrop of recent referendums and the mass immigration of people fleeing their homelands because of religious persecution, economic hardships, and war, there has been a historical reassessment about people travelling for similar reasons in the early modern period.
By Texas State Honor Students
When introduced in the early twentieth century at Ivy League institutions, “Western Civilization” courses were initially considered pedagogically innovative for their attempt at making European history relevant to the United States.
By Kevin Michot
By the late 1980’s, the postwar generations of Romania, no longer willing to accept an oppressive Communist regime, fought for and achieved their freedom.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
Spanning from antiquity, this course deconstructs the concept and history of “Western Civilization.” Through the study of primary and secondary sources, students will consider how history can be written to include oppressed and marginalized voices while still attempting to understand the broad scope of European history and its legacy.
Reviewed by Joseph Malherek
There is an inherent fatalism in the term “interwar.” Yet, it remains a convenient descriptor for historians of the twentieth century.
By Conny Burian
Although scholars outside the humanities tend to think of European Studies as disciplines housed primarily in the political and social sciences, language and cultural studies programs make important contributions to this field.
Reviewed by Kristin Dickinson
At the core of Güneli’s film analyses are the diverse “soundtracks” of Akın’s films. In her specific focus on polyphony, Güneli builds on previous scholarship, which has situated Akın’s work in the tensions between a “Fortress Europe” marked by borders and exclusivity and a “New Europe” marked by mobility and integration.
By Kerstin Hinrichsen
For more than twenty years, students from Germany, Poland, France, Turkey, and many other countries in Europe and the world have come to Frankfurt (Oder), on the German-Polish border, to take up a unique Master’s (MA) program in European Studies.
Interviewed by Louie Dean Valencia-García
As part of this special issue on Imagining, Thinking, and Teaching Europe, this interview helps highlight the value of language and cultural exchange.
Translated by Olivia Baes
[The fog] had taken shape little by little, rising from the bottom of the gorge like water does in a basin. Strangled between boulders, the great rumble of water filled the air…
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By Elisabeth Krimmer
Koppetsch’s analysis links the emergence of extreme-right populist movements and the attendant preference for nationalist over cosmopolitan narratives to a paradigm shift from industrial-national modernity toward globalism.
By John Pickles
In this course we will focus much of our attention on diverse geographies of Europe and how post-socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, political unification through the European Union, economic globalization, and post-colonial immigration mean for our understanding of Europe Today.
By Nicholas Ostrum
Writing and even reading experimental literature can, in itself, be an act of creative critical analysis. In certain contexts, moreover, it can be an overt act of civic engagement, resistance, and self-realization.
By John Pickles
“Europe Today” is an upper division undergraduate course focused on the processes and patterns of transnational and global Europe, and the ways in which these processes and patterns have reshaped and are reshaping everyday lives, economies, and places across the continent.
By Clara Frysztacka
Europe is not only a central reference point for cultural studies at the Europe-University Viadrina and elsewhere, but it is also an omnipresent concept in the press and political debates.
By Clara Frysztacka
“Europe” and “nation” are deeply connected concepts. In historiography, conceptions seeing the seventeenth century as birth moment both for the nation-state and the idea of modern Europe are utterly widespread.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia, and Hélène B. Ducros.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Focusing on the role of critical scholars in effecting change.
By Elsa Tulmets
At the University Viadrina, the program strengthens the examination of diversity in French scientific thinking in teaching and research. In doing so, it takes into account the Viadrina’s founding mission to promote European perspectives as a German-Polish university situated at the German-Polish border.
By Hélène B. Ducros and Louie Dean Valencia-García
This issue gathers a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary scholarship where all Europeanists have a place, whether they consider themselves European studies scholars, integration studies scholars, or European Union studies scholars.
By Mishka Henner
A landscape occasionally punctuated by sharp aesthetic contrasts between secret sites and the rural and urban environments surrounding them.
By Sol Calero
Calero’s work explores themes of representation, displacement, and marginalization, all informed by her own perspective as a migrant.
By Stefanie C. Boulila
Modernity and progress have operated as central ideas for pan-European identification. Citizenship, equality, and human rights are claimed to have their “natural” home in Europe. In its post-structuralist understanding, history is theorized as a site for the negotiation of power.
Interviewed by Juliane Mendelsohn
I think we are learning that the European project still requires more from all of us: more unity, more compassion, and more selfless solidarity.
By Jean Beaman
Minority populations are responding to a violence that is not new, but rather an extension of the violence of French colonialism. The quarantine period reveals how some individuals, even those who are citizens, are forever seen as suspicious.
By Anke S. Biendarra
While mutual support might work reasonably well on an interpersonal level, the Coronavirus outbreak is rapidly revealing the limits of solidarity when it comes to nation states, confirming that it is not a genuine “European” value per se, but is borrowed from the national political vocabulary.
By Peter Debaere
If we continue to scapegoat globalization instead of being willing to share more equitably the benefits of technological progress and of globalization, we will fail to bring about the international cooperation we need.
By Jennifer McWeeny
Much like Beauvoir and her famous entourage, we, too, are contending with an unexpected and catastrophic visitor. The coronavirus pandemic therefore allows us to enter the historical experience of these French thinkers more deeply than we have before.
Translated by Stephen Twilley
They move slowly, lazily; move their arms or turn their back by swiveling their chest, their head immobile, with the lazy litheness of reptiles.
By Anke S. Biendarra
The regimented and multilingual intake and asylum interview features prominently in many narratives of flight and refuge across.
By Timm Beichelt
The field of European Studies is not only constituted by its inner conditions, but also by the many different meanings attributed to it. European Studies are sometimes seen as one among many Area Studies, which implies cooperation of several disciplines in order to develop a somehow holistic approach to societal and/or cultural developments of a given territory.
By Estela Schindel
The persistence of migrants’ death on their way to Europe through the last two decades poses a challenge to the political and administrative forces of the continent, but their implications go far beyond those spheres.
By Kristin Dickinson
In October of 1932, just months before Hitler’s rise to power, the Turkish modernist poet Ahmet Haşim stepped off a train in Frankfurt am Main.
By Christopher Impiglia
As any student of history can attest, there are times when the voices of the past prove eerily relevant to the present.
By Christine Ivanovic
The task of “reshaping Europe” asks for experiments, for agency, for translating the experience of the migrational condition into a new cultural practice.
By Randall Halle
Integration seems to offer orientation and unity. And, yet, integration also seems difficult to achieve, apparently coupled with its antithesis―disintegration.
By Susann Worschech
There are not too many societies in Europe that have experienced such a close sequence and severe intensity of protests, crises, and social change as Ukraine did since its independence in 1991.
By Zsuzsánna Magdó
Balázs’s utopian desire and practice records his lived experience of a set of social realities and discursive positions that scholars have come to associate with the problematic concept of (global) modernity.
Reviewed by Caroline Bruzelius
A provocative and stimulating book, one that is best-suited to historians of art and architecture.
By Renata Schellenberg
Since gaining independence in 1990, Namibia has engaged in a process of seeking reparations from the German government, requesting compensation for the material damages and loss of life that incurred during Germany’s colonial rule in German South West Africa from 1884 to 1915.
By Karen Remmler
Images of overcrowded boats have become iconic for the plight of refugees. At the same time, however, the portrayal of the overcrowding elicits a sense of the pitiful and helpless victims, masses, in need of saving from the humanitarians of the global north.
By Emi Finkelstein
The reconstruction of the major Berlin landmark has fostered debate about the ways in which Germany continues to come to terms with its (short but brutal) colonial past, particularly in reference to the repatriation of objects, which were looted during the era.
Reviewed by Martin Fotta
Materializing Difference portrays relatively well-integrated Gabor Roma from the region of Transylvania in Romania, who enjoy a standard of living comparable to—if not higher than—that of their neighbors.
Reviewed by Giovanni Dettori
Carole Counihan explores food activism in southern Sardinia. She investigates the work of food activists living in Cagliari, Sardinia’s regional and provincial capital, and its surrounding areas.
Reviewed by David Harrisville
Over the last several decades, scholarship on the Wehrmacht—the German military during the Third Reich—has overturned the longstanding myth that its officers and men avoided involvement in the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Reviewed by Tony Foreman
Another theme developed by a couple of authors in this volume, traces the ways in which Soviet justice and its leading minds contributed to and complicated post-war international law. Perhaps the Soviets’ most important contribution was the introduction of the legal concepts of complicity and conspiracy.
Reviewed by Peter Cowley
After a decade of using Nouveau Rond Point 1 as the textbook for our first-year beginner French courses, the time for renewal had come.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Juliane Mendelsohn, Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia, and Hélène B. Ducros.
Reviewed by Hélène Ducros
It is paradoxical that a book on “out there learning” be reviewed at a time in which, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most people in the world have been confined indoors, many borders have been closed, international and some domestic travel has halted, and students have been engaging in their curriculum virtually, often alone behind a computer.
By Randall Halle
The European project is one that I have come to describe as dis/union—a dynamic of push-pull factors that remain constant. Precisely because there is a European project, the dynamic of union and disunion, contentious skepticism and optimism, pro and contra, which are part of all polities, obtains within the EU and at the broader European level.
By Maria Wasilewska
Creating her spatial models, Maria Wasilewska tries to create a physically and mentally consistent unity, which may contain some particle of information about the world.
Translated by Katie Whittemore
In any case, the woods are forbidden. Supposedly, they’re dangerous. Not because of animals or the rough terrain, but the possibility of vagabonds, thieves, terrorists: people who want to blow up what this world is becoming.
The European Studies Book Award shortlist has been announced. The award honors the work of talented scholars who have written their first book on any subject in European Studies published within a two-year period.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Appalachian State University
By Lillian Livermore
What does it mean to be educated or to have an education? Does it mean having influence, power, and knowledge? There are certainly many benefits―material and otherwise―to having an education, but throughout history, one particular group has been excluded from the ranks of the “educated:” women.
By Kathryn Kirkpatrick
This dual vocation of academic and poet has felt both necessary and arduous: in the 1980s, reclaiming women’s writing through scholarship felt like putting literal ground under my feet.
Reviewed by Maya Solovej
She was only eleven, but the experience exposed her to the fragile border between the civility of the everyday and the violence of war.
By Nancy Love
This course examines the various types of feminist political theories that inform contemporary feminist politics.
By Denise Martz
The purpose of this course is to take the contemporary social psychological phenomena of fat talk and body snarking to examine them through scientific and a feminist/political lens.
By Júlia Garraio, Sofia José Santos, Inês Amaral, and Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho
This embodiment of national pride is gendered, based upon class and race assumptions.
By Sumayya Ebrahim and Lisa Liu
Celebrities not only have the potential to discursively influence contemporary issues, they have the potential to be activists and resist silence for any given cause.
By Alison Gulley
Despite having taught the “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” many times and to hundreds of students, from sophomores to graduate students, I left class feeling inadequately prepared to teach the work in our specific modern context.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) broke away with the then dominant naturalist understanding of women’s bodies when she asserted that society is the key determinant of women’s roles and status through the restriction it imposes on their bodies.
By Elisabeth Pauline Gniosdorsch
The very notion of women in combat throws the boundaries between masculinity and femininity into question. The military is an important state institution and its gender assumptions and narratives are constantly referenced and reproduced in society as a whole.
By Bronwyn Winter
Both Macron’s words and the media debate over #Metoo/balancetonporc brought into sharp relief the particularly “French” dimension of public debate over sexual harassment that had been in evidence both at the time of the DSK Affair and in French reactions to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas sexual harassment case in the US.
Interviewed by Alice R. Bertram
When dealing with gender-based violence, there is baggage. Looking at it from a corruption perspective doesn’t have the same baggage.
By Sarah Cooper and Koen Slootmaeckers
The disparagingly fickle and fleeting attention of citizens often times serves to dilute the extent of actual change following public scandals, but it arguable that the mounting critical mass of cases of sexual assault and harassment now punctuating the media’s gaze opens a prominent window of opportunity for the social movement on the political agenda.
By Caitlin Carroll
The Swedish #MeToo movement has revealed a fundamental hypocrisy when it comes to sexual violence and the law.
By Mikael Owunna
After enduring years of alienation from his Nigerian heritage, Owunna began Limit(less) to reclaim his African-ness and queerness on his own terms.
Translated by Saskia Vogel
My body clung to me like something foreign—a sticky, itchy rubber suit; but no matter how much I scratched and scraped at it, it was where it was.
By Martha McCaughey and Scott Welsh
In an era of melting glaciers, genocide, starvation, and species extinction, what is a scholar working at a college or university to do? Many of us feel an urgent pull to be useful, lamenting our privileged position in the ivory tower.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s pick from Research Editorial Committee member Hélène B. Ducros.
Reviewed by Jennifer Miller
Thomsen Vierra poses important questions: Where does the conflicted sense of belonging come from for Turkish-Germans? How do they manage their hybridity?
Reviewed by Siobhán McIlvanney
What was it about certain types of writing that prioritized gender and overrode—or at least minimized—affiliation based on class or social rank?
Reviewed by Nicholas Ostrum
The Holocaust and North Africa sets out “to flesh out our understanding of the ways the Holocaust unfolded in North Africa, a region considered marginal… to the racial and genocidal policies of the Nazis and their allies.”
Reviewed by Aleksandra Pomiecko
Oil and the Great Powers makes a convincing case for the importance of using oil as a tool to unpack critical diplomatic, geopolitical, and economic moments in the global twentieth century.
Reviewed by Stephanie Yep
Faces of Muhammad is a magisterial work that offers a complex portrait of European identity.
Reviewed by Kimberley Peters
As expressed in Vaillant’s own words, the book aims to explore the “users and developers of US-French broadcasting to illuminate the complexity of international broadcasting and reveal its consequences for cultural affairs and geopolitics,” and does so through careful, detailed research, drawing on a variety of textual and sound archives, making for a rich and expressive account.
By Kyle Shybunko
Presidential candidates in the current Democratic primary campaign are proposing major structural changes to America’s political economy in a way not seen since perhaps Ronald Reagan’s 1980 run for President, when he called for the liberalization of America’s labor market, deregulation of industries across the board, and welfare reform.
By Olga A. Vorkunova and Samvel Kochoi
A social integration perspective in Europe provides an organizing framework for understanding the changing processes of complex identities. For Yezidi people, it is about new methods and forms of post-genocide survival.
By Benjamin Tainturier
It is because of its radical opposition to the past that the movement of the Gilets Jaunes is so little intelligible to most people.
By Christopher Campo-Bowen
First premiered in 1866, The Bartered Bride became the single most beloved of all Czech operas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Critics and scholars praised the work as a symbol of Czech national character, emphasizing that its music flawlessly represented the essence of the Czech people, regardless of their education or class.
By William Allchorn
For several years now, scholars have identified a rich seam in far-right discourse that has strategically used liberal rights to further what is ostensibly an illiberal, anti-immigration agenda.
By Sindre Bangstand
The Norwegian case illustrates how crucially important it remains to take local and national context into account when studying the rise of far-right and populist right-wing political formations, and how mistaken the view that right-wing populism is inherently ‘anti-elitist’ and anti-thetical rather than instrumental to neoliberalism actually is.
Reviewed by Christoph Dieckmann
The question that Hanebrink tackles in this study is of crucial importance for analyzing antisemitic mass violence in the 20th century.
Reviewed by Maboula Soumahoro
The mention of “love and friendship” is a rare feature in a scholarly publication. Yet, these two noble and lofty feelings make their appearance in the foreword to The Fire Now. Love and friendship, to which “tenderness” is added later on, are used by the three editors of this collective project, as the core for their “continuous dialoguing.”
By Robert Kramm
In light of current phenomena such as the gilets jaunes in France, rising right-wing populism and nationalism all over Europe and social media undermining democratic discourse and the electoral system, the Hong Kong protests raise important questions also for a European audience.
By Marc Tuters
In the aftermath of the insurgency of US president Donald Trump there was a great deal of concern regarding the problem of “fake news,” often imagined or assumed to be the work of exotic “Russian trolls.”
By Christina Isabel Zuber
In the late 1980s, when ideational explanations were on the rise, political scientists suggesting such explanations often had to defend their work against harsh critique.
By Jenny Barnett
“Visual culture,” Jane Lydon writes “can define boundaries between people, supporting perceived hierarchies of race, gender and culture, and justifying arguments for conquest and oppression.”
By Diogo Magalhaes
In recent years and with all four areas of European integration—economic, social, legal and political—facing a series of unprecedented and interconnected crises, the normative foundations of the integration process have been shattered.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of Amsterdam.
Reviewed by Brian Gebhart
For over a decade, historians of Central and Eastern Europe have begun to highlight how the subjects and citizens of states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not always neatly subscribe to the identities projected onto them.
By Christopher Paul, Tirupapuliyar Damodaran, Noelle Wyman Roth, Laurell Malone, and Charlotte Clark
Inspired by the three-leaved plant, the Trillium conference uses a tripartite approach to sustainability that includes social, economic, and environmental elements.
By Boyd van Dijk
The course demonstrates how Europe’s images of justice and rights were far from constant, but actually shifted overtime to reflect changing moral and political transformations.
By P.W. Zuidhof
From its inception, European integration has heavily relied on economic cooperation and legal collaboration. This course revisits important milestones in the history of European integration to study how at every stage new forms of economic cooperation have been established and how the legal basis of the EU has been extended.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
By Claske Vos and Robin de Bruin
Global power relations, the global economy, corporate interests, national interests, historical traditions, public opinion, stereotypes, institutional settings, and personal relations of politicians, policy officers and experts, all impact upon each other in the process of European integration and European policy making.
By R. Grant Kleiser
When first formalizing my research plans in early 2018, I conceived of my project concerning the British Free Port Act of 1766 to be about emulation and idea-sharing between various European empires in the Caribbean.
Interviewed by Louie Dean Valencia-García
This interview helps to show the ways in which the field of European Studies is evolving, but also demonstrates the importance of thinking outside of one’s discipline and one’s own perspective.
Interviewed by Kathryn Crim
At the center of Berlin-based Australian artist and writer Alex Martinis Roe’s work is the concept of feminist genealogies.
Translated by Angela Rodel
We danced through the Videnov financial Crisis as well, the protests, the harsh hyperinflation that bled our parents dry.
By Shayna Vayser
The wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989 featured a dramatic decline in the participation rate of women in government.[1] Research attempting to rationalize this demographic shift has often omitted the sociocultural factors that influence social practice and normative values, specifically within discourses on behavioral changes in the absence of a communist, faux-egalitarian society.
By Carlos Reijnen
European Studies at the UvA has existed for well over thirty years now, and has gradually shifted from a very cultural and historical paradigm to an ambitious interdisciplinary collaboration between humanities, law, economics, and the social sciences.
Reviewed by Anton Hemerijck
Ten years after the first economic crisis of twenty-first century capitalism, Europe seems to have passed the nadir of the Great Recession. Time to count our blessings: a rerun of the Great Depression has been avoided, and recovery, however timid, is under way while poverty is coming come down.
Reviewed by José Luis Fernández Castillo
From a general perspective, the authors illustrate how the act of translating was, on many occasions, at the center of political resistance both during the Spanish Civil War and in the long dictatorship that ensued.
By Madison Jackson
Jewish exhibitions first emerged as a post emancipation concept, founded in Western Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Prior to World War II, Jewish museums and exhibitions of any sort were limited; however, in 1945 the Jewish museums presence expanded in the West.
By Medina Dugger
Dugger’s images feature the veil primarily in an abstract sense, observing its forms, patterns, colors, and its contribution to identity, self-expression, and style.
Translated by Daniella Zamir
The sidewalk was cleansed of the blood. Rivers of rain, water hoses, and street sweepers joined forces to scrub the surface after the last remnant was removed.
By Rüdiger Müller
At some point in the days that followed, I remember my mother telling me that the wall was gone, and that my father had been promoted to managing director of his company.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros, Mark Vail, Carol Ferrara, Nick Ostrum, Juliane K. Mendelsohn, and Louie Dean Valencia-García.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In the fall issue of EuropeNow, we feature an Author-Meets-Critics on Vichy contre Vichy, Une capitale sans mémoire by Audrey Mallet
By Richard J. Golsan
To today’s casual visitor, Vichy seems an attractive, prosperous provincial French town. One of Europe’s most celebrated spas, it has enjoyed a long and largely prosperous past.
By Bertram M. Gordon
Mallet addresses the prewar history of Vichy as a spa center, reaching a turning point with the construction of a railway station under Napoleon III, which brought an extended clientele and made it internationally famous, evidenced in an article in the New York Times in 1876.
By David Lees
For historians of modern France, it can sometimes appear that all roads lead to the small spa town of Vichy. Such is the legacy of World War II in France that the four “dark years” of German Occupation and Vichy rule still cast long shadows over French society today.
By Richard Carswell
The visitor to Vichy today will look in vain for the Hôtel du Parc, seat of Marshal Pétain’s government from 1940 to 1944. The building still exists. But there are no signs to indicate its former incarnation. It is now a block of offices, apartments, shops and the local tourist office, where an official will tell you—on request—that, yes, this was the site of the Hôtel du Parc. The only sign of the building’s association with the defunct regime is closed to the casual tourist.
By Kirrily Freeman
In this engaging book, Mallet examines the factors that shaped the wartime experiences of the town of Vichy (which was the provisional capital of France and seat of Marshal Philippe Pétain’s collaborationist government from 1940 to 1944), the responses of the local population, and the ways in which these experiences and responses have been remembered locally (or not remembered) since the end of World War II.
By Amy Kaslow
This series transports you to a dozen countries, decades into their post-war years, providing historical context, spotlighting here and now conditions, and pointing to horizon issues.
By Brittany Murray and Matthew Brill-Carlat
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Vassar College.
By Giovanna Faleschini Lerner
With the rise of western modernity and the invention of childhood, the job description of parenthood has expanded to include the establishment and maintenance of childhood archives.
By Evan Henritze and Adam Brown
The potential negative mental health consequences of forced migration is becoming increasingly recognized as an urgent issue in the context of international public health. Recent estimates show forcibly displaced people to be approximately 71 million worldwide. This crisis not only impacts those directly affected by forced migration, but also subsequent generations as well as non-immigrant populations of host countries whose health is closely associated with immigration policy.
By Adam Brown
Since 2016, millions of individuals have fled the Middle East and Northern Africa and have entered the European Union (EU) through Italy, Greece, and Spain. Although the majority of refugees seek asylum in Germany, a considerable minority of individuals seek protection in Switzerland.
Interviewed by Matthew Brill-Carlat
In today’s world, repressive and authoritarian governments across the globe are an increasing threat to intellectuals and civil society.
By Jan Müller
Documentary filmmaker Jan Müller chronicled life during the “New Americans” Summer Program, interviewing the high school students with refugee and forced migrant backgrounds who came to Vassar College for two weeks in July 2019.
Interviewed by Brittany Murray and students from the New Americans Summer Program at Vassar College
Factors like climate change, political violence, and economic disparity are compelling more people to migrate, and writers are learning to represent the increasingly common experience of displacement. The story of any migration, of course, is determined by the person who makes the journey as well as those who welcome her, or refuse to do so.
By Tracey Holland
For too many years now, millions of uprooted children and young people have fallen between the cracks, unseen among the data. Not only do they face discrimination and isolation as they seek to make new lives for themselves, but many do not have access to national or local services, and are never accounted for by the various child-protection systems as they cross borders.
Translated by Paul Wilson
And sure enough, Blackie stopped paying attention to me, and then she began clawing at me and I had to take a rag, and then a blanket, and hold her down.
By Ava McElhone Yates
Nearly every news report and explanation of resignation syndrome (alternatively known as uppgivenhetssyndrom, RS, or traumatic withdrawal syndrome) begins the same way. Each explains the life of a child.
Reviewed by Nergis Canefe
An engaging analysis of the Greek-Turkish population exchange that moves far beyond conventional attention to nationalism.
By Matthew Brill-Carlat
“Access” implies that the problem of unequal opportunity in the US is a spatial one. Institutions erect barriers — test scores and sticker prices being two of the most prominent — and once aspiring students find a path through these barriers and enter the collegiate sphere, they gain access to the knowledge, connections, and opportunities they seek.
By Julie K. Allen, Chunjie Zhang, and Sabine Zimmermann
Inspired by an actual hunger strike conducted by African asylum seekers in Berlin in 2012, and published just as the Syrian refugee wave peaked in 2015, Erpenbeck’s novel centers on Richard, a recently retired Classics professor in Berlin, who befriends a group of African men trying to get the Berlin Senate to consider their applications for asylum and becomes gradually aware of the many challenges they face in trying to start their lives over in Europe.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros and Louie Dean Valencia-García.
By Miles Rodríguez
Today, over 11 of 44 million immigrants in the US were born in Mexico, by far the largest country of origin, and Latin American immigrants as a whole makes up approximately half of the entire US immigrant population.
By Lauranne Wolfe
There is a long history of restricting the entry of immigrants with medical conditions and disabilities into the United States. Disabled immigrants have historically been considered undesirable and a burden on society.
By Elise Shea, Camelia Suleiman, and Eva Woods Peiró
Conversations Unbound (CU) is an organization that connects college students learning languages with forcibly displaced individuals who work as online tutors. As an initiative launched by Vassar students under Professor Maria Höhn’s guidance as faculty mentor and founder of Vassar Refugee Solidarity (VRS), CU embodied VRS’s commitment to rethink existing vertical models of humanitarian engagement with displaced populations and to innovate horizontal models that allow for more democratic interactions.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Reviewed by Felicity Chaplin
A committed and engaging enquiry into the contradiction between feminism and neoliberalism.
By Eva Woods Peiró
For quite some time, colleagues in Education at Vassar have been trying to reimagine the classroom in an increasingly neoliberal, commercialized landscape through contemplative practices or Human Rights Education and restorative justice models.
By Stefanie Woodard
Although people have been relocating for millennia, migration and related phenomena seem to have dominated our headlines in the last few years. Is migration happening on a larger scale today, or is this just a matter of perception?
By Stefanie Woodard
“Although people have been relocating for millennia, migration and related phenomena seem to have dominated our headlines in the last few years. Is migration happening on a larger scale today, or is this just a matter of perception?”
By Miles Rodríguez
The Border. The Ban. The Wall. Raids. Deportations. Separation of Families. Immigrant Rights. Sanctuary. Refugee Resettlement. These words – usually confined to policy, enforcement, and activism related to migrants and refugees – have recently exploded into the public view and entered into constant use.
By Eva Woods-Peiró and Jeff Golden
In this course we will explore best practices for nurturing positive change in a community, notably in the context of the local Latinx community.
By Brittany Murray and Matthew Brill-Carlat
Together, these contributions indicate new ways to narrate forced migration, rooted in past actions of hospitality while remaining responsive to contemporary challenges. As these contributions demonstrate, the call to build sustainable models of defying borders is at the same time a call to rethink academic categories.
By Charles Geiger
Geiger’s work deals with climate and displacement outside the arid context of cacti, as many of his recent semi-narrative paintings depict severe weather events.
Reviewed by Thomas Nolden
By reframing Gershom Scholem, simply, as a member of a German Jewish bourgeois family, Jay Howard Geller presents a welcome and innovative study of the figure who single-handedly invented an entire field of Jewish religious studies.
Reviewed by Eric S. Einhorn
A compelling analysis of the adaptability of Nordic countries’ politics and policy.
By Nancy Bisaha
As we witness one of the largest movements of people in world history, universities and colleges endeavor to provide refuge for scholars and students. They offer homes, short or long term, for people fleeing oppression, injustice, and poverty. They create a space for reflection upon the universal ideals of education and collective action toward attaining them. How and where did these notions arise?
By Hélène Ducros
In the September issue of EuropeNow, we feature a roundtable on the Notre-Dame de Paris fires.
By Caroline Bruzelius
Fires were the scourge of Medieval and Early Modern buildings and cities (think of the Great Fire of London, 1666). But they were also the opportunity for great creativity and innovation, an incentive to introduce new updated architecture and to produce cities built largely of non-flammable materials (London, Paris). In the Middle Ages, some cathedrals burned over and over (Canterbury, Chartres, Reims), but the destruction of the old churches stimulated the construction of the glorious structures in the Gothic style that we know today.
By Darcie Fontaine
For the vast majority of the nearly thirteen million annual visitors, the cathedral is less of a religious pilgrimage than an exceptional opportunity to observe rare medieval Gothic architecture and its famous stained glass rose windows.
By Carol Ferrara
French identity and its Catholic-ness has been reified against France’s Muslims—underlining for far-right nationalism why and how France and Islam are seemingly incompatible.
Reviewed by Sean Brennan
The success of Christian Democratic parties in stabilizing the political orders, which emerged out of the devastation of the Second World War in countries such as Austria, Germany, Italy, and to a smaller extent, in France and other countries in Western Europe, remains one of the most important stories in the history of Europe in the twentieth century.
By Vera Zvereva
Among various research areas in digital memory studies, one in particular is the study of “digital memory wars.”
By Martin Kalb
Scholars have long understood youth as a social construct only partially connected to age. After all, youth often appears in history as a hope for the future or as a threat to contemporary society. Those studying policing and juvenile delinquency have wrestled with stereotypes surrounding young people.
By Andrea Recek
During the Middle Ages, at ecclesiastical institutions throughout western Christendom, the choice of a patron saint was a fundamental expression of the identity of the community.
By Tadeusz Wojtych
To say that history fuels conflicts and inspires sacrifice in times of war borders on a truism. Are people, however, emotionally invested in history in times of peace and prosperity?
By Ksenia Stanicka-Brzezicka and Emilia Kloda
The Mária Valéria bridge joins Esztergom in Hungary and Štúrovo in Slovakia, across the River Danube. Since its opening in 1895, the bridge has been destroyed twice, in 1919 and 1944. Decades of intransigence between the Communist governments of Hungary and Czechoslovakia mean that the bridge was not rebuilt until the new millennium.
By Alain Duplouy and Holger A. Klein
These collections recount the parallel histories of knowledge and of scholarly traditions within two different national and academic settings.
By Adéla Gjuričová
Even when reducing the issue to archives and other history-related footage, we miss an analytical understanding of what kind of material is actually attractive enough to circulate and how to find out. On what platforms and in what context does the re-use happen?
By Piotr Kisiel
In the ever-expanding universe of Facebook, it is hard to keep track of all the features of the platform. However, it is one of its most basic functions that can be of interest to those working in “history from below” in the digital age.
By Amanda Garrett
There is no shortage of scholarly evidence to suggest that voters can be receptive to negative messaging concerning immigrants and other ethnic minorities. The idea of racially coded campaign appeals has long been discussed by academics, particularly in the case of the United States.
Reviewed by Naheed Patel
[This book] is a sad howl that comes from deep inside the heart of grief, sending a current of anguish down the reader’s spine.
Interviewed by David Leupold
Today more than ever, the call for building and restoring trust dominates all spheres of social and political life.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of Helsinki.
By Mikko Tolonen
There are many crucial aspects of the digital world in current society in which humanists should be more involved, such as big data, my data, smart cities, the platform and circular economy, and the use of neural networks
Reviewed by Ilker Hepkaner
An exciting and innovative study of the American involvement in Turkey in the beginning of the Cold War.
By Eszter Gantner
What does the concept of historic consciousness describe or include? According to Andrew Glencross, “Historical consciousness is defined as the understanding of the temporality of historical experience or how past, present and future are thought to be connected.”
By Sarah Wilma Watson
The scope and framing of this collection raise a number of questions. How did these diverse “treasures” come to the UK? Why are these objects so valuable? And what does it mean that they are displayed in a “British” space?
By Eszter Gantner and Olga Dovbysh
In the last decade, there has been increasing interest in digital technologies and their influence on the production of memory, history, and heritage, not only within academic research, but also in politics, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia. The tendency toward selective history, heritage, and memory politics in the region manifests itself more and more in the digital sphere.
Translated by Kristina Andersson Bicher
I searched for a climbing tree / to fall out of. You were stepping / right into grief. Your errand / was to be overgrown. Become grief. / Cold grief. I fell. Soft / as an apple.
By Stefan Trajković-Filipović
There are a number of ways in which one can explore the historical heritage of the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Apart from visiting museums or joining tours, a visitor can also download a smartphone application (available both for Android and iOS), titled Hidden places of Belgrade, developed by the Danube Competence Center, an association of tourism actors who are promoting Danube as a touristic destination.
Translated by Heather Cleary
The characteristic scent of Buenos Aires, a mix of aquatic plants and the local soil, which—as many have told me and I’ve also read—still filters through the streets on the breeze, was an incipient aroma slowly rising off the river to form waves of disparate and paradoxically incomplete smells that morning, probably due to the hour.
Reviewed by Lia Brozgal
In their 2007 manifesto, “Pour une littérature-monde en français,” writers Michel Le Bris and Jean Rouaud announced to readers of Le Monde that a Copernican revolution had taken place but had yet to be acknowledged or named—the previous fall, writers hailing from beyond the hexagon had dominated France’s most prestigious literary prize competitions.
By Eero Hyvönen
The digital world with its digitized resources, such as the Web with its data, services, and applications, is changing the society in fundamental ways and creating opportunities and challenges for globalization. Digitalization provides ever more new research opportunities in the humanities and social sciences, and rapidly changes ways in which research is done. These developments create a growing need for novel research and education in the emerging multidisciplinary field of Digital Humanities (DH).
By Eero Hyvönen
Data, the oil of the digital world, is typically interlinked in content, published in different formats and languages, and is distributed in different services across countries.
By Eero Hyvönen
A fundamental semantic problem in publishing and using Cultural Heritage (CH) data on the Web, is how to make the heterogeneous CH contents semantically interoperable, so that they can be searched, interlinked, and presented in a harmonized way across the boundaries of the datasets and data silos.
Reviewed by Sinem Adar
Once regarded as the poster child of Islam’s compatibility with democracy, Turkey is now drawing attention to itself for different reasons. The country’s rapid and unexpected authoritarian turn in recent years has unsettled many observers both at home and abroad.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros, Louie Dean Valencia-García, Nick Ostrum, and Daniela Irrera.
By Hélène Ducros
EuropeNow features a selection of scholarly articles and books on topics pertinent to the teaching of Europe or teaching in Europe that were published within the last 5 years.
Reviewed by Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager and Minkyung Kim
Grand master narratives of contemporary history rarely correlate war with womanhood, especially if the latter has some dark, shameful, and controversial nature, like the infamous stories of comfort women.
By Stuart P. M. Mackintosh
Boris Johnson’s election as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on July 23, 2019, may result in a damaging, hard, disorganized Brexit on Halloween, October 31. But the economic reality of a hard Brexit could be obscured by fairytales about the glorious future awaiting Britannia when she is freed from the shackles of the European Union, and able once again to sail the seas and chart her own economic and trade course.
By Ugo Goetzl
It’s ironic that a disease that caused so much public health concern during the first half of the 20th century should have scant documentation.
By Thomas Henökl
Whether we see a shift away from populism or whether the far right manages to set the agenda will depend on the ability of the political mainstream, together with progressive moderates, to present a credible agenda for the future.
Interviewed by Kelly McKowen
Oscar Wilde’s utopia was socialism, a social order that he believed would overcome the misery and exploitation wrought by industrial capitalism. More than a century later, as issues like inequality and climate change swell the ranks of the left in Europe and abroad, one hears renewed calls to set sail for a society that lies beyond the capitalist horizon.
By Elyas Bakhtiari
As rates of immigration have risen in recent years, so have questions and concerns about the health needs and care delivery challenges for newly arrived populations.
By Esther Dischereit
It’s no different in Brooklyn: of the 1,825 students accepted into an elite high school, 95 are black. Well-off parents pay for private tutoring long before the entrance exam so their children will pass the test. The result is that black and Latinx children are left waiting outside the door.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Hadler has been committed to analyzing and deciphering a vast medical and public health literature for specialist and lay audiences.
By Julia Lynch
What lesson will social scientists take from public health and epidemiology? That clean causal inference from experimental (or at least quasi-experimental) data is the holy grail for social science; or that deep contextual knowledge, generated by expenditure of shoe leather, is necessary for advancing scientific understanding of social causation?
By Nadine Reibling
Many empirical studies have demonstrated how more and more social problems—from childbirth to death, from restless children to melancholic adults—have been interpreted in medical terms and brought under medical jurisdiction.
Reviewed by Rachel A. Ankeny
We associate France with the highest of gastronomic ideals, producing artisanal products steeped in the terroir of its diverse regions.
Translated by Tsipi Keller
A pointless day in Brindisi. A terrible fatigue. Pain in my gut, and I fear that I’ll be sick throughout the trip. I’m now sitting in a restaurant…
By Raúl Necochea López
When I was in graduate school, the most emphasized skills were learning how to carry out historical research and present it to multiple publics. In colloquial terms, these skills were “the money,” often literally, as they were highly prized in the academic job market that I knew in the 2000s.
Reviewed by Claudio Minca
The very question of practicing “history after Hitler” is an enormous one, and I believe that reflecting on its post-war developments is an important task that transcends the boundaries of this specific academic field.
By Maia Evrona
Daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes: / Daughter of the world sustained / on the sweat of a back in pain; / mother of a word with wings on its feet.
By Michele Rivkin-Fish and Mark Sorensen
This course examines comparisons and contrasts between the disciplinary approaches of public health and anthropology. We begin by examining the theories and methods of the social determinants of health paradigm, an approach that investigates the relationships between inequality, poverty, and health.
By Lindsey Smith Taillie
We will examine the social, political, and ethical context of how individuals make decisions about what to eat; how this context shapes the implementation of food policy; and how these policies in turn shape individual behavior and health, by employing a comparative framework over three countries/regions (China, Latin America, and the US).
By Mike Fisher
Inadequate access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (‘WaSH’) is a major cause of preventable morbidity and mortality, and accounts for a substantive portion of the global burden of disease.
By Michele Rivkin-Fish and Jehanne Gheith
This course explores the ways historical, cultural, and political forces shape major moments of the life course and the stories told to make sense of them. Specifically, we examine the changing experiences and representations of living, suffering, healing, and dying in Russia through key moments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Interviewed by Rusudan Zabakhidze
Only specific migration policies and cultural attitudes do anything to reduce health inequalities between natives and immigrants.
Reviewed by Richard S. Fogarty
She has humanized the men and women of the past, making their unimaginable experiences of war and pain and caring accessible to us.
By Michele Rivkin-Fish
This course examines the experiences of post-socialist countries as a means of understanding the relationship between political-economic, social, and cultural change, on the one hand, and public health and gender relations, on the other.
By Raúl Necochea López
Now a decade into my job as a professor, I am learning that teaching is not only as important as my research, it is also personally and professionally rewarding.
Reviewed by Mehmet Polatel
The book explores the rise and fall of Talaat Bey, his approach to politics, his role in the planning and implementation of the Armenian Genocide, and the impact of his policies and activities on the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
By Hélène Ducros
Welcome to our first Campus Round-up!
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet
The crooked street darkens / the city’s diseased lungs. / Drags to its entrance gates / the one unafraid of the heavens.
Curated by Rusudan Zabakhidze
Emphasis on mental health has resulted in a de-taboo process of the associated challenges. Visual arts contributes towards healing and raising awareness about these issues.
By Sigrún Ólafsdóttir and Jason Beckfield
Health is a major political, cultural, and societal issue across Europe. While health and illness have, of course, always been a part of the human experience, the epidemiological transition from infectious, deadly diseases to the increased burden of chronic and mental health problems, has put various pressures and constraints on policy makers.
By Terje A. Eikemo, Tim Huijts, Mirza Balaj, Johan P.Mackenbach, and Emmanuela Gakidou
In the EU alone, more than 700,000 avoidable deaths per year and 33 million preventable cases of ill health are due to health inequalities, costing the EU 141 billion euros in economic losses annually.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros and Louie Dean Valencia-García.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
By Josh Lepawsky
Concerns over how to handle discarded electronics as a waste stream have been growing over nearly two decades in Europe.
By Willi Haas
When I visit my childhood neighborhood, I hardly recognize it. Empty spaces have been filled; what was once, in the seventies, a one-storied building, is now multileveled. Even a sky-scrapper has risen.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
We tend to think that modernity and progress allow us to resolve issues of waste through technology and increased efficiency.
By Megan Blake
Global estimates suggest that approximately one third of all food that is produced is wasted. Alongside this, a myriad of concerns, not least a concern for people who struggle to access food that is safe and healthy, has given rise to a host of organizations operating across the world that seek to move food that otherwise would be wasted from the commercial supply chain to the not-for-profit sector.
By Tatiana Kasperski
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the countries of the socialist block moved to redefine international alliances and quickly reestablished ties with the members of the EC.
By Esther Dischereit
The words Let the People Rule can be found on an inscription in this city. This slogan, which Andrew Jackson proclaimed a long time ago, earned him the name of “Jackass” from his enemies. Since then, the Democrats are happy to use the image of a donkey in their campaigns.
By James Wilkes and Myra Hird
On a global scale, waste, we argue—as material object, as concept, as symbol, and as leitmotif—is a symptom of colonialism, and indeed, cannot be meaningfully understood detached from historical and ongoing forms of colonialism.
Reviewed by Jill S. Schneiderman
A narrative that takes readers from the deep geological past into the Anthropocene.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
While food waste has long been considered in European media and regulations, until recently the issue of pre- and post-consumer textile waste had mobilized less public attention.
Curated by Hélène B. Ducros
The scavenger-artists showcased here not only modify the status of waste, but also brace a pedagogical movement vital to the subsistence of the planet.
By Isabelle Hajek
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the fight against waste in many industrialized countries. Discourses and documented analyses on growing masses of waste and their devastating consequences for natural and human milieus have received increased exposure.
Reviewed by Hugh McDonnell
Both Julian Jackson’s and Grey Anderson’s work point to the equivalent recurring task for Charles de Gaulle, and in doing so lay out key political logics, values, and calculations guiding de Gaulle’s career.
By Hélène B. Ducros
Will we seize this moment as an opportunity to make strides in waste reduction and develop ecological solutions for surplus, unused, and rejected materials of all sorts, or will we simply seek out new trash havens elsewhere in the world?
By Susan Signe Morrison
Waste Studies offers ethical frameworks to pay attention to, understand, and act on bodily, cultural, and societal waste—material aspects of our world. As an aspect of the environmental humanities, Waste Studies expands traditional approaches of ecocriticism, once devoted to “nature,” a loaded and complex term.
Translated by Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge
Four years, or nearly. The next four years of the boy’s life, which will be the most beautiful, the most marvelous. The trees were nothing. The elms and the planes and the chestnuts…
Reviewed by Sartirios Zartaloudis
The EU stands proudly as the longest and most advanced process of international/transnational collaboration among different independent countries in an effort to pool sovereignty to common policies for all members, the most important accomplishments being the EU’s single market, the Euro, and cross-border co-operation of the Schengen area.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros, Louie Dean Valencia-García, and Daniela Irrera.
By Salman Zafar
The biomethane industry in Europe is growing at a rapid rate due to increasing traction in the industrial waste-derived biogas sector and public acceptance of biogas as a clean fuel.
By Esther Dischereit
Elizabeth has almost finished her degree in International Relations. She had an interview for the Foreign Service on Saturday that lasted all day. Is that her President? She rolled her eyes; she doesn’t believe that impeachment proceedings could succeed.
By Svetlana Nikitina
High expectations and multiple feedback loops create constructive impetus for students to adjust their intervention to the needs of the community and its circumstances.
Reviewed by Alexander McConnell
These quibbles notwithstanding, State of Madness represents a significant contribution to the scholarship on late Soviet culture, nonconformist literature, and the dissident movement.
By Thomas O. Haakenson
After nearly a decade in the United States, Ai returned in 1993 to China and continued an active practice and spoke openly about Chinese censorship.
By Jocelyn Wright
Young Arab men just like the boy in Arabico are a group that continues to be maligned in France due to a complex combination of colonial history and socioeconomic class.
By Lydia Lindsey and Carlton Wilson
The xenophobic discourse that denounces the illegitimacy of a non-white presence in Europe is frequently justified by a denial of the historical contribution of non-white populations in the development of Europe, in particular, people of African descent.
By Daniel Shea
The critical conversation concerning the migrant experience tends to focus on those countries on the front line: first-contact issues in Italy, capacity challenges in Germany, or right-wing responses in the United States. Ireland, at the edge of the EU and with only a fraction of the migrant refugee population, is often overlooked in context of conflicts in assimilation and minority status.
By Agata Lisiak
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Bard College Berlin.
By Nurretin Ucar
Balibar talks here about the discriminatory functions of real borders, but the aforementioned invisible borders are stricter in terms of limiting the movements of foreigners and refugees. This limitation is carried out through violence.
By Ljudmila Bilkić
Sitting outside a tea house in Istanbul on a cold evening in early 2016, the Berlin-based Syrian journalist and gay rights campaigner Mahmoud Hassino discusses his intentions of sending the first Syrian gay man to Mr. Gay World, an annual international beauty pageant competition for gay men.
By Mark Chu
Art has a substantially higher engagement in meaning, and another term for this transfer of meaning is communication, perhaps art’s chief purpose.
By Matthew D. Miller
Once celebrated as a path-breaking project of peace, hope, and greater political cooperation in the new century, the unification of Europe under the auspices of the European Union appears, from the vantage-point of 2019, to be fraught with disunity, animosity, and peril.
By Giovanni Dettori
In recent decades, the island of Sardinia, the second-largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily, has lived a cultural renaissance that has brought many Sardinian authors onto the national and international literary stage.
By Zakaria Fatih
Except for a brief postwar episode of epuration (purge), for decades, France entertained the image of a country with unquestionable moral authority, an added value to the Jacobin ethics the French bequeathed to the rest of the world.
By Luke Wood
The 2016 election of Donald Trump to the American Presidency marked the beginning of a new era of deteriorating relations between the United States and its core West European allies.
Translated by Janet Louth
It seems to me that the people sitting at tables on the terraces notice me in spite of my shabby clothes. Once a woman sitting behind a tiny tea-pot eyed me from head to foot.
By Senka Neuman Stanivukovic
How to assemble, curate and circulate an archive of human mobility? The Colours of a Journey (CoJ) is a collective that addresses these questions by envisioning an archive of human mobility that apprehends the variegated practices and experiences of movement.
By Agata Lisiak
Bard College Berlin (BCB) is a liberal arts university located in Berlin’s district of Pankow. True to the principles of liberal arts education, BCB offers interdisciplinary programs in the humanities and social sciences, with a strong focus on the development of essential writing and thinking skills.
By Andrea Carlà and Johanna Mitterhofer
The richness of Europe’s cultural heritage and diversity is embodied in the striking monuments and historical buildings that dot the continent, but many of these artifacts also talk of difficult times and remind of the darker history of Europe—its wars, its violence, the sufferings of its people that lie behind today’s union of democratic nation-states.
By Marion Detjen and Dorothea von Hantelmann
Germany’s migration history of the twentieth and twenty-first century is shaped by its own denial. Until this day, and in spite of the fundamental shift of the new citizenship and residency laws in the years between 2000 and 2005, Germany cannot conceive of itself as an immigration country.
Reviewed by Neil Dooley
The European project has been eulogized, like clockwork, every couple of years since the Treaty of Rome.
By Laura Scuriatti
How is it possible to narrate the experiences of estrangement, disorientation and surprise born out of the encounter with a foreign place which is also supposed to feel like “home?”
Reviewed by Meghan Tinsley
Paradoxically, in interweaving the stories of metropolis and colonies, and in emphasizing their mutual constitution, Fradera cedes space for the oppressed.
By Kerry Bystrom
What does citizenship mean today when the power of nation-states to define and secure the future seems to be shrinking even as nationalism is on the rise?
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros and Louie Dean Valencia-García.
Reviewed by David J. Burn
Hearing the City is a major contribution at several levels. It re-addresses existing literature from different perspectives as well as covers cities and material not previously treated.
By Agata Lisiak
Unpacking the workings of colonial histories and racial capitalism, the course puts emphasis on the uneven geopolitical developments that produce specific forms and taxonomies of migration.
By Wilma Ewerhart, Omar Haidari, May Keren, Jude Macannuco, and Mohamad Othman
In the weeks leading up to the assignment, we discussed the meanings and workings of colonialism, borders, migration, and belonging in Europe and beyond.
By Ariane Simard
What happens when conscientious acts move from being merely a political practice to becoming something that resembles works that are more subtle and personal? What happens when an artist’s work veers into the political realm?
By Katya Traboulsi
1975 Lebanon is in flames and I am fifteen. For my birthday, I receive the empty sleeve of a mortar shell, which I automatically place on a shelf.
By Randall Halle
“United in diversity” is the official motto of the EU. Yet this special issue appears at a moment when European unity seems distant, and diversity seems to foster disunion, conflict, and cultural clash, rather than accord. We may do well to recall that the motto reaches back to the immediate post WWII era and the attempts to overcome the cataclysm of the war.
Translated by Katy Derbyshire
Once tall and slim, Bassel’s body is no longer immune to time’s passing – his hair has gone grey but at least it hasn’t fallen out like most of his contemporaries’, his belly has grown soft and visibly convex, and his back is no longer strong and straight. A slipped disc a year ago came as a rude reminder of advancing age.
Please join us for a moderated discussion in anticipation of the 26th International Conference of Europeanists. April 11th, 2019, Instituto Cervantes New York.
By John Hultgren
Our world today shares troublesome similarities to the one Polanyi encountered.
By Brittany Murray
Taïa could serve as a model for those who strive to balance intellectual breadth with depth.
By Jeffrey Jurgens
Since 2015, more than three million people from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia have traveled into the EU in order to seek refuge and asylum.
By Adam Brown
Addressing the mental health needs of refugees within the current context of forced migration is an unprecedented challenge for the international mental health care community.
By Djemila Carron
InZone has been working in refugee camps for the last eight years, and in fragile contexts for over twelve years. Starting with trainings for interpreters in the field, InZone subsequently developed into a center dedicated to higher education for refugees in refugee camps in Kenya and Jordan.
Reviewed by Alison J. Murray Levine
Louis Malle was one of the most versatile, provocative, and independent directors of the postwar period.
Translated by Adriana Hunter
My stepfather respected every form of authority… and it so happens he also obeyed my mother. Weak with the strong, he was quite naturally strong with the weak.
By Parthiban Muniandy
What does it mean to be a “temporary” person? The multiple discourses surrounding “migrants,” “refugees,” “illegals,” and other non-native-born people often paint problematic, exaggerated, and frustratingly misunderstood portraits about entire communities and populations.
By Agata Lisiak
Our team investigated how Poles, coming from cities that are largely homogenous in terms of ethnicity and religion, make sense of and come to terms with the much greater diversity they encounter in the British and German cities in which they now live
By Nathalie Peutz
Nadia Benchallal’s photographs depict the camp’s predominantly Yemeni residents navigating a state of increasingly permanent suspension.
By Jeffrey Jurgens
As challenging as the current situation may be, however, its characterization as a crisis is also somewhat curious. After all, this is hardly the first time that European nation-states have responded to significant numbers of unauthorized migrants. In addition, far more people remain displaced in Turkey and Syria, for example, than in the entire EU, and many EU member states have far greater material and institutional resources at their disposal than other major “receiving countries.” Why, then, do the recent flows of refugees constitute a crisis for Europe? And why the language of crisis now?
By Matthew Brill-Carlat
Consortium projects strive to push the boundaries of thought and action around forced migration. The introductory “Lexicon of Forced Migration” course, offered for the first time this semester across the Consortium, is valuable precisely because its premise is a critical re-evaluation of the current discourse around migration, and because it launches explorations of different ways to think about these issues and find solutions.
Interviewed by Matthew Brill-Carlat and Margaret Edgecombe
One of the objectives behind the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education is bridging the gaps between liberal arts institutions. The member schools aim to do so through collaboration on a number of initiatives, one of which is the “Signature Project” at each institution.
By the CFMDE
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education (CFMDE).
Reviewed by Brad Blitz
Migrating Borders and Moving Times is an extraordinarily rich collection including many personal testimonies of migrants who experienced dislocation over extended periods of time. While much migration research still focuses on the shift between sending and receiving contexts, this book smashes that mode of thinking and in turn contributes to our understanding of the lingering effects of cross-border mobility as it is experienced, internalized, and refashioned.
Interviewed by Matthew Brill-Carlat and Margaret Edgecombe
Each institutional member of the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education has committed to supporting one “Signature Project” over the four years of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant that reflects the individual strengths and passions of the member institutions.
Interviewed by Susan Sgorbati
I was being persecuted because of signing a peace petition entitled “We will not be a party to this crime,” along with over 1,100 academics.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Nick Ostrum and Hélène B. Ducros.
Reviewed by David Ward
What is worse for Italy is that a vicious cycle of corruption seems destined to lead the nation ever more downward and further away from achieving the status of open-access social order.
By Mohamad Hafez
A Syrian born artist depicts cities besieged by civil war to capture the magnitude of the devastation and to expose the fragility of human life.
By Maria Höhn, Brittany Murray, and Nicole Shea
As institutions of higher learning, we are uniquely positioned to draw on our robust local, national, and international educational and cultural networks to prepare our students for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of forced migration and displacement. Indeed, the coming era of human movement will, without doubt, challenge our existing national and global institutions, and our students must be able to respond to these challenges with intelligence, compassion, and ingenuity.
By Kerry Bystrom
From the Global North, and from Berlin specifically, the so-called “refugee crisis” and those seeking refuge from acute and structural violence are imagined through two key figures: the camp and the border. I will focus on the second.
Translated by Luke Hankins
children of the fog / dense fog of those eyes gazes / intersecting / the paths of meteors
By Frederic Baitinger
The violence that underpins the sexual conduct reported by #MeToo has its roots in one of the most typical and commonly shared male fantasies: the fantasy of domination.
By Melissa Kerr Chiovenda
There is a very different understanding as to what human rights should be, between the refugees, those who make asylum decisions, and policy makers.
By Árdís K. Ingvars
The common denominator within these stories is the elevated symbol of mobility (Salazar 2018). However, the stories around the names further reflect everyone’s fragility, thus illuminating the men’s wishes to be acknowledged as human beings with myriad experiences (Mallki, 1995), countering the defining criminalized image of men from the Middle-East in Europe. As Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) demonstrated, it is possible to trace power through shifting modes of resistance.
By Silvana Patriarca
The League wants to put the “Italians first.” But who are the Italians? Until recently, race was not mentioned explicitly when speaking of Italian identity. But these days even this post-Holocaust taboo seems to be on its way out, as the paranoid representation of immigration as an attempt at “ethnic substitution” and other language of this kind is spreading.
By Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager
Rethinking the Italian Self and normalizing its patriarchal core implies multiple approaches. Using religion as a tool of normalization of patriarchy, and re-establishing the infamous in critical feminist studies Madonna/Whore duality is one of them.
Reviewed by Rosalind Sharpe
Surprisingly, given how important it is to daily life and the fate of governments, food hardly featured in discussions about Brexit.
Interviewed by Melanie Evans
Good translation is reading at glacial speed and writing in sync with a voice that isn’t yours but is nevertheless coming from you.
Reviewed by Sergio Parussa
A detailed, harrowing account of the active participation of ordinary Italians in the deportation of Italian Jews between 1943 and 1945, as well as of the subsequent erasure of their responsibilities and absolution of all guilt during the postwar years.
By Rachel Ingalls
They were already weighed down by an emotion that made for even greater lassitude — a kind of inertia, intermittently broken by irritable indecisiveness.
Reviewed by M. Chloe Mulderig
At a time when nationalist discourse is very much on the rise worldwide, the issue of “European identity” has become pressing and contentious. Threats to the stability of the European Union, along with increasing electoral success of right-wing politicians, are, at least in some part, the consequence of growing mistrust of immigrants and refugees.
Interviewed by June Brawner
I started this project by working with the few remaining photographs of Paul made shortly before my grandmother and her family left Europe for America. These provided actual evidence of this man, the missing person in my family’s narrative. I combined these family snapshots into a single piece titled Every Paul, presenting an accumulation of all visual evidence we still have of this man.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros, Louie Dean Valencia-García, and Daniela Irrera.
Reviewed by Stephen Rose
The more astonishing feature of the French tax regime is how few people pay income taxes. It was only after the end of WWII that more than 20 percent of the population paid income taxes. This share increased steadily to reach 65 percent in 1980.
Reviewed by Jodi Campbell
Christopher Kissane has written an engaging and informative book that introduces readers to the significant role of food in the social and cultural history of early modern Europe. He paints a broad picture of a range of communities, from Catholic to Protestant, northern to southern, elite to poor. These patterns are illustrated and enriched by the narration of numerous individual experiences of ordinary people whose food practices came into conflict with religious or secular authorities, and therefore left a paper trail.
By Carlo Cafferini
Throughout the ages, architecture has been used as a way to express a wide range of concepts, reflecting the historical, political, and religious beliefs of the period.
By Sharon Jacobs
Blaming the Rescuers—an academic investigation into the criminalization of Mediterranean rescue work—charges European Union member states with the responsibility for migrant deaths as a result of their preventing aid at sea.
By Nataliia Slobodian and Iryna Ptasnyk
We cannot expect sanctions to lead to surrender. The relevant question is rather: are sanctions changing the context in which Russia’s decisions are being made? Would we have achieved the Minsk package, even with its weakness of implementation, without sanctions?
Translated by Anna Halager
Oh, my head. I let out a deep sigh and smell alcohol. My stomach roils and I heave my body out of bed, go to the bathroom. Shit, my head is about to explode. I still feel drunk. My eyes won’t focus and my legs aren’t working right. I kick the clothes I dumped on the floor because they block my way and I walk five long metres to the bathroom, my hand over my mouth.
By EuropeNow Editors
The EuropeNow Editors choose their favorite literary translations of 2018 from or concerning Europe.
By Ellen Arnold
In the summer of 2018, a series of “hunger stones” in the Czech Republic’s Elbe River emerged, bearing warnings of the perils of drought and the vital importance of rivers.
By Peter Debaere
Here we sample a number of water centers and institutes. By its very nature, water almost asks for the emergence of such organizations.
By Cynthia A. Ruder
If we consider the construction of the three European canals as part of the larger program to build a singularly Soviet space, albeit on the backs of slave laborers, then the consequences and subsequent apprehension of the canals remains no less important.
Interviewed by Hélène Ducros
In endorsing social and environmental justice causes dear to them, athletes recognize their potential as change agents.
By Dagomar Degroot
These are momentous times in the history of our planet. Industrialized and industrializing nations, as well as world-straddling corporations, are choking our atmosphere with greenhouse gases in such quantity that the whole Earth is warming with a speed, on a scale, unprecedented in the 300,000-year history of our species. Yet natural forces have repeatedly changed Earth’s climate during that long history, even before the onset of industrialization.
Translated by Jennifer Russell
Daniel found her in the ground. He dug her free and brushed off the dirt. He joined the pieces, logged the pigment traces: how they were distributed across her clothes and her skin.
By Alexis Morgan
Civilization was founded on the presence of water. The two cradles of civilization—the Nile Valley and the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—were established around fertile river valleys that brought both the rewards of rich soils for agriculture, and perversely, the risks associated with the nutrient-laden flood waters.
By Fernando Mercé
Today, there are approximately 4 billion people living in regions where the water supply is woefully inadequate. With about 663 million people without safe drinking water, scarcity has become a very real and complex challenge. Additionally, UNESCO estimates that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with severe water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could fall under “water stress” conditions from increased demand and the impacts of climate change.
Interviewed by Peter Debaere
The appropriation and transfer of virtual water can also be associated with the acquisition of agricultural land instead of “just” crops.
By Geoffrey M. Geise
Within the next decade, water shortages are projected to affect 40 US states and effectively all Americans. The issue of water accessibility is not one limited to the US, however, as the problem of clean water availability has become more widely recognized in recent years. For example, the US National Academy of Engineering has recognized the urgent need to provide access to clean water as one of the “Grand Challenges for Engineering
By Monica Garcia Quesada and David Aubin
2018 has seen the hottest and driest summer in Western Europe since records began. This prolonged heat and dryness has touched areas in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France amongst others, affecting farms and forests, threating agricultural output, pasture, and feed supply.
Translated by Peter Bachev
If she just looks long and hard enough through the grimy pane of the southern window, she is sure to see one of them returning to its nest. That’s what she’s been told…
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the Global Water Initiative at the University of Virginia.
By Ralf B. Schäfer, Mira Kattwinkel, and Elisabeth Berger
Water has always been essential for human societies providing ecosystem services, such as drinking water, crop production through irrigation water, food, climate regulation, and recreation. The German sociologist Karl Wittfogel went so far as to suggest a connection between water and the evolution of the state, the so-called “hydraulic societies.” Today, water management is a key sector of environmental policy in Europe, and arguably the environmental sector with the highest aspirations.
By Stefan Siebert
If water and soil resources are not well managed, water use for irrigation can negatively affect ecosystems and water availability for other water use sectors. Globally, irrigation is by far the largest water use sector and contributes to about 90 percent of the additional evapotranspiration caused by human water use
By Alexandra Campbell-Ferrari and Luke Wilson
It seems simple: water and sanitation are essential to life and livelihood, and thus everyone should have access to these basic necessities and services. But therein lays the challenge. They are services that demand resources, capacity, infrastructure, and governance to be safely and efficiently delivered. Services do not come free. And the reality is: it costs a lot to provide water and sanitation services, it is not easy to provide these services, and everyone should but not everyone can pay.
By Leon F. Szeptycki and Newsha Ajami
The American West is an arid region to begin with, and climate change, population growth, and aging infrastructure are further exacerbating water scarcity in some parts of the region. Stanford University established Water in the West in 2010 to conduct research relevant to the growing water challenges in the American West and to develop solutions that will move the region toward a more sustainable water future.
By Robin Kundis Craig
“Water management” can refer to several types of governmental activities. These include allocation of surface water use and depletion rights, allocation of groundwater use and depletion rights, control of surface water pollution, control of groundwater pollution, preservation or restoration of aquatic habitat and ecosystems, and regulation of development near and in waterbodies, including the destruction of wetlands and mangrove forests.
By Rebecca Olson
The Pacific Institute is a global water think tank that combines science-based thought leadership with active outreach to influence local, national, and international efforts in developing sustainable water policies
By Javier D. Donna and José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez
Water scarcity is ubiquitous, affecting all continents and nations. The World Economic Forum (2015) listed water scarcity as one of the “greatest global [risks] to economies, environments, and people.”
By Upmanu Lall
Founded in January 2008, the Columbia Water Center (CWC) is committed to understanding and addressing both the role and scarcity of fresh water in the 21st century. The CWC was established for the purpose of studying the diminishing levels of fresh water and creating innovative sustainable and global solutions. CWC combines multidisciplinary academic research with solutions-based fieldwork to develop and test creative responses to water challenges around the world.
Reviewed by Elandre Dedrick
Fast fashion has taken the world by storm in recent years, and this book gives ethnographic depth to a growing controversy.
Reviewed by Salvatore Cipriano
The notion that early medieval Ireland was an island of “saints and scholars,” a bastion of civilization-saving monks and their rich corpus of well-travelled books and manuscripts, is something of a popular truism. Scholars, too, have also readily identified Irish scholarship’s significant contributions to monastic, spiritual, and intellectual life in the eight and ninth centuries.
Reviewed by Christopher P. Gillett
In his new book, Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700, Miles Pattenden argues that the unique character of the papal electoral model contributed to the papacy’s increasing economic and structural problems throughout the early modern period.
By Nicole Shea and Peter Debaere
Fresh water is essential for life. No plant, animal, or person can live without it. Because whatever we do requires a lot of water, cities and towns were initially built next to rivers or streams, and farmers grew crops where water was plentiful or accessible. Water abundance cannot be taken for granted any longer everywhere. A dry spell and record temperatures caught up with Europe this summer, testing farmers from Scandinavia and England as well as France, the Netherlands, Germany and southern European countries.
By Timothy Beatley
We live on the Blue Planet, as oceanographers like Sylvia Earle remind us, but we are also increasingly the Urban Planet. How to reconcile these two realities, and how to integrate them into a unified vision of future cities is a major challenge and a topic I have been working on for many years.
Translated by Diana Thow
The only illusion is that there’s a road to follow to an end: the hallway inhabits a closed door hourly. The mystery of a dark legend buried inside a tunnel where children grow into adult visions.
By Neda Zawahri
It may be argued that there is sufficient fresh water in our planet to meet basic human needs throughout the world, however, this water is unevenly distributed. For instance, regions containing large populations, such as the Middle East, North Africa, western portions of the United States, and northern portions of China all confront extreme shortages of fresh water.
Curated by Nicole Shea and Kayla Maiuri
This art series illustrates both the phenomenal beauty of water and the pollution that has washed upon our shores at the hands of humankind.
By David Harrisville
For decades after the Second World War, both the public memory and historical study of the German military were dominated by what has come to be termed the myth of the “clean” Wehrmacht.
Translated by H.J. Gardner
A fence separating one country from another in Europe. On one side, MOTHER, about 45 years old; on the other side, her SON, about 20 years old. They are connected to each other by the umbilical cord that supplies nourishment to the fetus. The cord is still functioning, moving nourishment from one body to the other.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
Eighty years ago today, November 9, 1938, an order was given by Nazi German authorities to terrorize and arrest German Jewish citizens, resulting in tens of thousands of people being sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, marked a violent escalation against Jewish people.
By David L. Phillips
Hate speech gives rise to hate crimes. Demonizing the other legitimizes violent extremism, undermining principles of an open society and cultural diversity.
By Toussaint Losier
State officials did not simply build more prisons, but they commissioned increasingly secure, riot-proof facilities. These new prisons were designed to hold captive a population that might regularly exceed official capacity, while limiting the space in which imprisoned men and women might move about, congregate together, and, potentially, gain control of the institution.
By David Hernández
The problem with framing mass emigration of refugees and asylum seekers as one-off crises is that they demand one-off solutions—walls and fences, military deployments at the border, and deterrence that hinges on mass detention of families.
By Victoria Troy
Although there are parenting programs currently being delivered within the Criminal Justice System, more emphasis needs to be placed on addressing the holistic needs of the populations being targeted.
By Julia Gardiner
I feel guilty, as usual, because I can leave and my students cannot. Razor wire glitters in the dark as I walk down the hill from the school building to the front gate. Not for the first time in my experience, I see a bus idling in the dark as women board, holding small bundles of their possessions.
By Julie Ciccolini and Cynthia Conti-Cook
Naturally, in a system already primed for triage, actuarial risk assessment instruments are spreading rapidly. At nearly every stage of decision-making—including bail, program eligibility, sentencing, probation, prison classification, parole release and supervision—actuarial tools are assisting decision-makers to ration liberty and due process.
Translated by Layla Benitez-James
Africa, our old and beloved continent, is an ancestral land, just like her inhabitants. Africa is the beginning of everything.
By Stuart Mackintosh
As we approach the two-year mark of the Trump Presidency, the implications and the effects of the “America First” policy are becoming clear. Supporters of the multilateral rules-based world order are alarmed. We are witnessing the end of Pax Americana; the end of a generally benign U.S. hegemony; the end of U.S. support for a global system created by America and her allies after the Second World War.
By Padraic X. Scanlan
In practice, there was a law for the rich and a law for the poor in Britain. In the British Empire, there was a law for whites and another for everyone else. Courtrooms were officially blind to race, but racism was everywhere.
By Anne Kerth
The similarities between convict leasing and modern mass incarceration are uncomfortably clear: in both systems, convicts are cordoned off from larger society and coerced into the performance of menial labor, from which they gain neither profit nor personal advancement. In this version of history, slavery, convict leasing, and modern incarceration merge to form an unbroken legacy of American coercion of unskilled and easily replaced black labor.
By Giray Sadik
Hybrid war encompasses a set of hostile actions whereby, instead of a classical large-scale military invasion, an attacking power seeks to undermine its opponent through a variety of acts including subversive intelligence operations, sabotage, hacking, and the empowering of proxy insurgent groups.
Translated by Mirza Purić
Under a stolen car the world will shrink down to a single truth, and then I’ll encourage / the bullet I’d spat out into your lung.
By Nicole Callahan
So much of what really happens in our system is that people are cowed into submission, traumatized and damaged.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Bishop
During 2013, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the Russian feminist protest punk rock group Pussy Riot, went missing for twenty-seven days.
Reviewed by Kate Ince
Throughout her book, Chaplin readily acknowledges that la Parisienne is in many ways particularly a nineteenth-century figure, at her strongest in the Second Empire Paris of Haussman and during the early Belle Époque.
Translated by Rachael Daum
Someday it will be enough. / I’ll write a poem, / the words will spill all over your street / and you’ll slip / and fall straight into my arms my shackles / they’re learning to be gentle / by way of drunkenness,
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
What really interests me in this emerging field is that it has pushed geography into a new empirical territory and critical agenda.
Interviewed by Christopher P. Gillett
Between June 9th and October 7th, 2018, the Palace Green Library of Durham University hosted the exhibition “Bodies of Evidence: How science unearthed Durham’s dark secret.” This display forms part of a much larger, interdisciplinary research project investigating the remains of seventeenth-century Scottish prisoners of war discovered in the grounds of the cathedral square in November 2013.
Reviewed by Stephen Gross
The surge of populist movements across Europe, which are assaulting the supranational powers of the European Union; the growth of massive financial institutions, which transcend borders with a web of monetary flows; the expansion of firms with global supply chains, which can relocate production around the world; the trade wars unleashed by President Donald Trump, which ostensibly aim to reassert American control over its own economy; can be understood as either causes of or reactions to the perceived decline of the nation state.
Reviewed by June Brawner
The qualities of wines have been linked to their places of origin for millennia, though perhaps never with such enthusiasm as in the twenty-first century.
By Emily Bloom and Nicole Callahan
Much like the Core Curriculum, this course aims to equip students with critical tools for approaching, reading, and striving with literary and philosophical texts—ancient as well as modern.
By Sylvia Beato-Davis
sleep without touching & in the morning, you ask what is the matter., but nothing is ever the matter until the tea kettle struggles to sing. i dig to remember the ardor of dreamlife, putting the wrapped stick of butter near the flame to melt.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here is this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène B. Ducros (Geography), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), and Mihai Sebe (Political Science).
By Christopher M. Florio and Nicole Shea
The study of crime and punishment is bound up with the study of a host of other subjects, ranging from social welfare to immigration to imperialism, from law to race relations to education. It is our hope that this issue helps readers to understand how crime and punishment have long been and continue to be entangled with virtually every side of human existence.
Translated by Mirza Purić
They’ve brought us to the front line. Mud and fog everywhere. I can barely see the man in front of me. We almost hold onto each other’s belts lest we get lost. We pass between burning houses. The file trudges on along rickety fences. The mud sticks to our boots, stretches like dough.
By Sarah Armstrong
Should mass imprisonment be applied as a general phenomenon that might arise anywhere, or should it be understood as a label for the unique experience of one country at one point in time? The distinctiveness of the US experience and the lack of a similar pattern elsewhere argue for the latter. No country in Europe has experienced post-war a scale of imprisonment (bar Russia with its gulag legacy) or a rate of growth anything like that observed in the US between the 1980s and 2000s.
By Jesse Krimes
A Philadelphia-based artist whose work explores power, authority, systems, social hierarchies, norms, transgressions, and conventions of beauty.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography) and Louie Dean Valencia-García (History).
By Özgür Özvatan
European welfare states witness both the challenges of Turks’ political inclusion and the rise of the populist radical right firmly warning against the threat of “Islamization.” Turks in Europe, perceived as Europe’s dominant Muslim group, create complex dilemmas for “native” Europeans as well as their “non-native” Turkish fellows. The latter recognize drastic changes in the way they are treated in their everyday life and are portrayed in the public sphere in the aftermath of 9/11.
Reviewed by Bart Bonikowski
A deep exploration of the relationship between symbolic practices, cultural narratives, and political beliefs and behavior in an era of radical politics.
By Aude Jehan-Robert
That official proclamation of “failure of multiculturalism” was indicative of Europe’s inability to situate Islam within its society.
By Tom Pettinger
The Prevent program tries to stop people becoming drawn into, supporting, or engaging in violence based on twenty-two supposed “signs of radicalization.”[4] The program has moved through several different iterations, focusing, in its early years, specifically on Muslim communities who were targeted with explicit funding, to a whole-of-society approach where specific community work has become less overt.
By Chris Allen
The far-right’s championing of free speech is an interesting albeit flawed development, an argument best articulated by Nesrine Malik. As she notes, free speech is no longer a value but as she puts it, “a loophole exploited with impunity.”
By Raymond Slot, Frans Van Assche, Sérgio Vieira, and Joana Vieira dos Santos
One specific psychological approach to understand the terrorist is not feasible, as terrorists differ widely in motivation, conviction, and objective. Consequently, trying to identify or profile terrorists within the general population based on psychological characteristics is a difficult task.
By Lella Nouri
How do groups like Britain First use social media, and how does this result in such unprecedented popularity? Does social media bring out xenophobia in British society? Is Britain First really that popular? Is this thanks to its online strategy; and if so, what is their secret?
Reviewed by Shoshana Akabas
One hundred years later, German-born poet Maximiliane Donicht picks up where Rilke left off, weaving her own expressive, elegiac verses. I balance on the bottleneck of being.
By Katherine Kondor
In a political environment so influenced by radical right elites, the number of radical right street-level and direct-action organizations is notable. Derivatively, in a county whose political atmosphere is becoming increasingly radicalized, on what grounds do radical right activist groups stand? In what way have the attitudes and aims of radical right street movements shifted in reflecting this change?
By Julian Göpffarth
While Tellkamp and Grünbein are well-known figures in the German public sphere, and their debate received a lot of attention in the German mediascape, little attention is paid to less prominent, more local intellectuals. This is probably due to the tendency to associate the social concept of the “public intellectual” with a certain degree of grandeur or prestige, and a national or even global audience.
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus we feature a spotlight on American University.
Reviewed by Angela Acosta
Drawing on the concept of “Fortress Europe,” first used during the Second World War to refer to defending Europe from outsiders, Bermúdez applies the term to the dangerous process of migrants attempting to enter the EU via its southern boundaries
Interviewed by Maria Lechtarova
With the populist wave extending across Europe, scholars of diverse disciplines are working to understand this alarming trend.
Reviewed by Ib Bondebjerg
For citizens of the European Union, navigating the relationship between the transnational and national is very complicated business. Though they are both European and national citizens, it is by far the nation which is most present in their everyday lives, their minds, and the cultures they imagine themselves to belong to.
By Bernhard Forchtner
When contemplating radical-right politics, whether past or present, few think about the fight against environmental degradation. Yet to consider radical-right perspectives on environmental issues and the natural environment more generally does provide an important insight into these actors’ ideas and practices.
Reviewed by Shoshana Adler
A core tenet of Heng’s understanding of race as an analytic is the way its operations transform especially visible individuals into symbolic representatives of an entire [hated, feared, or disavowed] population.
By Cynthia Miller-Idriss
Analyze how state authorities, rebel movements, extremist associations, and ethnic and religious organizations mobilize youth populations to shape public narratives.
By Barbara Manthe
They live in their own world. They proclaim their own state territories, which are sometimes only the size of a stately home. They reject the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany and its legal system, arguing that the pre-1945 German “Reich” is still in force.
Translated by Jeff Diteman
“Excellent work,” says the raspy-voiced, pock-faced man, as he holds out a copy of Spain: One Year of Dictatorship, “really excellent.”
Reviewed by Brian Ladd
The widespread fascination with the landscape of underground railways is not difficult to understand. This is a realm frequently visited by large numbers of people who realize that they only glimpse fragments of a much larger system. The fact that these structures lie under the earth, and often lack illumination, ensures that many of us will wonder what might be hidden there, concealed by a cloak of darkness.
By Spencer Kaplan
I argue that these supercollectors do far more than simply move European art out of Europe. Central to their practices is the transformation of the very experience of these cultural objects. Through their museum exhibitions and accompanying catalogs, press releases, interviews, and panel discussions, the supercollectors imbue their European acquisitions with non-European narratives of economic power, national identity, and heritage.
By Cynthia Miller-Idriss
The evening event, held from 5-7 pm followed by a reception, will include speakers from North America and Europe working on scholarship, policy and practice related to extreme and radical right politics, movements, organizations, and subcultural youth scenes.
Reviewed by Jonah S. Rubin
In this timely volume, Zahira Aragüete-Toribio examines civil society forensic exhumations of Spanish Civil War dead in Extremadura, the region of western Spain where the author grew up. The region, which borders Portugal, saw some of the most intense fighting of the Spanish Civil War.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), and Thomas Nolden (Comparative Literature).
Reviewed by Alexandra Bousiou
By focusing on the interrelations between democratic accountability, political order, and orderly change, Johan Olsen approaches democratic accountability as a mechanism by which citizens can influence and even control the elected representatives, non-elected officials, and other power holders.
By Rob May
The radical right is currently flourishing across the globe. Positioned at the extreme end of this ideological spectrum are Hitler worshipping neo-Nazis. Back in the 1980s, these white supremacists created their own genre of music – White Power – which has since become an essential ingredient of neo-Nazi skinhead propaganda.
Reviewed by Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager
World War II was the most significant European and global conflict of the twentieth century – historically, politically, ideologically – a conflict, whose cultural legacy still greatly affects international relations on the world arena today and reminds us about le passé qui ne passe pas. War pages of history are comprised of complex and controversial narratives of perpetrators and victims: those who later became celebrated, glorified, forever commemorated; or those who become feared, loathed, pitied, or forever forgotten.
Interviewed by Kelly McKowen
I feel that the phenomenon of surveillance has completely gotten out of hand and is going to continue to.
By Evelin Rizzo
Air pollution has emerged as the world’s fourth-leading fatal risk to people’s health, causing one in ten deaths in 2013. Each year, more than 5.5 million people around the world die prematurely from illnesses caused by breathing polluted air. A study conducted in 2016 by the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington reports that “breathing polluted air increases the risk of debilitating and deadly diseases such as lung cancer, stroke, heart disease, and chronic bronchitis.
By Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Nicole Shea, and Fabian Virchow
In this special issue, artists and authors take up these issues in a series of feature essays and works, short opinion pieces, and research reports, examining questions of radicalism and violence, prevention and intervention, and radicalization and de-radicalization across Europe and other parts of the world. The authors examine cases from Germany, France, Hungary, the U.K. and beyond, looking at social media, school-based interventions, the use of history by far groups, the role of public intellectuals, and more.
Curated by Nicole Shea
Artists Hank Willis Thomas and Yosman Botero call awareness to racism and police brutality, pulling viewers into unarmed victim cases and making them witnesses to inequality.
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole
It was hot, a damp hot hell, sweat emerged from all my pores. I began excreting smells, how strange, as though something within me were starting to mold, an extraordinary fromage, as though I smelled of my eyeballs, which bulged and welled with what seemed a sort of slime, a turbidity likely rising up from my loins, a twinge from the groin that brushed my heart, stinging; it dug slowly into my brain, but I hadn’t felt its onset.
By Sam Jackson
National history is often familiar to a broad segment of the nation’s public, providing a set of recognizable characters that extremists can attempt to connect to their cause.
By Mike Finn
In the Brexit debate, academic expertise itself came under visceral attack. Overwhelmingly, academics backed the Remain cause, and as the political scientist David Runciman has noted, universities and their environs often became isolated pockets of Remain resistance in otherwise Leave-dominated areas once the votes were tallied.
By Elizabeth Heath
Tariffs are tools of international diplomacy. They are also political mechanisms that prioritize the interests of certain producers and consumers.
By Marion Demossier
Throughout the last decade, the global world of wine has seen a radical transformation, defined by the emergence of the concept of terroir as a space for renegotiation of past, present, and future ways of producing, selling, and consuming wine. But what is terroir? And why is it attracting so much interest from academics, producers, experts, and wine consumers?
By Anu Mai Kõll
Historically, the fate of the Baltic realm has been difficult. It served as a kind of Middle East of the North; inhabited by small ethnic groups with larger neighbors, which tended to play out rivalries fighting about their territory. German feudal lords, knights and barons, were a heritage from the crusades in Latvian- and Estonian-speaking areas in the thirteenth century.
By Louise Manning
This article focuses on Europe and the interaction between food price spikes, economic downturn and political austerity, and the risk of reported food fraud. It is important to firstly consider the impact of the 2007-2008 financial crash on household food security and the role of food insecurity as a driver towards political instability.
Translated by Celia Hawkesworth and Ellen Elias-Bursac
My mother collects other people’s deaths, rattling them mournfully like coins in a piggy bank. “Did you know Petrović died?” asks Mother over the phone.
By Richard White
One way to approach this question involves identifying and teasing apart two rather crude-but-important approaches of veganism. One is rooted in the “original” definition for veganism, which emerged in the UK in the 1940s. I will refer to this as “activist” veganism, one which inspires a more radical vision for veganism, encouraging greater critical reflection, awareness, and commitment to social justice issues than “the other” type of veganism, namely “lifestyle,” or “corporate” veganism
By Angela Cacciarru
How do diverse property systems work in order to ensure access to land and the management of local resource? What role do moral economies play beyond property? Von Benda-Beckmann and Wiber find these questions intriguing, and argue that property regimes cannot be expressed by any one-dimensional political, economic, or legal model: they are multi-dimensional and multi-functional.
And to think he’d expected them to rally round at the first puff of smoke from his cigar! That, whatever the circumstance, whatever the temptations, it was to him they would turn, him they would support with their powerful young love.
By David Sutton
This short essay explores the power of eating together as a symbol and practice of social relations with powerful political implications in our contemporary times of neoliberal austerity and xenophobia.
By Ioana Uricaru
Food is essential for life and has always been used in art and literature to fulfill emotional, visual, intellectual, and narrative functions.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus we feature a spotlight on Middlebury College.
By Sandra Carletti
Food and life experiences are inextricably linked. In this course, we will examine the ways in which literature uses food to represent and understand the human experience We will focus on the various symbolic functions of food associated with the images of cooking, eating, drinking, and feasting presented in these literary works.
By Erik Jönsson
As a number of scholars have noted, cultured (or “in vitro,” or “clean”) meat is, today, a confusing technology, shot through with ontological ambiguity. What cultured meat eventually could become, and what cultured meat is today, are both uncertain. Moreover, in making sense of cultured meat in relation to (particular forms of) contemporary veganism, cultural and technological processes visibly entangle.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Carter
A crucial wine debate swirls around the concept of terroir. The term can be approximately, and beautifully, thought of as “somewhereness.”
By Cristina Grasseni
Collective food procurement defines the production, distribution, and consumption of food with a participatory dimension: for example community gardens, but also new entrepreneurship based on urban agriculture, as well as broader projects governing food markets or allotments at municipal level.
By Olga Sezneva
I check myself in the mirror one last time. Black sweater, high neck, navy blue pants that you won’t see under my long apron. Dark-frame glasses. City smart, I’d say, no different from that mevrouw I saw selling gloves in E*.
Reviewed by Brittany Lehman
Historians often rely on a preponderance of evidence to stake their claims. In so doing, however, these scholars frequently get lost in the numbers and the trends, forgetting the individual. Jennifer Miller’s much-needed book shows readers that groups of people—even when they number in the millions—are made up of individuals, each of whom has unique experiences.
Reviewed by Philip Slavin
The history of food, both from the production and consumption side, has been arguably one of the most popular scholarly topics in social and economic history
Reviewed by Annie Jourdan
Callister’s book is an ambitious study as it examines the interplay of public opinion, national sentiment, and foreign policy during the period 1785-1815, not only in one, but in three countries.
Reviewed by Sabrina Papazian
Verdery highlights the vulnerability of her emotions and experiences by sharing fieldnotes where she describes feelings of hopelessness and despair during particular stressful moments in her ethnographic endeavors. She also documents her emotions as she carefully read her secret file in 2010. This introspective dive into Verdery’s psyche makes her research experience and writing relatable.
Interviewed by Hélène Ducros
The neuroscientist explains how “the industry” and the “big business” side of food optimize and improve the quality of the food supply.
Reviewed by David A. Messenger
Drawing on traveler accounts from the late eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, as well as official tourist publications, memoirs, and regional newspapers, Lyons takes a transnational approach to understand exchanges, conceptions, and ideas that flourished in the region.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Food is an enormous business and food companies want to sell as much food as they can, regardless of its health consequences.
By Peter Debaere
The lead-poisoning of children in the wake of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, that erupted in 2015 put a spotlight on the crumbling state of U.S. water infrastructure.
By Gideon Wolfaardt
The challenges linked to water scarcity are often exacerbated by poor water quality, and South Africa is no exception. These challenges are complex, with technological capabilities often constrained by social and economic realities.
By Matt Reidenbach
The objective of this course is to introduce students to the principles governing the flow of water on and beneath the earth’s surface. This includes concepts of fluid dynamics applied to open channel flow, ground water flow, and dynamics.
Reviewed by Catherine Leglu
This book presents a broad-ranging description of women’s social and familial networks in medieval Southern France through the archival traces left by a single woman, Agnès de Bossones (d.1342), a wealthy widow of Montpellier.
By Joep Schyns
Water footprints can be calculated for an individual person, a process, a product’s entire value chain, or for a business, a river basin, or a nation. They provide powerful insights for businesses to understand their water-related business risk, for governments to understand the role of water in their economy and water dependency, and for consumers to know how much water is hidden in the products they use.
By Erica Morrell
In this course, we will learn about and apply core sociological perspectives to analyze dynamics of local, regional, national, and global agri-food systems development over the past several decades.
By Christine Aubry and Baptiste Grard
Through this conversation, we can see that urban agriculture is an open door to delve into many issues around the functioning and development of urban environment: food provisioning, habitat fragmentation, soil waterproofing, waste recycling, well-being, social linkages, etc.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Food stands at the crossroad of the physical and social sciences, such that its many facets offer multiple points of entry into a slew of research areas, from social and environmental justice topics, to health, gender, or youth studies, among countless others.
By Mike Pace
This is part of our Campus Spotlight on the Global Water Initiative at the University of Virginia.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Daniela Irrera (International Relations), Samantha Lomb (History), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), and Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science).
By Erica Morrell
What is knowledge? In this course, we will explore the rise of the authority of science across much of the globe. We will regard potential problems with and challenges to science’s dominant position, and we will analyze whether and how other forms of knowledge may shape contemporary social, cultural, and political life. Practical cases to illustrate these dynamics will draw from the food system, and we will conduct significant engagement with our local community’s emergency food system to translate theoretical concepts around knowledge into practice.
By Hélène B. Ducros
The articles and interviews included here clearly convey that food stands as an entry point into a wide range of contemporary and historical debates that touch all humans. What is more, they also indicate that food operates as a spatial and temporal link across a complex web of interconnected social, cultural, political, economic, environmental, demographic, nutritional, and physiological topics
By Ken Albala
We are all too familiar today with the wildly exaggerated health claims made for so-called super foods. Often based loosely on clinical research, the underlying motivation for these claims is, of course, selling new products. Foods are likewise demonized with the same motives, here too pushing a new line and maximizing profit underlies the latest fad diets that ban whole classes of food.
Translated by Susanna Nied
When I was nine years old, the world too was nine years old. At least there was no difference between us, no opposition, no distance. We just tumbled around from sunrise to sunset, earth and body as like as two pennies. And there was never a harsh word between us, for the simple reason that there were no words at all between us; we never uttered a word to each other, the world and I.
By Phillipp Schofield
While we have a general sense of famine events in this period and some inroads into exploring the extent and impact of famine and dearth, there is also a great deal we do not know about famine in the middle ages. In fact, our ignorance in regards to famine reflects a more general gap in our understanding of medieval society.
Curated by Nicole Shea
Tjalf Sparnaay’s oil paintings highlight the beauty of the contemporary commonplace while David Hicks draws his inspiration from the beauty of farm lands surrounding his home.
By Lara Davis
In relation to migration, the 2008 Financial Crisis changed the concept of securitization, which historically describes a political process of the construction of a security threat. It is a concept that was originally coined by the Copenhagen School and academics such as Ole Waever, Barry Buzan, and Jaap de Wilde.
Reviewed by Andrea F. Bohlman
The organizing strategy usefully provides reading routes through the book. It keeps both chronology and geography in kaleidoscopic movement so as to foreground diversity.
By Giuseppe Spatafora
The end of the Cold War significantly strengthened the forces of globalization and internationalization: the political and economic developments in Eastern Europe, the post-Soviet space, Southeast Asia and Latin America opened up previously sealed markets and fuelled exponential growth of trade and financial interchange.
By Nicholas Ostrum
Even more beneficial to West Germany, Libya was plying the German oil industry with reliably growing quantities of high quality crude. By 1964, Libya relied on German markets for 45 percent of its production.
Reviewed by Alina Zubkovych
The authors have included material on migration flows in the context of the post-Maidan situation. It is an interesting phenomenon where further explanations will benefit a deeper understanding of the migration strategies of Ukrainians to Poland.
By Thomas Henökl
Nationalism both fosters an affection towards the nation’s past and an aversion towards present change and challenges, as well as the demands of flexibility and adaptation.
Reviewed by Rosalind Cavaghan
An analysis of the European state of minority women’s activism and critique.
By Jordi Torrent
Many studies and experts are pointing that the main reason of the increase of anxiety in our society (particularly in youth, but not only) are the uses we are making of contemporary media, in particular of social media.
Reviewed by A. Lorraine Kaljund
Veronica Davidov’s Long Night at the Vepsian Museum provides a punchy and compelling overview of cosmology, cultural production, and political ecology in Sheltozero, a small Vepsian village in Karelia, northeastern Russia.
By Liya Yu
Not only are our brains ill-equipped to handle the socio-political realities that accompany liberal democratic procedures, but we might never be able to completely overcome our brains’ biases and dehumanizing abilities, nor can we prevent people from preferring cognitive closure over openness towards ambiguity, uncertainty and risk.
By Sandra Ponzanesi
The status of Europe, which is supposed to welcome so-called “legitimate” refugees, is itself so very precarious at the moment; instead of identification with the needy, this has led to antagonism, ambivalence and fear, often erupting into pure xenophobia, expertly manipulated by right-wing demagogues and anti-immigration parties
Reviewed by Ada Engebrigtsen
Jennifer Mack’s The Construction of Equality, tells the fascinating story of a community of Syriac Orthodox refugees in Sweden who fled discrimination and persecution in Turkey and lived as stateless refugees in Lebanon before being admitted by Swedish authorities as part of a quota agreement in 1967.
By Raphaël Liogier
For millennia, human beings have been fascinated by their own tools; and they still are. The question that preoccupies us now, is why anxiety has replaced the original optimism attached to technical objects and activities.
By Layla Benitez-James
I wanted to unequivocally condemn police violence while simultaneously feeling a knee jerk aversion to any movement working under a shared idea of nationalism.
By Beatrice L. Bridglall
It appears that our ability to moderate anxiety over accelerations in climate change, may hinge on what we believe and how we perceive this issue. Cognitive scientists suggest the value of reframing our mental maps in efforts to process our fears and dilemmas more constructively and positively.
By Ken White
I forget nothing / think of a curse / triple it and still / you’re nowhere near / all braids evenly divided / from earth
By Caitlin Berrigan
Even an entirety must have an edge. Just as the continents drifted before, leaving a line against water: California.
By Bàrbara Roviró and Patricia Martínez-Álvarez
Anxieties related to the parenting experience for migrant families are complicated by multiple factors, some of which are perceived as being life-threatening, and thus, at times, prioritized over any others (e.g., making a living, finding a home, having someone to care for their children, paying their bills, or avoiding police prosecution, among others).
Translated by Christiana Hills
This isn’t exactly how Tristan tells his story to Dumestre. He doesn’t tell him everything. He doesn’t use words like “stammer” or “arrogance.”
Reviewed by Owen Parker
Brexit was one of the first book-length contributions to this rapidly growing set of stories. Broadly, it is in the camp of those interested in the survey-data-driven “who-voted-what-and-why” question. But unlike many analyses in that camp, it considers the results of the referendum within the broader context of a rigorous and detailed analysis of public opinion during the decade preceding the referendum and of the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a growing political force, particularly during the latter part of that period.
Reviewed by Larissa Stiglich
In 2009, the year after Felix Ringel arrived to conduct his fieldwork in the former socialist model-city, Hoyerswerda received the new, dubious distinction of the fastest-shrinking city in all of Germany.
Reviewed by Larry Wolff
The Venetian republic and the Ottoman Empire, while frequently at war during the early modern centuries, also enjoyed extended periods of closely coordinated diplomatic and commercial relations.
Reviewed by Jennifer Walker
The lion’s share of scholarly literature that treats the subject of European musical theater during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relegates itself to the study of “high” art, mainly in the form of opera. Musical Theater in Europe, 1830–1945, however, stands as a long-awaited corrective to this issue.
Reviewed by Tatjana Lichtenstein
In Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust: Language, Rhetoric, and the Traditions of Hatred, Beth Griech-Polelle sets out to investigate the relationship between antisemitism, the construction of a German racial community, and the persecution and murder of Jews during the Second World War.
Reviewed by Mary R. O’Neil
Until the last several decades, historians would have agreed that European witch beliefs had gradually disappeared following the decline of witch trials during the seventeenth century. However, contemporary researchers have effected an historic revision, documenting the persistence of these archaic beliefs into the twentieth century.
By Paul Mecheril and Monica van der Haagen-Wulff
Lacan’s ideas establish the theoretical framework in which subjectivization and identity formation can be understood, not merely in the solipsistic process of the self, but rather as a constant “mirror dynamic.”
Reviewed by Daniela Irrera
Various contributions have flourished in recent years regarding the current migration and refugee crisis, raising awareness among academics, practitioners, policy-makers, and public opinion.
By Janosch Nieden
In the heart of Europe, tradition meets innovation. In the trinational Upper Rhine region, shared by Germany, France, and Switzerland, five universities within a distance of only 200 kilometers are forming a European Campus.
By Juan Carmona Zabala
Greece and the Balkans have often been considered the place where Europe and the Orient—both contested categories themselves—meet and overlap. In the twentieth century, this part of the world has been the stage of geopolitical competition among world powers.
Interviewed by Sarah Wilma Watson
Strakhov is committed to challenging the artificial boundaries of national literary canons, periodization, and discipline.
Reviewed by Colin Brown
Recognition of the immigrant-origin electorate, and especially of the Muslim electorate, has grown in Europe in recent years. Academic studies have highlighted the increasing descriptive representation of migrant-background politicians at the local and national level—and have asked why this increase has been uneven.
By Stephan Habscheid, Christine Hrncal, Jens Lüssem, Rainer Wieching, Felix Carros, and Volker Wulf
One of the commonplaces in the debate on technological innovation is that interpretations and expectations, emotions and assessments with which people encounter new technologies, differ considerably in cultural terms. In the public debate in Germany, for example, it is often claimed that robots in Japan are generally already anchored much more widely and consensus-based in society, and that instead of the fears, anxiety, and skepticism towards robotic technology, which are characteristic for Germany, trust in and gratitude towards technology prevail in Japan.
By Nicole Shea and Emmanuel Kattan
The challenges of climate change, pandemics, mental illness, rapid technological change and its impact on work and individual freedom, migration and its social and political consequences are not always best understood under the prism of “crisis.” Rather, they seep into our collective consciousness, building on an increased sense of insecurity and powerlessness and shaping our relationships with others and the world.
Curated by Kayla Maiuri and Nicole Shea
Through the works of Kim Noble and Jorge Tacla, “Hands Tied” tackles questions of identity and the throes of mental illness, ultimately illustrating the beauty that can be discovered.
By Michael I. Schapira, Ulrich Hoinkes, and John P. Allegrante
There are many consequences of living in this state of anxiety on an individual or collective level. Invoking crisis or danger tends to speed up our thinking and lend a sense of urgency to our actions, but might this come at the expense of a deeper understanding of the changing face of our societies?
Translated by Andrea Rosenberg
Javier eyed his father’s invulnerable back as the old man, sitting up in the bow, received the morning full on his face. His father was skinnier and shorter than Javier, and he was wearing a polo shirt that had started out red but had long since faded.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Daniela Irrera (International Relations), Samantha Lomb (History), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), Nick Ostrum (History), and Thomas Nolden (Literature).
By Susan Ossman
This mobile art and scholarship laboratory tests, enacts, and teases out the idea that subjects are formed not simply by sharing territory, blood or nationality, but according to the paths they have followed.
By Stephen F. Williams
The years 1905-1917 presented Russia with an opportunity to move smartly toward the rule of law and constitutionalism. In October 1905, Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, in which he promised a popularly elected legislature, the State Duma, and committed the regime to the principle that law could become effective only with approval of the Duma.
By Enika Abazi
Fatigued by expansion and challenged by the refugee crisis, Brexit, Catalonian independence, and the aftershocks of the financial crash, the EU project faces major internal challenges, which perhaps should require the EU to revise its policies to make membership more attractive.
Interviewed by Dana J. Johnson
The name Maria Todorova is familiar to all scholars of the Balkan Peninsula and Eastern Europe. Prof. Todorova’s seminal book, Imagining the Balkans (1997), prompted a broad conversation in the social sciences and humanities about the Balkans as location and imaginary.
Reviewed by Anca Pop
François Jullien is a world-renowned French philosopher and sinologist, a most widely translated thinker with a prolific oeuvre on Chinese thought and culture. Having uniquely forged an intellectual reputation as an intercultural philosopher, he aptly holds the Alterity Chair at “Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme” in Paris.
By Odd Arne Westad
At the beginning of the 21st century, China is moving ever closer to the center of international affairs. This course traces the country’s complex foreign relations over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine its path in the decades to come.
By Andreas Bøje Forsby
This human rights dialogue can be traced back to the 1990s, with the moral outcry in the West in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre.
By Alberto Turkstra
At a time when other regions and geopolitical hotspots are dominating the political and media headlines, Central Asia has been quietly taking advantage of the extraordinary opportunities deriving from the region’s increasingly central role in the numerous connectivity initiatives and corridors that are traversing Eurasia, of which China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a primary example.
Translated by Audrey Young
in that place there was a woman who did not want to have children from her womb. She asked the men to bring her their wives’ children
so she could educate them in a large house…
By Eamonn Butler
In July 2018, Bulgaria, fresh off the back of its EU Presidency, will host the seventh annual summit for “Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries.” More commonly known 16+1 Initiative, it is a diplomatic platform coordinated by China, to support institutional coordination of relations between China and sixteen countries from the Central and East European (CEE) region.
By Alexandra-Maria Bocse
The EU also cooperates with China towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement in the framework of initiatives such the Clean Energy Ministerial, a global forum promoting policies and sharing best practices in order to accelerate the transition to clean energy.
By Madeleine Herren
Chinese news is presenting the new silk road project with a strong reference to a deep historical past, imaging the silk road as a bustling trading route established centuries ago. The narrative usually does not mention the very fact that the concept of a silk road in the sense of a coherent trading route only surfaced as recently as 1877.
By Ralph Weber and Silvana Tarlea
It is difficult to disregard the importance of the relationship between Europe and China. The European Union (EU) is China’s biggest trading partner and China is the EU’s second-biggest trading partner after the United States. In order to enhance and consolidate relations with China, the EU has provided considerable research funding to Chinese universities over the years.
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of Glasgow.
By Jan Knoerich and Simon Vitting
This short article presents a wide range of perceptions and views on Chinese investments in Europe, from positive and encouraging to highly critical, in a way rarely discussed by one individual stakeholder group.
By Eamonn Butler
This course is designed to appeal to students interested in the geopolitics and international relations of the Central European region. It will provide students with the opportunity to examine the key foreign policies, geopolitical developments and international political relations of Central Europe, with specific attention given to the Visegrád countries of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.
Translated by Gnaomi Siemens
All over the earth are countless creatures we can never know. / Wherever water encircles the world’s bright breast, legions /
of land-roving beasts, huge swarms of birds, crowd against / the roaring surf, the surge of the salty waves.
By Xinghua Liu
Hit by the sovereign debt crisis, Europe has proven eager to obtain China’s support in terms of spurring trade and investment. Yet, when BRI was proposed in late 2013, European countries had a lukewarm stance.
Translated by Will Vanderhyden
My mother—known as “Fair Sarah”—died during the great influenza epidemic, when I was less than a year old. I got sick too. And against all prognoses, condemned by the doctors, I survived, and no one dared call it miracle
By Thomas Lundberg
The purpose of this course is to examine and compare the political processes, governing institutions and political economies of contemporary European societies. Through the in-depth study of country case studies, we will analyse how history has shaped the political and economic structures of these societies and the extent to which these structures determine contemporary political outcomes in both the advanced industrial democracies of the west and the transition countries of the east.
Translated by Todd Portnowitz
nothing but iron mouth / a chest of ash and shadow / stiff atonal mouth / and scattered limbs
Interviewed by Daniela Irrera
Mario Telò is an eminent scholar in the International Relations and European Studies field. He has just edited Deepening the EU-China Partnership: Bridging Institutional and Ideational Differences in an Unstable World with Ding Chun and Zhang Xiaotong (Routledge, 2018) where he discusses the relations between China and Europe and launches some perspectives on the future of this partnership, facing the regional and global political and economic developments and the challenges posed by the current instability.
Reviewed by Brandon Hunter
A book about “the desire for belonging” that explores “the ways the cultural logics of kinship inform imaginings of self in relation to others.”
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Samantha Lomb (History), and Louie Dean Valencia-García (History).
Reviewed by Scott Smith
This overview of tuition and subsidy regimes is important because of the dearth in empirical data around what drives tuition fees across the OECD, as well as what accounts for the stickiness of subsidies even when governments are led by rightist political parties that traditionally espouse greater privatization and deregulation.
By Luca Anceschi
This course aims to present students with an advanced introduction to the politics and international relations of post-Soviet Central Asia – a region that is here defined as the ensemble of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Reviewed by Jamie Blake
Particularly within the realm of film, landmarks of creativity are rarely the product of a singular mind. Rather, a great cinematic experience is often the result of artistic collaboration at its finest.
Interviewed by Sherman Teichman
A world-renowned expert on what he has termed the “Global Cold War,” he is an analyst of contemporary international history.
Interviewed by Kelly McKowen
Who are the makers behind the “Made in Italy” label prized by the world’s fashion-conscious consumers? In Prato, a small Tuscan city with a long history of textile production, the makers come increasingly from a growing community of transnational Chinese migrants.
By Dustin Garrick
Water is vital for human well-being, economic development and a healthy environment. Each year shocks such as floods and droughts have devastating impacts on people and economies worldwide. Ensuring access to an acceptable quantity and quality of water, and protection from water-related shocks is a defining challenge for society in the 21st century.
Interviewed by Lara Davis
One of our most recent initiatives has been the creation of a Joint Graduate School with Nankai University in China. This is a unique development which is the first such joint graduate school between a UK and Chinese university and reflects the important strategic partnership which we have with Nankai.
By Emma Meurs
IHE Delft is the largest international graduate water education facility in the world and is based in Delft, the Netherlands. Since 1957, the Institute has provided water education and training to professionals from over 190 countries, the vast majority from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
By Mette Frimodt-Møller
A wide range of research is conducted into water at the University of Copenhagen, and collectively, it covers the whole water cycle. The research includes, for example, the interaction between soil, water, and biological production, water quality in developing countries, and modelling of how pollutants are transported via water.
By Eamonn Butler and Nicole Shea
It has been more than 40 years since the first formal, diplomatic relations between China and the European Union (EU) were established. In the subsequent years, relations between these two global economic powerhouses have significantly developed, with both the EU and China publishing and implementing a number of communiqués intended to build and strengthen partnership.
Curated by Nicole Shea
While Xin Song’s work highlights the ancient folk art tradition of paper-cutting, her collages made from recycled magazines also cut through modern consumerism and wastefulness.
Translated by Emma Ramadan
In an angel’s bed in a wool dress she sleeps / The house is cold the walls white like a dream / motionless death takes a seat / and for two weeks awaits the end of the temporary peace
By Patrick Bayer
At the end of last year, the Chinese government approved plans for a national emissions trading scheme. While many of the details are still in the works, the biggest carbon emitter’s commitment to set up carbon markets nationwide has important implications for global climate mitigation.
By Marci Vogel
As reflected in its title, Galaxies intérieures straddles the worlds of material and spirit, creating a convergence of inner and outer realms, an interior emotional galaxy intimately tied to earthly experience — personal, political, and linguistic.
By Pekka Tuominen
Kontula has never been a strictly delineated district, but has constantly had a dynamic relationship with urban and suburban spaces.
By Heike Oevermann
Industrial heritage is not only about identity, memory, traditions, and labor movements; it belongs to cities, sites, and their transformations.
By Jacob Dahlstrup
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
By Juli Székely
Following the year of 1993, when several socialist statues were relocated to a designated Statue Park in Budapest, the previous memory-scape of the city considerably changed; partly remaining visible, partly disappearing.
Reviewed by Adrien Fauve
As a virtuosic ethnographer and social scientist, he traces evolving aspirations, creative behavior, and unexpected consequences.
Interviewed by Eszter Gantner
In 2013, a network of urban researchers with various national and disciplinary background was founded in Berlin. This small community of committed scholars working in different fields of urban studies, had been linked by the approach of creating an interdisciplinary and transnational discursive space for a free exchange on art, public spaces, and urban activism.
By Christoph Sommer
Amidst the “overtourism” debate going on in Europe, one question pops up routinely. Namely, how much tourism do cities bear?
By Cor Wagenaar
Only in the late eighteenth century, curing patients was identified as the primary function of hospitals, and the provision of clean air as the best tool to do so. This view was propagated by medical doctors and produced buildings in which medicine, paradoxically, only played a marginal role.
By Lilia Voronkova and Oleg Pachekov
Disappearance of public space in cities due to their privatization and commoditization has become a truism in the twentieth century. What is less discussed is another danger — lack of publics, which leads to the deficiency of demand for public space.
Reviewed by Alejandro J. Gomez-del-Moral
As a history of the beliefs, expectations, motives, and modus operandi of the architects and urban planners who masterminded postwar Europe’s wave of shopping center construction, this volume is superb.
By Eszter Gantner
We consider urban interventions to be practices in which the most diverse participants make their socio-political positions and genuine private interests clear and visible and exert their influence on the public space.
By Ayse Erek
Debates on the shrinking public space in Istanbul are not new. Since the last two decades, they have been crystalized in relation to the topics such as the regeneration of old neighborhoods, protecting heritage, the right for the waterfronts and green spaces, as well as the public but unused spaces, revived with old or new ways of usages.
Reviewed by Yaron Ben-Naeh and Tamir Karkason
Jewish Salonica is a cornerstone of Sephardi legacy, without which it is impossible to describe the history of Sephardi Jews after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula. Alongside Istanbul, Salonica stands at the center of the study on Ottoman Jewry and the Jewish Sephardi Diaspora.
Interviewed by Eszter Gantner
Kaschuba has been addressing key issues of post-modern urban European life for decades.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Samantha Lomb (History), and Louie Dean Valencia-García (History).
By Nicole Shea and Eszter Gantner
By now, urban public spaces have become strongly contested resources in present European cities, where multiple agents are claiming the right to these spaces. Reacting to this development, this special issue concentrates on European cities, focusing on their public spaces, their histories and their rich heritages.
Curated by Nicole Shea
The modern metropolis thrives on the creativity of its citizens, with the arts and culture as revitalizing forces.
Interviewed by Mara-Katharina Thurnhofer
European migration research has been shining a spotlight on various global and local trends.
Interviewed by Andrea Recek
Lumedia Musicworks is a non-profit organization that creates concert seasons equally present in the local community and on the internet. We design our seasons around three words: Collaborate, Innovate, and Captivate.
By Michael Haspel
With both areas connected with the Reformation, the prince expanded his power and united several layers of ruling in his control.
Translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen
She is angry about being an export. She is angry that adoption agencies in sending as well as receiving countries make money off transnational adoption.
Interviewed by Ida Bencke
Short periods of time spent in Norway have proven generative for engaging Norwegian as literary material for my lack of fluency.
By Foster Chamberlin
The recent push for independence in Catalonia represents the greatest challenge to the authority of the Spanish state since at least the coup attempt of 1981.
Translated by Paul Cunningham
The wolf is so small / The wolf is so very small / I see the wolf die / I don’t know what to do / I see that the wolf is on the ground / I see the wolf die / I stand beside the wolf
Reviewed by Jorge Marí
Spanish film aficionados will immediately recognize the image as a frame from Pedro Lazaga’s 1967 comedy Sor Citroën.
Reviewed by Danielle Hanley
Highmore makes a number of provocative and ultimately productive choices for his project. First, he chooses to use the terms “feeling” and “mood” over “affect.” He does so because these terms are vague and allow the author to move between habituated and the emotional, the quotidian and the intense aspects of lived experience.
Translated by Susanna Nied
my fathers mother kept smoking after her stroke / one side of her face was paralyzed / she could just barely hold her lips together, they werent airtight / it must have affected the strength of her smokes / i think now
Curated by Kayla Maiuri
In this photography series, we showcase the works of three emerging Finnish artists, Anni Hanén, Kimmo Metsäranta, and Jaakko Kahilaniemi.
By Susan Smith-Peter
Russians knew of the idea of civil society for nearly 150 years before the end of serfdom. In 1703, the first Russian use of the term drew upon Aristotle’s concept of a civil society that was contrasted to an uncivil, or uncivilized society.
By Yiannis Kokosalakis
The question thus remained; what did Lenin’s vanguard actually do? One of the most influential social historians of the Stalin period described party activism as a paradox, pointing out that the many thousands of communist rank-and-filers were representatives of political authority, but their activities brought them to conflict with functionaries of the state everywhere.
Translated by Meg Matich
I invited the biologist into my back garden / he marveled at the lightbulbs / and took to dancing like a night moth
Translated by Johannes Goransson
She covers herself in down! / defiled and stained / Roaring silk flower / jealous and yellow
Translated by Julia Johanne Tolo
This is the globe. It’s blue, with green, orange, and yellow sections. Sometimes pink or red. It turns in the dark, and has two white spots. The North Pole and the South Pole. If you want to leave the globe you have to send an application to somewhere like NASA, and you’ll need to be good at physics, math, and chemistry.
Reviewed by Lucy Popescu
In her latest novel, Daša Drndić interweaves fiction, reality, history, and memory to terrific effect.
Translated by Niina Pollari
She believes she’s very happy. She tells herself that a loving husband, three beautiful children, a red granny cottage in an idyllic countryside setting, and a newish Opel station wagon in the yard is exactly what she’s always wanted.
Translated by Kerri Pierce
Truth to tell, I’ve always thought that, when it comes to the animal kingdom, starlings are the creatures that most resemble humans. Could be that’s just wishful thinking.
Translated by Owen Witesman
Imagine you are partially blind. Minus eleven diopters. Imagine a dark exam room at an optometrist’s office. You’re sitting in a comfortable leather chair, afraid you’ll lose your sight entirely. You’ve carefully placed your old glasses on the table. The plastic rims, electric-blue ten years ago, are scuffed now.
Translated by Meg Matich
The most preposterous figure in Icelandic folklore is the indomitable wife of My Dear Jon who travels to the kingdom of heaven with the soul of her husband in a sack, to smuggle him into Paradise; she’s a woman who slings insults at the saints and slut shames the Virgin Mary before Jesus Christ himself arrives at the gates of heaven to bid her, with ceremonious tact, to get lost.
Translated by Meg Matich
Ripples in the bath. You sit / naked on the tub’s ledge, feet touch bottom, / blood drips from your nose, aquiline.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Samantha Lomb (History), Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), and Daniela Irrera (International Relations).
Reviewed by Zita Eva Rohr
While the stories of medieval kings, and indeed their kingships, have received considerable scholarly attention for decades, if not for a hundred years or more, studies of medieval queens, and queenship in general, as legitimate fields of cross-disciplinary research really only received their “shot in the arm” following John Carmi Parson’s ground-breaking and durable collection of essays, Medieval Queenship, first published in 1993.
Reviewed by Alyssa Maraj Grahame
Despite owning the distinction of being the first national economy to experience the full brunt of the financial crisis in 2008, and the first to “recover” from it, Iceland is no exception to widespread patterns of ongoing consequences.
Reviewed by Crosbie Smith
This is an ambitious, provocative, and at times idiosyncratic book. The dust-jacket fly-leaf declares its broad aims as the telling of “the story of the complex relationship between the Victorians and their wondrous steamships … it is a fascinating glimpse into a world where an empire felt powerful and anything seemed possible – if there was an engine behind it.”
By Katrine Øgaard Jensen and Kayla Maiuri
A selection of emerging writers from Nordic countries—Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and the Faroe Islands.
Translated by Catherine Cobham
We love you, Europe. We love your art and hate your colonialist history, love your theatre and hate your concentration camps, love your music and hate the sound of your bombs
Translated by Meg Matich
wet paper / tangled in birch branches / inside the window, smoking, / a woman with red hair / says to herself: / they can’t hear me anymore
Translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen
Rain clouds and fox traces / newly-fledged birds / a pair of rotten cherries hitting the ground / an inevitable detachment, a dry release
Translated by David M. Smith
I kept my mouth shut and realized that Stovner was a very small place, and Tante Ulrikkes vei even smaller. I realized that in Stovner, people lived in houses on one side and housing on the other, and that the two were nothing alike, something that held true for Oslo just as much as the rest of the world.
Reviewed by Lee Douglas
Broad in scope and interdisciplinary in tone, the book examines the political, social, and symbolic lives of the bodies of Europe’s most singular tyrants, including Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini, who are placed side by side with analyses of other dictators and despots from Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia.
By Jonathan Bach
View Jonathans course syllabus for Migration of Memory at the New School.
By Dacia Viejo-Rose
The objective of this paper is to provide candidates with a sound knowledge about reasons for and ways of managing the past. During the course, candidates will develop a broad understanding of the diverse issues involved in heritage management, as well as an understanding of the types of agents and instruments involved.
Translated by Larissa Kyzer
My hands get no cleaner than an old bathtub. My fingernails are all clipped as short as possible, but the chemicals have managed to claw their way through the dead skin, into the bone. As if there’s no enamel.
Reviewed by Alison Sperling
Haraway engages the feminist techno-scientific thinkers and ideas that have always marked her work, as she stays with different sticky, murky, complicated practices and companions, laying out the ethical dilemmas presented on a damaged planet and making suggestions about how we are to navigate them.
Reviewed by Thomas Kuehn
Collections of essays are sometimes uneven, but no such weakness plagues Marriage in Europe. The editor has solicited contributions from an impressive array of leading scholars in the field, and from eight different countries.
By Daniela Irrera
Among the EU policies, humanitarian aid has been one of the most expressive, expected to represent and apply the European principles and values in the world. It has changed a lot over the decades in its strategy, actors, and tools, trying to adapt to the transformations in the global environment and to fulfill international duties.
By Julian Jürgenmeyer
Martin Schulz went head-on against Angela Merkel: the German chancellor was a “vacuum cleaner of ideas,” sucking up the programmatic core of other parties and selling it as her own whenever public opinion polling promises a profit; her “systematic refusal of politics” was responsible for the rise of right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD); her election campaign nothing short of “scandalous.” The problem with Schulz’s fierce attack: it came too late.
By Chris Boonzaaier and Harry Wels
The commodification of culture in tourism is often critiqued and lamented in academic texts. What this process often seems to entail is that so called “cultures” of local communities are showcased to tourists from around the world. Often, it is especially what is considered “exotic” and “indigenous” that is showcased to tourists.
Translated by Todd Fredson
I dream the poem of a borderless sea / I dance a welcoming music in my skin / first ground for any home / while the hands of plenty the portly souls / weave their barbed wire
Translated by John K. Cox
Ivan urged his mother impatiently on, watching her root around in the ruins on Uskočka Street. He screamed at her, flapping his arms, cursed, threatened her, looked around in nervousness and fright: It’s already getting dark! But Milica, not paying him any heed, sat down on a smashed ceiling joist, and, now with her cane and now with her bare hand, she picked through the indistinguishable mass of rags, furniture, burnt scraps…
By Sokari Douglas Camp
In this art series, Nigerian artist Sokari Douglas Camp finds herself inspired by European painters William Blake, Botticelli, and Michelangelo. These pieces aim to signify beauty and hope.
By Peo Hansen and Stefan Jonsson
The history of European integration and colonialism is best understood through a geopolitical entity once known as Eurafrica.
By Annalisa Butticci
African women and men are mobilizing the resources of the long-established African diasporas, joining local civil rights associations, and fiercely expressing their anger at the racial violence and the economic and social injustice.
By Veit Bachmann
The term “Eurafrica” invokes a global panregion that has long and pervasively been a fantasy of imperialistic geopolitics, yet that has never existed. First, the spatial construction of panregions is in itself problematic as it describes a “large functional area linking core states to resource peripheries and cutting across latitudinal distributed environmental zones” and is thus inherently exploitative and imperial. Second, it is superficial, incomplete, and possibly essentializing as it suggests a homogeneity that has never existed.
By Chika Unigwe
But suffering is not without its lessons. Here, she has learned thrift. Not the thriftiness of her mother back home in Nigeria who bargains for palm oil until she gets a good price, and boasts.
Reviewed by Naomi Falk
Ndulue directs the mind away from imagining stereotypes of times and places and coaxes it towards a sustained patience with language, one that melts the text into the reader.
Translated by Baba Badji
Here is the Sun/ Which tightens the breasts of the virgins/ Who makes the old men smile on the green benches/ Who would awaken the dead under a maternal earth.
By Adriana Chira
In our geographic imaginaries, Spanish colonialism tends to be mapped onto South America. But the last Spanish colony to claim independence from Spain in 1968 was a territory in West Africa—Equatorial Guinea
Reviewed by Andrei Rogatchevski
Hůlová’s first-person narrative on behalf of a thirty-something female prostitute attempts to establish the image of prostitutes as women of integrity, who provide a service to society by furnishing their clients with “a bit of humanity.”
Reviewed by Michael Collins
The ambitious aim of Jansen and Osterhammel’s Decolonization is to provide a comparative evaluation of an immensely complex global historical process in a relatively concise volume. The authors revised and expanded their original 2013 German language version for the current text, whose purpose is to explain how the de-legitimation of European colonial rule over Africa and Asia during the course of the twentieth century involved a broad array of structural and normative factors.
Translated by Allison M. Charette
You cannot walk fast in Antananarivo. There’s a weight in the air, a heat that makes everything slow and viscous. There’s a constant small of noxious gas, an acid odor that gets into your lungs, infests your muscles. There’s the red dust, blackened by exhaust fumes, and the perpetual suffocation of the city, so precariously perched, so dry.
By Marcia C. Schenck
It is 2014. The faded flag the German Democratic Republic used from 1959 to 1990 blows in the wind on a makeshift flagpole in the heart of Maputo. It consists of the tricolor: black, red, and yellow, and features the symbols of the worker and peasant state: a compass and hammer encircled with rye.
By Margaret Andersen
Family allowances became a focal point in debates about rights and equality within a larger imperial framework as Moroccans increasingly traveled to France to work in the postwar period.
By Amy L. Hubbell
France’s former French citizens of Algeria, the Pieds-Noirs, include one of Europe’s largest diaspora communities in the twentieth century. This diverse group of people settled in Algeria during the colonial years, and after one-hundred and thirty years of French colonial rule, Algeria fought for and won its independence in 1962. The seven-year war was traumatic for both the Algerians and the French living in the colony, and nearly one million people crossed the Mediterranean during and after the war to make a new home in France.
By Anna Arnone and David O’Kane
Certain historical incidents can crystallize and condense the reality of an entire era. The mass drowning of at least 500 migrants, mostly Eritrean, near the island of Lampedusa on the third of October 2013, was one such incident. It was part of a wider set of political logics that characterize this era, logics that include those described by Barbara Pinelli in her ethnography of the conditions endured by asylum seekers in the reception centers of the Italian state.
By Thaddeus Sunseri
Although rinderpest was long known in Eurasia, emanating from the central Asian steppes with trade, warfare, and herd migration, its arrival in sub-Saharan Africa in 1888, and subsequent spread throughout the continent over the next decade, is surprising.
By Nina Berman
Across the world, the effects of neoliberal capitalism and anthropocentric excesses act as stressors on people and their natural habitat. On the sub-Saharan African continent, neoliberal economic development, in conjunction with economic and political programs of authoritarian postcolonial rulers, have increased the economic and social precarity of the urban and rural poor.
The European Studies Book Award shortlist has been announced. The award honors the work of talented scholars who have written their first book on any subject in European Studies published within a two-year period.
By Michael Meeuwis
Dutch has been present in South Africa since the establishment in 1652 of the first permanent Dutch settlement around what is now Cape Town. In the decades and centuries that followed, the Dutch spoken there, detached from its ancestor in Europe, underwent internal developments as well as influences from other languages.
Translated by Baba Badji
One open prism placed at random from the thistles / and not one / reason to live
Translated by Hope Campbell Gustafson
Mama built our house with flamboyant tree branches and braids of palms, mixing a paste of resin, dung and red sand to protect us from water and from the monsoons.
Reviewed by Séverin Guillard
This music genre sheds light on postcolonial issues that, despite having been crucial in European politics, have often been put aside in most debates. As immigrants from former colonized countries settle in the heart of the ex-colonial capitals, hip hop helps them to “flip the script” on the dominant discourse on Europe, forcing the nation to see them as an inherent part of its identity.
Reviewed by Mark Lawrence
Nina Berman’s Germans on the Kenyan Coast: Land, Charity, and Romance is a thoughtful effort to draw connections between the ever-vexed land question in the postcolonial world, the frequently oversimplified complexity of the history behind this, and the often-marginalized ways in which the personal has played as important a role as the political in externally-driven material development in Africa.
Reviewed by Özden Ocak
The last few years have left their mark on the history of humankind with the deadliest shipwrecks known to the Mediterranean, unnumbered capsized “migrant boats” trying to reach the European shores, and dead bodies washed ashore after failed attempts to cross European maritime borders—such as Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian boy trying to reach the Greek Island of Kos from Turkey.
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Brandeis University.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
The anthropologist delves into her disciplinary approach to the study of Africa, some of her classroom pedagogical strategies, her fieldwork experience in Kenya, and her work on the dimensions of African whiteness. As she reviews issues of race, technology, language, privilege, land tenure, and national loyalty, she highlights the many layers of post-colonial plural identities and belongings.
Translated by Alice Inggs
When slavery ended/ in America a slave got/ 40 acres anna mule/ to start his life with
By Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg and Alma Gottlieb
The lives, status, and images of immigrants may constitute the single-most urgent human issue.
By Janet McIntosh
View this course syllabus for Colonialism and Postcoloniality in Africa: Encounters and Dilemmas from the Anthropology Department at Brandeis University.
Reviewed by Christopher Tozzi
These essays offer valuable and fascinating information on the experiences of Muslim troops within diverse regions of Europe during the wars of the twentieth century.
Reviewed by Yousuf Al-Bulushi
When Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994, much of the Western world rejoiced at the prospect of a “reasonable” transition from apartheid to liberal democracy on the African continent. Mandela was seen by many as the best equipped to realize the goals of freedom, justice, and equality in the African country that had remained under white settler domination for longer than any other on the continent.
Translated by Cole Swensen
They have the extreme, soft, palpable, tangible sensation of glimmering each with his neck plunged in a basin of water, made artificial, they look at each other, clearly apt to scurry off, they know nothing of each other, to scrutinize, they possess the fragile, fluttering, heightened, exclamatory sensation of being able to leave at any moment, whenever they want
By Carina Ray
View this course syllabus for Race, Sex, and Colonialism from the History Department at Brandeis University.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), Mihai Sebe (Political Science), and Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science).
Interviewed by Sherman Teichman
The current conflicts in Africa are concentrated in specific regions, but they are intense, volatile, and some pose great challenges to both regional and global governance and stability.
By Hélène B. Ducros
With this special feature, EuropeNow confirms the web of connectivity that exists between nations of Europe and nations of Africa, as not only rooted in geopolitics and global economic flows, but also increasingly in global cultural flows, which support the enduring linkages and reciprocal influences between the two continents and shape the ways in which both Africans and Europeans apprehend the local and the global.
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Alain leaves everything behind walking, walking toward the station… walking toward Claire, toward a happiness cold as the sun in this country.
By Daniel Mengara
History owes the term “Françafrique” to François-Xavier Verschave, the late French human-rights activist who enshrined the notion in a number of groundbreaking books that provide an extensive background to France’s neocolonialist policies towards Africa.
Curated by Kayla Maiuri
Through the works of three African-European artists, “It Dwells Within” depicts the contemporary and historical relationship between Europe and Africa.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
While many elements of the extreme far-right were suppressed after the Second World War, today, neo-fascists, white nationalists, far-right traditionalists, and new groups have emerged, such as Génération Identitaire (Generation Identity)—a trans-European, networked group of primarily young people who advocate for a “Europe of Nations.”
Interviewed by Masha Udensiva-Brenner
Krasikov immigrated to the United States in 1987 from the Soviet Republic of Georgia. Her critically-acclaimed debut short story collection, One More Year, was published in 2008. She was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists of 2017. I spent an afternoon with Krasikov in the Hudson Valley discussing her novel in the context of the recent global paradigm shift, and Russian-American political attitudes.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
From its beginning, ITP/Arktos heavily promoted the work of far-right philosopher Julius Evola, whose ideas were popular amongst fascist thinkers and in the press under Mussolini. Politically, Evola located himself to the right of fascism. Like many of his fascist contemporaries, Evola wanted to eschew modernity to restore an imagined, glorious past, delving into a sort of occultism that obscured the rhetoric of his fascistic ideologies.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
Established by many of the original ITP collaborators, most of whom no longer are with the company, Arktos dominates the field of far-right publishing, and has published and translated authors with the purpose of radically transforming the conservative and neoliberal right—calling forth a return of the “real right,” as Arktos C.E.O., Daniel Friberg, articulates in his less-than-eloquent manifesto work published in 2015.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
Over the last decade, ITP/Arktos has created a trans-European and global Nationalist-Traditionalist network, translating and editing texts that have appealed to supporters of both nationalist and neo-traditionalist ideologies.
By Peter Debaere
Under the banner of “Make America Great Again,” Trump took every opportunity to call for more protectionism and to blame “bad trade deals” for the predicament of the United States.
By Sheri Berman
Democracy today seems to be in constant crisis. Democratic backsliding has occurred in countries from Venezuela to Poland, and autocratic leaders, including Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, proudly proclaim that the era of liberal democracy is over.
By Samantha Fox
Dark, with its drama centered on the consequences of nuclear energy production—social and economic consequences, in addition to those more speculative and supernatural—illustrates the degree to which changing energy politics serve as the backdrop to everyday life in Germany. One hopes that the show can export Germany’s attention to energy politics to an international audience.
By Jan Willem Duyvendak and Josip Kesic
Wilders has not only dominated the public sphere in the Netherlands for more than fifteen years, but has also become a prominent voice in transnational anti-Islam circles.
By Juan Andrés García Martín
Since the economic crisis began, Catalan nationalism has abandoned its traditional cooperation with the central government. This radicalization happened under the argument of lack of economic assistance, the impossibility of recognizing of its particularities, and political repression, leading towards a unilateral policy. Moreover, Catalan nationalism identified not only a foreign enemy — Spain — but domestic enemies — those who support unity with Spain.
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole
Later, to restore the sense of uniqueness, of something transcending the symphony, vocal force and splendid voices were sought after.
By Agnieszka Pasieka
Among numerous questions that have been posed after recent electoral successes of conservative, right-wing, populist parties at least one seems to be repeated ad nauseam: “Who voted for them?” Whether this question is asked on the occasion of a dinner among friends, an academic conference, or a business meeting, it tends to provoke a somewhat comforting reaction: those who committed “such terrible electoral mistakes” were misled, driven by emotions (usually “anger” and “fear”), and deluded by hopes of economic gains.
By Jonathan Harris
Nativism and nationalist populism, despite Macron’s 2017 victory over the Front National, are a significant part of contemporary French politics. Popular concerns about the weakening power of the nation-state to control the economic and demographic effects of globalization contribute to xenophobic, and particularly Islamophobic, attitudes in broader contemporary French state and society, predominantly directed at France’s large Maghrebi postcolonial diaspora.
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of Virginia.
By Jan Čulík
Zeman’s victory is a sign of the emergence of politics of parasitism as a mainstream political strategy within Central Europe in general, and the Czech Republic in particular. Both Miloš Zeman and most Czech politicians have realized that in order to gain substantial political support amongst voters, they no longer need to develop strategies for the solution of many of the existing, often intractable, social problems. The only thing they need to do in order to gain influence and money is to peddle fear.
By Christopher Impiglia
What the alt-right still lacks is a leader that can not only champion many of its ideals and bring them to the forefront of the political debate, but outright embraces it in return; despite flattering calls of “Heil Trump,” at Charlottesville, the president has increasingly distanced himself from the alt-right, most recently by ousting their mouthpiece—Bannon—from the White House, although his policies and consistent, racist comments continue to reveal clear alt-right sympathies.
Interviewed by Sherman Teichman
Liberal democracy has been the bulwark against authoritarianism, ever since the end of World War II.
Reviewed by Keith Brown
There is an art to communicating the urgency, excitement, and significance of microhistory.
Interviewed by Morten Høi Jensen
In democratic nations there is usually a multitude of narratives about people in power, but in these one-man dictatorships there’s just one, and its usually very warped and far-fetched. So I was very interested in the idea of Ceaușescu’s narrative in Romania, and of how one’s own narrative about one’s life clashes with that larger, overpowering official narrative. And then, of course, there’s the fact that, from a storytelling perspective, in a world in which these very rigid rules are imposed on you there’s much more at stake.
Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać and David Williams
Marlene was Polish (in age she could have been my daughter) and she occasionally cleaned my apartment for ten Euros an hour. Who knows how she’d found her way to Amsterdam and from where, but in the flood of words she showered on me in her poor, strongly Polish accented English, I remembered mention of a collective somewhere in Belgium with its leader whom she referred to, reverently, as “Baba.”
Reviewed by Cathrine Thorleifsson
Teitlebaum gathers striking empirical knowledge on the role of music and expressive culture in reconfiguring neo-nationalist thought and action.
Reviewed by Michelle Royer
Since the 1980s, Western countries have seen an increasing number of films by female directors who challenge the mainstream representation of women, and attempt to present women’s lives and identities in a new light. Kate Ince’s volume offer new readings of several key French and British female filmmakers of the last twenty-five years, and shows that feminist philosophers can provide the tools for rethinking female subjectivities in cinema.
By Kieran Kelley
The specters of anti-social criminality and death by overdose, amplified by crisis-inflected media coverage, loom large in public discourse. In the face of the uncertainties and crises that proliferate around drugs, the language of social inclusion and human rights raises new perplexities.
Reviewed by Fearghal McGarry
The comparative approach has long been recognized as an effective means of analyzing nationalism, even if studies of nationalist movements remain mostly confined within nation-state frameworks. While the appeal of nationalist rhetoric is rooted in its claim to represent the unique values, aspirations, and destiny of a specific national community, comparative studies emphasize the political and cultural commonalities shared by various brands of nationalism.
By Esther Dischereit
Three months after the Nazi march and terror attack in Charlottesville, a film that seeks to unearth what exactly happened there on August 12, 2017 celebrated its premiere in the very same place.The film, directed by Brian Wimer and Jackson Landers, is called Charlottesville: Our Streets.
By Joshua Kleinberg
It’s not the threat of violence. It’s the questions I’m expected to answer before the violence that bother me. All stemming from premises I don’t agree with, but what are you going to get into a debate with a man who just caught you making out with his “domestic partner?”
Translated by Daniel Evans Pritchard
It was a time of infamy and lies. / The nation itself was dressed up / like a squalid clown to draw / attention away from our wound.
By Louie Dean Valencia-García
Over the course of this series, readers will be introduced to a hybrid print/digital publisher that has brought esoteric, fascist ideologies back from the grave. Each installment will delve into another aspect of the media company, outlining Arktos’ history, while describing more broadly the ways its collaborators are using both the internet and analogue media to promote fascistic ideologies.
Interviewed by Maria Lechtarova
The interdisciplinary lens afforded by European Studies has the potential not only to initiate a dynamic redefinition of how we study and conceive of Europe, particularly at this critical juncture in its history, but it also has the potential to be transformational in our corner of the academy.
By Manuela Achilles and Hannah Winnick
The violence of white supremacists in Charlottesville, the enduring debate over Confederate symbols and statues, and the broader reemergence of a nationalist political rhetoric that harkens back to a mythical Golden Age have left many Americans (especially also young Americans) hungry for a national conversation about their country’s history and collective memory. There is a renewed urgency not only to reckon with the past, but to more deeply understand history’s architectural power over society today.
Reviewed by Donald Sutherland
Until fairly recently, historians of the Revolution were reluctant to tell such stories but McPhee shows there were plenty of atrocities and lynchings along with the outrages of the revolutionary tribunals.
By Manuela Achilles and Matthew Burtner
After the events of August 11-12, faculty, staff, and students of the UVa College of Arts & Sciences responded quickly and thoughtfully with events and programming that interrogated what happened, the history behind it, the legal and social context, and much more. Performance and art events swiftly organized by students and faculty demonstrated that our community rejects the hatred and violence on display on our campus and the city of Charlottesville.
Reviewed by Graeme Callister
The French Revolution has long been acknowledged as a watershed in the history of France. Over the past two-and-a-quarter centuries it has spawned a plethora of studies from scholars, statesmen, political scientists, and polemical ideologues, while the wars that engulfed Europe from 1792-1815 are amongst the most written about in history.
Reviewed by Michelle Lynn Kahn
As rightwing nativist parties gain traction across the Continent, Europeans’ fraught relationship to ethnically and religiously diverse minority populations, and particularly Muslim migrants, is at the forefront of national and international debates. These debates cannot, however, be understood solely in the vacuum of the ongoing “refugee crisis,” nor in light of the rising Islamophobia since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Reviewed by Henri-Pierre Mottironi
While many fear a possible retreat of democracy following these reactionary surges, Daniel Ziblatt’s Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy demonstrates that strong and well-organized conservative parties paradoxically played a crucial role in the democratization and constitutional stability of European countries from the nineteenth century to the Second World War.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), Samantha Lomb (History), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), and Hélène Ducros (Geography).
By Kyrill Kunakhovich, Manuela Achilles, and Janet Horne
This reading list provides links to first responses of UVa faculty and students to the rallies of white supremacists and neo-Nazis on University Grounds and in downtown Charlottesville.
Reviewed by Caroline Ford
Enright argues that it was in the context of the 2005 riots, which first erupted in Clichy-sur-Bois, that Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected right-wing president of France in 2007, proposed a regional development plan that would become Grand Paris.
By Manuela Achilles, Kyrill Kunakhovich, and Nicole Shea
This special issue examines the resurgence of far-right groups, considering how recent events in Charlottesville can illuminate radical movements in Europe. It focuses on three key elements: nationalism, nativism, and the revolt against globalization. Nationalism was the word most associated with the Charlottesville rally, whose participants often called themselves “white nationalists.” By this, they meant that a racialized national identity should be the condition for political belonging.
By Isaac Ariail Reed
On the night of September 12, 2017, a group of students shrouded the statue of Jefferson. They did so in memoriam of Heather Heyer, who was killed a month before by a white supremacist when she was protesting the fascist rally in downtown Charlottesville on August 12. They did so in protest of the university’s paltry response to the violent fascists on its lawn — and at this same statue — on the night of August 11.
Curated by Nicole Shea
The perception of a safe home is closely linked with the populist view that women’s “intended role” is at home, as dutiful wife and mother.
Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen
anima of a dismantled marine among the poppies / and the eternal snows south of Kandahar anima of a banker
By John Shattuck
View this course syllabus for US-EU Relations in the 21st Century at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
By Eric Lee
While the Russian Bolsheviks were clamping down on trade unions, which were dismissed by Trotsky as being under the control of “chatterboxes,” in Menshevik-led Georgia they thrived – retaining their independence from the state and winning a constitutional right to strike. They also played a key role in a remarkable institution known as the Wages Board, which consisted of ten representatives each from the employers and trade unions.
By EuropeNow Editors
The EuropeNow Editors choose their favorite literary translations of 2017.
By Anne Price-Owen
For over three decades, devotees of the painter-poet David Jones have waited eagerly for the definitive biography and attendant revelations concerning this extraordinary artist and poet, and they have not been disappointed. Thomas Dilworth’s book is a compelling read, and his claim that Jones was the greatest native British Modernist working in twentieth century Britain is convincingly articulated.
Reviewed by Mark B. Tauger
This book contains reproductions of more than sixty Soviet propaganda posters from the 1920s and 1930s, selected from a large collection at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California.
By Molly Lipscomb
In this class we will discuss why sustainability is a problem, and how to measure and evaluate the trade-offs related to different environmental policy choices. We will discuss benefits and drawbacks of various traditional policy solutions such as command and control, permitting, and taxation, and we will discuss new policy tools that are gaining in use: integrated platforms, auctions, tradeable quotas.
By James Fitzgerald
Political theorists and philosophers of a certain ilk argue that the impulse to control life and death is woven into the body politic.
By Marina Germane
The well-documented “rise, fall and revival” of minority rights during the turbulent twentieth century can be subdivided into three corresponding periods: post-World War One, post-World War Two, and post-Cold War.
Moderated by Peter Haslinger
Since the beginning of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015/16, the discursive shift away from multiculturalism and the agendas of ethnic, cultural, religious, and other minorities to a perspective of assessing risks and challenges that evolve from societal diversity has intensified.
By Sergey Sukhankin
The case of Kaliningrad Oblast – the westernmost region of the Russian Federation physically detached from the mainland – should be seen as one of the most disappointing examples of post-Soviet transformation.
By Olga Chuprakova
Despite the prevailing trend to demonize Russia, we can find sincere sympathy for and understanding of Russia and the Russian people in the fiction of the bestselling British novelist Iris Murdoch (1919-1999). Russia, Russian culture, and Russian identity are prevalent themes in twenty of her twenty-six novels.
Reviewed by Nicholas Ostrum
Soviet energy policy created burdens as well as opportunities, divisions as well as bridges, enduring routes of energy flows.
Reviewed by Marianne Stecher
It is Jensen’s crisp and concise writing and wit, which distinguish his marvelous contextualization of the intellectual, cultural, and social worlds in which Jens Peter Jacobsen moved and breathed. Jensen draws vivid portraits of the nineteenth-century literary contemporaries of Jacobsen – so that they spring from the pages.
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Columbia University.
Translated by Angela Rodel
I can see her clearly now, wandering through the New York dusk on Christmas Eve. She grabs a cab, and in less than an hour she is standing in front of an entryway in Brooklyn.
Translated by Izidora Angel
The chains they took off, the ropes they left on, and they forced him, bound, into the car
By Ana Ivasiuc
As observers have pointed out, the rationale behind the EU’s political engagement with minority rights, and with Roma issues in particular, was at best ambivalent.
Translated by Angela Rodel
Your thighs – acacia / White, with a pleasant scent / Able to endure low / and high temperatures
Reviewed by Theodore Weeks
This year, the centenary of what used to be called the “Great October Socialist Revolution,” has seen the publication of numerous new works on the epoch-making event, its causes, and its consequences. Among these is Gleb Albert’s impressive study of the role of “world revolution” in the Soviet state’s first decade.
Reviewed by Samantha Lomb
Julia Mickenberg’s American Girls in Red Russia, touches on such diverse topics as American women’s participation in pre-1917 revolutionary movements, famine relief in during the Civil War period, the creation of an American colony in Siberia, the establishment of an American-run English language newspaper in Moscow, modern dance, African-American theater and film performances, and creating pro-Russian World War II propaganda.
By Elitza Kotzeva
Memories of moments from my childhood days / carefully sealed in the sarcophagus of / forlorn history / forgotten history / forbidden history
Reviewed by Stefan Zimmermann
This volume offers a mesmerizing gaze into the television industry behind the iron curtain, providing television scholars, who have ignored Soviet and Soviet bloc television, an opportunity to learn about the industry and culture.
By Elena Alexieva
I still can’t get used to living on ground level. The fact that from my kitchen window I see the people walking between the apartment blocks almost in their actual size keeps astonishing me. Living on the ground floor means we have no terrace. But we do have bars on the windows which we didn’t put there.
Reviewed by Steven G. Marks
What do we gain from looking at Russian history through the senses? On one level, it places front and center certain realities that are taken for granted or ignored in the scholarly literature. For instance, the cold climate that shocked the systems of early modern visitors from the West, as chronicled in Matthew P. Romaniello’s entry. Paying attention to the senses can also open our eyes to a new dimension of warfare, which is vividly illustrated in articles by Laurie S. Stoff on nurses in World War One and Steven G. Jug on soldiers in World War Two.
Translated by Ekaterina Petrova
Zhoro “the Bird” was a Bulgarian immigrant in Melbourne. He was born in a village near the town of Plovdiv, where, going off in pursuit of his entire family’s happiness, he had left behind a wife and a daughter.
Reviewed by Tor Bukkvoll
For those who would like to read an engagingly written, well researched and balanced account of two of the most discussed military conflicts in recent times, Gerard Toal’s book is an excellent choice.
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
She lives alone in a smoke-filled apartment. Now and again a glass of wine may be seen–hers, or that of a casual visitor. A bird lives there too, looking out of the window for hours, indifferent, distant. One day she decides to bring some plant life into her home to freshen things up…
Interviewed by Lillian Klein
We have seen a lot of criticism being voiced against approaches to multiculturalism, especially for reinforcing cultural hierarchies.
Translated by Alex Zucker
Don’t stink and watch your weight. Those are the most important resolutions I know of. Every morning I plop myself down in front of the mirror and stare into my face, just in case it might finally tell me something I don’t know. It stares right back, as if expecting the same from me.
By Cristiana Grigore
About twenty-five years ago, I vowed that no one would ever find out that I was a Gypsy from Romania, and I remember clearly the day when, as a little girl, I fiercely decided to keep my embarrassing origins a secret. I would have never guessed that after years of denial and secrecy there would be a time when I would not only speak openly and proudly about my Roma identity, but also create a project for Roma People.
Reviewed by Georgeta Stoian Connor
Disrupted Landscapes is a valuable contribution to the study of environmental politics of Romania generally, and to an understanding of the transformations of land relations since the fall of the Golden Age era specifically. As the title suggests, we learn significant information about the workings of power in rural areas and the social and political mechanisms behind them. The volume brings together in one resource Dorondel’s impressive quantity of work on the topic of the transformation of the agrarian landscape of postsocialist Romania during the transition from collectivization to privatization.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Samantha Lomb (History), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), Daniela Irrera (International Relations), and Hélène Ducros (Geography).
Interviewed by Lillian Klein
At that time—right after the fall of the Berlin Wall—many Bulgarians started traveling freely, and a lot of us young musicians chose to study abroad. But many of us still felt deeply connected to Bulgaria, so we started a Bulgarian concert series in New York.
Reviewed by Aleksandr Iakovlevich Gudov
Nikolai Charushin does not rank among the pantheon of famous historical figures, but this has its positive side. Charushin’s story demonstrates that the revolutionary movement in the last decades of the nineteenth century recruited new members not only from the educated strata of St. Petersburg or Moscow, but from the Russian periphery as well. This allows the reader to be able to learn a lot about the life of a provincial Russian town, of prison and exile, and about the relationship between the authorities and the revolutionaries in the periphery.
Interviewed by Cristiana Grigore
Roma communities have a very robust oral tradition, which includes stories, history, and philosophical thought. So, in addition to providing sources, the project can also work towards a broader epistemological change by elaborating a critique of Eurocentricity, avoid the politics of respectability that promote “assimilation,” and insist on the value and importance of multiple forms of knowledge.
Interviewed by Cristiana Grigore
The Irish Travellers and the Roma are among the most disadvantaged people in Ireland. The Travellers experience a low level of education, poor living conditions, and a lack of economic opportunities.
Reviewed by Judith Pallot
The problem of global food security was brought into sharp relief in 2008-2011 in food riots in the global south and the Arab Spring. These crises witnessed a sharpening of debate about how to feed the world. Advocates of the traditional food security approach maintain that the answer lies in “aid and trade” based on the world-price-governed staple food circuits that emerged in the twentieth century, and large-scale, high external-input corporate farms.
By Nicole Shea and Peter Haslinger
In this special anniversary edition of EuropeNow, curators Peter Haslinger and Nicole Shea highlight the importance in research and culture of smaller central and eastern European regions. The research presented here assesses the concepts, paradigms, and methods for the re-evaluation of multi-ethnicity, diversity, and mobility in a globalized and “post-factual” era, and seeks to identify factors and agencies that help to explain the current trends towards the obsession with security agendas.
By Stacy Mattingly
In the fall of 2015, as people fleeing Syria and elsewhere for Europe were being stopped en masse at borders, two writers’ collectives to which I belong – one based primarily in Sarajevo, one in Atlanta – decided to engage in a collaborative artistic response. We called it The Borders Project.
By EuropeNow Editors
A selection of contemporary Bulgarian fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
By Neđla Ćemanović
My cousin promised me a job in Austria. At the moment he told me he had managed to sort something out, I was glaring at a wall plastered with posters of nature, some of them faded and some coffeestained. The entire apartment was begrimed with the previous tenants’ addictions—from caffeine to domestic violence.
By Federica Prina
Russia is an exceptionally vast and heterogeneous country with high levels of ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, and a complex federal structure. The Russian empire already saw an intermingling of peoples, encompassing Slavic, Scandinavian, and Asiatic groups, with various forms of hybridization, multilingualism, and cultural cross-fertilization.
Translated by Mirza Purić
I untwist my headphones at the bus stop,
hysterically cussing, hands shaking
with the fear of the roar of the yellow bus
By Sebastian Paul
The Subcarpathian Rus is still a region for specialists. For hundreds of years, together with Slovakia, the territory of later Subcarpathian Rus embodied the northeastern part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Until 1918, it was the neighboring region to Habsburg Galicia, and in the Interwar Period, it formed Czechoslovakia’s eastern borderland to the reestablished Polish state.
By Suzanne Mozes
Ignorance and apathy have no boundaries,” David said. I raised the half-empty bottle of Evan Williams. He nodded at it but refused my boyfriend’s invitation to stay for dinner, saying he would “leave with this one last thing so y’all can eat.”
Curated by Nicole Shea
This series features three Bulgarian-born artists who experienced the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Motion and movement connect the works.
By Christos Louvaris
Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, and nearly twenty years after the proclamation of the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers, the Commission finally published the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR) in April 2017.
Interviewed by Frédéric Baitinger
The question of populism is essential, even though the term is a bit confusing. To be a populist does not mean to be close to the people. To be a populist, according to me, is to speak in the name of people, to speak for them, which is to say, on their behalf.
By Jonathan Sherry
All too often, the Spanish Civil War is discussed by way of subsequent events. The trend is just as marked in public discourse as it is in academic study. Whether intellectuals conceptualize the terms of World War II as the “first chapter” in the battle between the Axis and Allied powers, or in the Cold War lexicon as a struggle against Communist or Soviet domination, the ideological and historical complexity of the conflict is often swept under the carpet.
By Gregory W. Fuller
Fuller considers how European policymakers have relied too much on “mainstream” economic analysis in the design and re-design of eurozone governance structures.
By Salvatore Settis
“The city is in ruins.” In European cultural memory, these simple words have, sometimes, a literal sense (either narrative or descriptive)—when we talk about wars, insurrections, and natural disasters, for instance. More often, they have a strong metaphorical relevance according two complementary directions.
Surely Mama must realize that the little ones are scared and that we older ones know she’s lying. We can’t tell her so because the little ones would be even more scared.
By Peo Hansen
“Despite Sweden’s sizeable refugee reception, its economy is doing exceptionally well.” This line has been repeated on countless occasions over the past year or so. By the government, experts, and pundits — from right to left. As the president of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation put it a little while ago: “Despite an unstable world and a refugee emergency, Sweden’s economy is performing very well.” Despite?
By Alexandros Kyriakidis
The Eurozone crisis has been a turning point for the European Union (EU), and especially for the Eurozone – the epitome of the economic and monetary union (EMU) – bringing to the surface long-standing structural weaknesses.
Reviewed by Carey Fleiner
The author emphasizes how the creation of the emperor’s distinct image of warrior king and saintly ruler was consciously fashioned in the historical record from the start.
By Vivien Schmidt
View this course syllabus for Social Europe: Identity, Citizenship, and the Welfare State at Boston University.
Reviewed by Alessandra Russo
2016 was marked by EU’s inter-institutional negotiations on a new Directive on combatting terrorism, aiming to reinforce the EU’s legal framework in preventing terrorist attacks. The Directive also complements the current legislation on the rights for the victims of terrorism and envisages enhanced rules for information exchange between the member states related to terrorist offences gathered in criminal proceedings
By Daniela Valenta
It’s not that my father was a gambling man; after all, he never entered a casino in his life. He just had a way with cards and thought it would be a pity not to make the most of it, I guess. In the Yugoslavia of the 1970s, groups would gather in homes over a game of cards, playing as day turned slowly into night and night gave way to the next day, until one person finally left with a nice profit.
By Kate Tuttle
If we were really Hansel and Gretel, we’d walk through wolf-filled woods, the sky dark, a bright moon overhead. Here, we wander amid a bright thicket of beds and dressers, desks and chairs.
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Boston University.
Interviewed by Briitta van Staalduinen
Today, the questions circulating among EU citizens and policymakers do not concern a deepening or expansion of the EU, but rather how the EU will move forward in a post-Brexit era. From the Eurozone crisis to the governance challenges posed by immigration, the tension between national and EU-level sovereignty has never been more apparent.
Translated by Mirza Purić
He was walking in his neighbourhood, looking around. The streets were incredibly empty. He didn’t think it was possible not to see anyone that day. Unusually, not even his neighbour Mara had left her flat to do her morning shopping. She never missed her morning walk. Menso knew this because he preferred spying on his neighbours to watching breakfast television.
Reviewed by Alan Renwick
Whether or not you buy into the critical realist approach to understanding the reform of the CAP, the book is an interesting read and provides the reader with a useful overview of the development of the CAP.
Reviewed by Ari Ray
As Alison Johnston points out in her debut book, rising labor unit costs were indeed a defining characteristic of these member states in the early years of the Euro; most importantly in sectors such as public services or construction that are sheltered from trade.
Interviewed by Sherman Teichman
Nikos argues that the best way out of the downward spiral for Greece, is to analyze the crisis in terms of violations of human rights.
Reviewed by Kurt Huebner
Since the global financial crisis, Germany experienced a massive turnaround of its fate and today is widely seen as the dominant power in Europe–in Lever’s words: Berlin rules. Over the last couple of years, the idea that Germany is again dominating Europe has become a mainstream view, not only in media, but also in scholarly literature.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Katrine Øgaard Jensen (Literature), Samantha Lomb (History), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), Daniela Irrera (International Relations), and Hélène Ducros (Geography).
By Waltraud Schelkle
Albeit an arcane institution, TARGET, the cross-border payments system of the euro area, is a good example for how economics and political economy can be combined to advance our understanding of European integration.
By Erik Jones, Regine Paul, and Nicole Shea
The inescapable politics of knowledge production about and for a Europe in crisis demands scholarly transparency. In this issue, we consider the value and limits of their disciplinary perspectives in explaining the recent crises of European Integration. We nail our colors to the mast by arguing that a political economy approach is valuable – and ought to be cherished – for seeing more than just economics vs. politics at play in explaining crisis and navigating Europe’s future.
Curated by Nicole Shea
Depicting illusion, greed, and over-consumption, both artists wrestle with the impact that financial delusions have on the human psyche.
By Daniel Cohen
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, “philosemitism” has migrated closer to the mainstream of European societies, even in some cases in post-communist countries.
By Vivien Schmidt
View this course syllabus for Globalization and Contemporary Capitalism in Advanced Industrialized Nations at Boston University.
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole
One reason for my forays to the far side of town was the worry over what was to become of me.
Translated by Miranda Richmond Mouillot
I’m not going to hide at all, my friend. The ones who hide are always the ones they find. I’ve had smallpox twice; the Nazis just make it a third time.
Translated by Deborah Smith
It began in Mao’s room. Hazy, formless, faint things, things that were neither light nor shade, yet at the same time the illegitimate children of both, a moment of glittering black and dark…
By Irial Glynn
The sea offers hope but also dread for boat refugees leaving behind one region and setting sail for another.
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
Two sentences, the house’s number, don’t waste them, keep them
for a black hour.
By Elif Çetin
Europe is facing the largest humanitarian disaster since the end of World War II. Even though the European governments, in an attempt to address public feelings of insecurity about immigration, seek to project themselves as able to manage international migration effectively, the objectives and outcomes of their immigration and border control policies do not always overlap.
By Antonio Sorge
Neo-nationalist parties throughout Europe are deriving considerable mileage from the current refugee “crisis,” seeing within it an opportunity to shore up support from a disaffected electorate reeling from a slow economic recovery and high unemployment.
Translated by Celia Hawkesworth
On Saturday, November 19, 2002, sixty people incarcerated in a camp for illegal immigrants sew their lips together. Sixty people with their lips sewn reel around the camp, gazing at the sky. Small muddy stray dogs scamper after them, yapping shrilly. The authorities keep assiduously postponing consideration of their applications for leave to remain.
By Christopher Impiglia
For my great-grandparents, as it was for most immigrants of their generation, the past was a hindrance. It was all about the future. A new life with new appliances and new cars and new names. Nothing old, as the old carried with it the weight of oppressive regimes, poverty, and social immobility.
By Mark Römisch
Among the many challenges that Europe faces in the wake of the recent refugee crisis is the integration of millions of immigrants and the rise of xenophobia and nationalism at the same time. The photographic work Broken highlights an aspect of the crisis that is not necessarily obvious to those who are in support of the refugees or for those who want to refuse them entry to their country.
By Agnieszka Kulesa
Despite fears related to the increase in hate crime numbers following the EU referendum, and the uncertainty around their future residency status, immigrants from Poland will not abandon their established lives in the UK as willingly as the Brexit supporters would wish to see.
By Liudmila Kirpitchenko
In recent decades, we’ve witnessed an increased mobility of university students and scholars. International mobilities for academic purposes have become more commonplace and more diversified.
Reviewed by Alex Sager
The conditions in detention are appalling, commonly leading to suicide and self-harm. Many detainees have lived in limbo for years while they wait to see if they will be resettled.
Interviewed by Kader Attia
Many Syrian refugees are suffering from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as delirium. These people were already ill in Syria before they arrived here. The delirium is mostly political; they feel persecuted by ISIS, the Syrian army. It has to do with politics rather than religion. We see more patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder than patients who are truly depressed.
Translated by Mirza Purić
The smell of apple cider vinegar pervades the room, starting from the clean, warm window panes, making its way into the perfectly tightened coverlet on the bed, the freshly brushed carpet, and one suitcase.
Reviewed by Lauren Stokes
Reading the headlines in the summer of 2015, one might think that migration was a wholly new challenge for Europeans and specifically for Germans. Many of the contributors to this volume are explicit about their desire to intervene in this political culture of historical amnesia and in doing so contribute to what editor Cornelia Wilhelm identifies as “a new, more inclusive understanding of Germanness and of Germany’s role as a destination for immigrants.
Reviewed by Graeme Turner
The primary task undertaken in Familiar Stranger is one of intensely thoughtful theoretical introspection, an introspection that is directed at understanding the processes of cultural and intellectual self-fashioning that had gone into the formation of one of the most influential intellectuals of his generation.
By Rachael Maddux
At the Pawleys Island General Store, I bought a postcard of a ghost. He stood atop a dune in a wide-brimmed hat and overcoat, one arm raised towards the ocean, his body half-disappeared into the overcast sky. Some stories held that the Gray Man was the ghost of a colonial man who had been thrown from his horse and drowned in the marsh.
Reviewed by Jane Nadel-Klein
Willson’s volume is well-written, mostly clear, and follows an intriguing puzzle: it seems that Icelandic women have a long history of going to sea, but the Icelandic public is largely unaware of this.
Reviewed by Paula Fass
As the history of children has taken its place among the important fields of inquiry over the past two decades, and as children’s lives provide valuable insights into human experience, it is inevitable that the children brutalized by Nazi Germany should become historical subjects.
Reviewed by Stephanie Maher
Borders are political and economic, material and subjective, hard and soft. By their very nature, borders are gendered, classed, and raced in important ways. Yet, they are also emergent and relational, rather than being fixed and hegemonic.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), and Lillian Klein (Literature).
Interviewed by Sakeef Karim
Santos explains how Europe and the New World intersect due to contemporary migratory processes and the echoes of the past.
Curated by Nicole Shea
These artists tackle stereotypes and prejudices, focusing on the cultural capital of immigration and the ambition for a better life.
By Jennifer Elrick, Oliver Schmidtke, and Nicole Shea
We have seen two opposing trends across Europe: On the one hand, civil society has demonstrated a great degree of compassion with the plight of refugees, organizing local welcome committees and, in the Canadian case, even putting pressure on the government to accept more refugees from Syria as a fundamental humanitarian commitment of the country. On the other hand, the populist Right has exploited the influx of so many refugees for their political mobilization.
Translated by Susan Bernofsky
One Thursday in late August, ten men gather in front of Berlin’s Town Hall. According to news reports, they’ve decided to stop eating. Three days later they decide to stop drinking too. Their skin is black. They speak English, French, Italian, as well as other languages that no one here understands. What do these men want? They are asking for work. They want to support themselves by working.
By Stefan Wallaschek
At the beginning of October 2013, a boat shipwrecked at the coast of Lampedusa and caused the death of approximately 350 asylum seekers. During his visit to Lampedusa shortly after it, the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, demanded solidarity from the EU member states.
Translated by Gaye Kynoch
The days and weeks in Lisbon, the clear, higher, harder light out here by the coast, the slightly forsaken haziness of the city, a forgotten region of outermost Europe, the sound of the street-cleaning trucks advancing slowly through the streets behind Praça do Rossio in the last hour before daybreak, like big beetles snorting hoarsely in the dust of the strangely quiet city…
By Marinos Tsagkarakis
This photo series aims to highlight the consequences of a massive and uncontrolled tourist development.
By Morten Høi Jensen
The “white whine” has since reverberated across the country with increasing clamor, from the orifices of white nationalists to the offices of the White House.
By Mina Hamedi
I saw him walking, black hair in knots and a bottle with the cap open held by his side. Leaning over the top, he brought his bottle, took a sip and stared at us.
By John Lindner
I see only the two small feet of a child, who had just been previously feigning sleep, walk across the stage below a hovering curtain. They are met at the wings by a pair of adult shoes when the lights turn on for intermission.
Reviewed by Bethany Hicks
While travel over Cold War borders became difficult, youth travel encouraged a new generational identity in the postwar era.
By Hélène B. Ducros
By the early 1980s, some rural mayors in France came to the realization that their villages were dying. In spite of a strong attachment to the rural in the French collective imaginary, many factors had contributed to rural decline and exodus since the early twentieth century.
By Godfrey Baldacchino
In the wake of the Greek “financial crisis,” some observers were surprised to note that the Greek islands, with their less-developed economic fabric, weathered the storm much better than their urban counterparts.
Reviewed by Catherine Epstein
Karl Haushofer, the man who popularized the term Lebensraum (living space), has been accused of many misdeeds.
Reviewed by Joseph Palis
Paul Grant’s fine contribution to film studies sheds light on the subversive filmmaking practices of French collectives during and in the aftermath of May 1968 events. It exemplifies a “deep mapping” of the specific historical moment that greatly influenced and provided filmic vocabularies to filmmakers in succeeding generations.
By Roger Eberhard
It is quite common for wealthy tourists to visit impoverished countries without ever exposing themselves to the extreme penury its citizens suffer.
Reviewed by Tomas Antero Matza
Social and economic precarity, anomie, abandonment, dispossession and displacement—these, unfortunately, are hallmarks of our times. How, then, do ordinary people seek to make a difference in the lives of others?
Translated by Mirza Purić
Tell me!
between sleeplessness and dreamlessness
are the steps too tall too tight for the feet
swollen from roaming and do the eyeballs swell
from crossing gazes eye over eye
Reviewed by Leslie Sklair
This handsome book is a notable first contribution to the new Yale University series “Great Architects/Great Buildings.” In his illuminating preface, Dal Co begins with Virginia Woolf’s essay, “How One Should Read a Book,” published in the Yale Review in October 1926, where Woolf observes that a book is always “an attempt to make something as formed and controlled as a building.”
By Melanie Jordan
Three quarters of the way through, this dude
enters. Every time, he pops up like Mephistopheles
through a clunky trapdoor, and I don’t even know
if I’m inviting him
By Chris Blackman
Hope is but a greeting card, it occurs to me,
while in a cab barreling across the Triborough Bridge
and it might be important enough to get this maxim
tattooed on my neck in case I forget this simple truth
and lest ideas otherwise become more obtrusive,
more incessant, but these are just the ugly thoughts
to which I am chemically prone, when I’m feeling morbid—
By Stacy Mattingly
We’d already shown our passports at the border—it was still Czechoslovakia-Germany then. We’d kept the lights on in our compartment, waiting for the guard. Drab uniform. Angular face. Documents, he’d said. The Cold War was basically dead. Still, I could imagine.
By Fulvio Attinà
The security policy of the states and the multilateral management of international security have gone through a remarkable process of transformation in the contemporary world system.
By Rudi Hartmann
Historic places honoring the victims of Nazi Germany form a wide and expanding network of heritage sites in Europe.
By Michael Juliani
As the fishermen strangle cod
out on the wet docks our refrigerator arrives
and today is a warm sleeved gust
passing through the afternoon
a somnolent incident of pleasure
By Aura Socol
When Romania joined the EU it implicitly assumed responsibility for adopting the euro. After ten years, contrary to what was expected, East European states including Romania meet the nominal criteria for being accepted in the Eurozone while states from the Eurozone itself do not.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Darkness transforms the world, narrows it down by creating new sorts of convivialities and intimacies.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography) and Julian Garritzmann (Political Science).
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
Much of tourism is about how people experience places, what motivates people to experience places, and to seek out new and old places.
Reviewed by Nicholas Clark
From the deprivation that occurred in the aftermath of the Second World War, which ranged from ill-health, rationing, food and housing shortage, to the crushing impact on artistic life, there emerged in Britain an intention to rebuild and improve all aspects of social and cultural existence. It was from this context, of commemorating resilience and celebrating ingenuity, that the 1951 Festival of Britain was planned.
By James Wickham and Alicja Bobek
Hospitality sectors across Europe increasingly rely on a contingent workforce. Employment in bars, hotels, and restaurants is often casual and can be characterized by low pay.
Interviewed by Daniela Irrera
Realism is certainly helpful in making sense of the recent return of great-power tensions. However, many important aspects of world politics today require close attention to domestic institutions and political processes—I’m thinking of the revolt against globalization and the rise of populism in Britain, the USA, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Reviewed by Stephen Royle
More satisfying in many ways are substantial chapters that demonstrate a methodology, which not only deepens their explanation, but would also encourage other scholars to take up the ideas for further study.
By Lauren Wagner
This set of research notes illustrates how the annual vacation of diasporic European-Moroccan communities towards Morocco carves a “Moroccan” road in their trajectory through Europe. By embracing this practice as a materialization of affect, we can appreciate the infrastructure of the road as more than a space of transit.
By Theophilus Kwek
Now that we live in the same house, it sits on a glass shelf in the hallway, a dark lens winking when the lights come on. A cataract of dust, invisible except at certain angles…
By Hélène B. Ducros and Katrine Øgaard Jensen
In Europe, from the time of religious pilgrimages or journeys to spa towns for thermal treatments, all sorts of people have undertaken recreational travel since at least the Middle-Ages, even if motivations differed. But, it is with the industrial revolution that tourism took on a new face with the practice of the tour. Later, the emergence of paid leave in many places gave the impetus for the first mass tourists.
Translated by Rachel Hildebrandt and Alexandra Roesch
White swathes of steam float across the deck. It wreaks. Someone has puked into the swimming pool, and fibrous chunks float on the surface. Leg of duck in a truffle reduction—the Chef’s daily special. As though in slow motion, the girl straightens up, staggers away, reeling between stacks of deck chairs and disappears into the haze.
Reviewed by Yasmin Roshanian
Adua dreams of a place where the taboos surrounding sex, romantic idealism, and uninhibited aesthetic pleasures are not censored or damned.
Reviewed by Roger Ebbatson
The permeable generic boundaries between Hardy’s prose and poetry sometimes gesture towards a version of the Derridean thesis that a literary genre is dissolved at the moment of its establishment.
By Thomas Henökl
The EU is about to digest the separation from Great Britain, a major member state, and one of Europe’s two military powers. Setting a precedent of sorts, Brexit, so far, may appear to be a negative example of how to prepare for common challenges and multilateral cooperation in times of turbulence.
Reviewed by Theodore R. Weeks
The field of Jewish studies has developed considerably over the past few decades. In particular, the field, which has never closed off from other disciplines and area studies, has progressively opened up to insights and topics that are of interest to broader scholarly and social groups, from anthropologists, to historians, to social scientists of all stripes.
Reviewed by Michael Smith
The book is undoubtedly a historical study, but in pursuing a wide-ranging account of the years 1969-1982, it suggests a number of important themes for the non-historian, especially the student of International Relations.
Reviewed by Briana Smith
This book offers an important contribution to the trend in punk studies to de-center punk from its Anglo-American origin story and examine the multi-directional influence of punk cultures across the globe.
Reviewed by Sophie Gonick
In the decade following the financial collapse of Ecuador, hundreds of thousands of migrants left the country to make a home elsewhere. For a sizable portion of this population, Madrid was the ultimate destination.
Reviewed by Donald Carter
The author’s extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Italy, Ghana, and Nigeria informs her exploration of the complementarity of African Pentecostalism and Catholicism at the level of shared sacramental and incarnational principles evident in both traditions.
Reviewed by David Stegall
Kaplan chooses a linear approach to her task, giving the reader a chronological narrative, from Camus as clerk, writing The Stranger, to the current life of Camus’ first novel as it inspires Kamel Daoud’s lauded 2013 The Meursault Investigation.
By Michael Keating
Ten years after stepping down as first minister of Scotland, Jack McConnell remains a busy man. I caught up with him by Skype in New York, where he was attending the UN meetings on development.
By Aude Cefaliello
I belong to a generation that has been told there is no other choice other than to be flexible in the labour market. It means being flexible about where you go to work, when you go to work, and about what work you are going to do. For many of us, the idea of a long-term employment contract in a company where there is the possibility to progress belongs to another time.
Reviewed by Klaus-Jürgen Hermanik
The monograph, with its particular case studies, bring abstract categories of power relations between Hungary and the EU to the forefront. The chapters on the paprika ban, the foie gras scandal, and the red mud environmental catastrophe should help to make these power relations visible and understandable.
By Kelly Kollman and Alvise Favotto
When the Trump administration was still deciding whether America should remain in the Paris climate agreement, the president’s closest officials lined up on different sides of the debate. Those in favour of the agreement included Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, a career property developer, and the secretary of state and former chief executive of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson.
By Susan Giaimo
The economic crisis of the past decade has been a wrenching experience, particularly for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. They all required bailouts from the Troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and the IMF. The bailouts came with tough conditions to slash public spending and employment and raise taxes to achieve a balanced budget.
By Sarah French Brennan
Aziz is from Kabul in Afghanistan. His boyfriend was murdered by his own family in early 2014. They threatened to kill Aziz too, so he fled. After he arrived at an asylum camp in the Netherlands, the family beat his mother and siblings. He sought asylum claiming he was in fear of his life, but the Dutch authorities rejected the application.
By Declan Kavanagh
This article explores the often contradictory ways in which white bourgeois masculinities are constructed in contemporary British politics.
By Morten Høi Jensen
One of the central conflicts of Bellow’s novels is the apparent incommensurability of Old World thinking with the demonic pace of American society. The country’s big cities become a sort of battleground of Big Ideas. Bellow once wrote movingly of his discovery of the classics of European literature and philosophy as a young man darting about the streets of Depression-era Chicago.
By Catherine Bolzendahl and Ksenia Gracheva
Stagnating and declining of tolerance toward homosexuality in Eastern Europe should be alarming to anyone taking note of changes in Europe. It represents not only disparate perspectives on sexuality and freedom of personal identity, but also signifies a cultural and political rift between Western and Eastern Europe that may be deepening. Growing intolerance could be a symptom of a dangerous divide between East and West, rooted in political disenchantment and subsequent mutual rejection.
By Caitlin Carroll
In the “myth of the immigrant rapist,” white women’s bodies are seen as in need of protection by a paternalist state from the sexual violence of brown men. In the case of Europe’s refugee crisis, this protection took the form of closing borders and harshening immigration policies, including curtailing family reunification for refugees.
By Dorit Geva
Why would FN members link such narratives of Marine Le Pen’s feminine and masculine virtues alongside their virulent criticism of the European Union, Muslim immigrants, and political elites? How is a woman who is viewed as the beloved political daughter, the quintessential femme moderne, and at the same time as the new Charles de Gaulle, treated as the most potent cure to France’s political and economic woes? Why, in sum, do populist supporters emphasize such gendered virtues in their everyday discourses around their beloved leader?
Translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen
I put all the little
orb-shaped worlds of glass back
in their cosmic framings, and everything becomes everything.
By Lila Abu-Lughod, Marianne Hirsch, and Jean E. Howard
Over the past few decades, violence against women (VAW) and gender-based violence (GBV) have come to prominence as loci for activism throughout the world. Both VAW and GBV regularly garner international media attention and occupy a growing place in international law and global governance.
Translated by Erika Luckert
In her bedroom, where nobody would intrude, she imagined herself powerful, penis in hand, victor over all the rest and defying humiliation.
Reviewed by Miriam Shadis
Accusations of being bad mothers, sexual deviants, schemers, or profligates challenged Christian ideals and political stability.
Reviewed by Muireann O’Dwyer
This is a book that shows the gendered nature of the crisis, in particular looking at the gendered nature of the institutional reforms, and the gendered impacts of the austerity response.
Reviewed by Denis M. Provencher
Perreau’s book encourages us to seek and create new narratives where being queer means simultaneously “coming and going” instead of simply “coming out.”
Reviewed by Mor Sheinbein
Costa’s re-translation highlights her translating powers to both preserve and portray a world that has been left behind by the end of the nineteenth century, whilst highlighting a kind of humor and irony that some might claim to be the definite marker of the cynical twenty-first century.
Produced by Daniel Goulden
In this episode of the EuropeNow podcast we explore the murky world of the alt-right, the online movement dedicated to opposing multiculturalism and globalization. We’ll take a look at how the alt-right formed, the factors that led to their rapid rise, and how they advance their motives. Welcome to the EuropeNow Podcast.
Reviewed by Dominic Thomas
Achille Mbembe’s writings are groundbreaking, truly interdisciplinary in nature, bridging institutional divides between the humanities and social sciences, and affording him recognition as one of the most challenging and stimulating thinkers at work today.
Interviewed by Lillian Klein
Gender equality and women’s rights are deemed to be a luxury that can only be afforded in times of plenty. But research shows that gender equality also produces economic benefits.
By Shelley Grant
It is entirely possible that Europe, although in the midst of many grand debates on the acceptability of social sexual performances, is also unwittingly leading a sexual revolution on the microscopic level. The profundity of integrating the benefits of technology advances into pregnancy care may seem compelling. Yet, the incrementalization of pre-birth care may cause socially disorienting, disagreeable, and demanding effects.
Reviewed by Dr. Kim Simpson
Peakman carefully negotiates the slippery definitions of erotica and pornography, and illuminates the myriad ways that medical and scientific discourses are rehearsed, considered, and refuted by erotic materials.
Reviewed by Nadia Malinovich
An homage to Irène Némirovsky, a brilliant femme de lettres in inter-war France whose life was brutally cut short by the Holocaust.
Interviewed by Matteo Laruffa
There is a popular myth that Europe grows through crisis and that it strengthens in the face of adversity. I don’t buy it. European integration progresses despite these things.
By Alison Moore
He is not in the bedroom. She can hear the shower running in the bathroom, can hear him singing in there. She would prefer not to have to talk to this man who keeps calling her Ester as if he knows her. She is still annoyed with him for being so late and not even apologizing. She is obliged to feed the man – she wants to feed him, she always wants to feed men – but she would be pleased to get away without having to engage with him.
By Scott Siegel
Right-wing populism is often seen as a direct response to the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
By Selma Asotić
You are
mother’s madness
stirred in a teacup.
Translated by Emily Gogolak
The elusive gazes of the men, the slightly aghast looks from the women, upon the arrival of this rider, all to suggest that he was a dreadful and dreaded being.
By Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, Kayla Maiuri, and Gill Allwood
Given the severity of challenges facing Europe, from Brexit and the Trump administration’s thinly veiled hostility to the EU and NATO, to the on-going influx of refugees and the rise of populism, writing about gender and sexuality might seem quaint, even indulgent to some people. They would be mistaken. Any thorough examination of the political, social, and economic situation of Europe in the early twenty-first century takes gender and sexuality seriously.
By Esther Lee
Geometry shapes you into compliance, quiet desperation a spiderweb spreading over a face much
like your own.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), and Muireann O’Dwyer (Political Science).
By Marina Alagić-Bowder
The March sunshine is clear as a bell, but there’s a bitter edge to the glassy Adriatic waters. Matt and I follow the children down to the shore to watch them dip their toes and scream, “Hladno-o-o!” The initial H adds to the shivering.
Curated by Nicole Shea
This series offers idealized bodies whereby the tall and the slim define the desirable female, as guns, muscles and sports define the true man.
Reviewed by Pamela Dale
In the twenty-first century, the mental health of children is under constant scrutiny and is a topic that is regularly discussed by the print and broadcast media, drawing on reports from researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, service-providers, charities, and user-led organizations.
By Alexandra Ba-Tin
Over the last twenty-five years, clear patterns were emerging in the Central and Eastern European region, showing that unlike in the Baltics and in Ukraine, Russian involvement in private and state energy sectors had been relatively low.
By Aude Cefaliello
If we want to deal with the challenges Europe faces and develop sustainable mechanisms to overcome them, it is necessary to understand the forces exercised at the decision-making level, for example in the relations between employers, unions, and European Union institutions.
By Shumail Javed
“Human dignity,” Drowet makes the comparison, is “what the precautionary principle was in the 90s, and dignity is becoming the symbol of Europe in the European Framework of values.”
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on Eucor – The European Campus.
By Hunter Doyle and Sofia Pia Belenky
Zooming to the scale of the individual bill, it is clear that the note itself reflects both of these trends, the cultural narrative or mythology, as well as the private desire for territorial accumulation. Each euro note has an architectural theme ranging from classical to “modern” twentieth century. As the bill increasses in value, the architectural period becomes more contemporary.
The difference with today’s migrants is that they are better educated and leaving a welfare state that ranks as one of the best places to live in the world according to most indices. The likelihood of them returning has nevertheless fallen sharply. Why?
Interviewed by James Crossley
I hoped this story would go beyond the Persian diaspora. It is about all migrant communities, all refugees, all people exiled either by choice or because of necessity. We do need labels, to flag the limits of our knowledge, the extent of our ignorance, but as Aminatta Forna says, labels can also limit who we are.
Reviewed by Roger Hillman
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ongoing emergence of a new, multi-faceted European identity has been a gradual process. In a valuable contribution, this book takes stock of a work-in-process after its first quarter century, the melting pot fusion that is Europe, as reflected (but not in a vulgar Marxist sense) in European cinema
By Irial Glynn
With peak season approaching for refugees making treacherous journeys to and through Europe, don’t be surprised if we are told again that this is unprecedented. That would certainly be in keeping with what news organisations, politicians and research bodies have asserted in the past several years.
By Tobias Armborst
The idea of the architect as a lone artist who generates plans in the solitude of the studio has always been a part of the architectural imagination.
By Morten Høi Jensen
There is nothing mystical or demonic about embracing dangerous ideas; they are existential choices, not spirits plucked from the sky.
Translated by Dong Li
days are placid, like an olive grove
spread upon the slopes, not
too many high rises, not too much dust
or too many nouveau-riche neighbors;
Reviewed by Alexandros Kyriakidis
This book describes the origins and differences between the economic traditions of France and Germany.
By Stéphane Charitos, Christopher Kaiser, and Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl
In response to rapidly changing conditions in higher education, an increasing number of institutions of colleges and universities are exploring the potential for collaborative models of course and program sharing to help them meet their academic goals.
By Joel Bergner
With collaboration as the nucleus for sustainability and transformation, this series highlights artistic innovation in refugee camps.
By Kerry Bystrom with Marion Detjen
The following “field notes” give a glimpse into the College’s engagement in education and forced migration since 2015, when our PIE-SC plans crystallized, by profiling one pilot project created with the current and future cohorts of students with a forced migration background in mind.
Curated by Felix Meyer-Christian
The Berlin and Hamburg based COSTA COMPAGNIE was founded in 2009 as an collaboration of interdisciplinary working emerging artists.
Translated by Jethro Soutar and Annie McDermott
You would’ve come home and told me all about it, filled with enthusiasm and doubtless in fits of laughter. If the conversation had ever taken place.
Reviewed by Lucia Quaglia
The sovereign debt crisis in the euro area, which has not been fully addressed and has the potential to re-ignite at any time, has threatened the very survival of the euro and potentially of the European Union.
Reviewed by Louise Michelle Fitzgerald
This book tells a story of institutional norms, critical junctures, policy equilibrium, and path dependency.
Interviewed by Sherman Teichman
Droege discusses the urgency and feasibility of attaining 100% renewable energy.
By Anish Kanoria
According to the UNHCR, there are now more than 65 million forcibly displaced persons in the world. In sheer numbers, this is the largest displacement of people since the Second World War. It is a generational phenomenon that is global in its impact and local in its effect. The Vassar Refugee Solidarity initiative was inspired by and started in response to this realization.
By Kevin Boettcher
In August 2017, Binghamton University was one of twenty-eight schools selected for the Next Generation PhD program, a new initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) which provided more than $1.6 million in total grants to PhD-granting universities across the country.
By Christopher P. Long, Susan Gass, and Koen Van Gorp
Academic isolation has long been impractical; in today’s world, it is impossible. At a time when yesterday’s bright new fact becomes today’s doubt and tomorrow’s myth, no single institution has the resources in faculty or facilities to go it alone.
By Maria Höhn and Nicole Shea
In this challenging time of governmental retrenchment—with its accompanying cuts to the Arts and Humanities—many foundations have been stepping up and pivoting their missions to a defense of democratic values and shared cultural heritages. At the same time, institutions of higher learning, think tanks, artists, policy makers, and NGOs have been reimagining their mission and innovating new models of collaboration not only among like-minded institutions, but across disciplines and national boundaries.
By Tim Beatley
We are in a remarkable period of urbanization of the planet, as the percentage of the world’s population living in cities continues to grow, likely rising to 70 percent by 2050.
Translated by Mirza Purić
All the pain we inflicted on our mother began with our birth. We hurt her when we were being born, and we hurt her by being born. Why people come uninvited, she never understood. She invited her first husband into her life. Me she didn’t invite.
By Jake Purcell
EuropeNow is collaborating with the World of Film International Festival Glasgow to make the EuropeNow Festival, featuring films from across the globe that address sustainability and transformation in Europe.
By L.S. McKee
The doctors will search
for imperfection,
will root out the cause
of tumor or freckle
with misshapen borders.
Translated by Mirza Purić
The three frozen fingers on her hand
were like knives in my kneecaps.
Translated by James McFarlane and Kathleen McFarlane
On a calm winter morning, on 4th January, 1761, a company of five men, clad for a journey, were rowed out from the Tollbooth into the shipping roads off Copenhagen.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), Hélène Ducros (Geography), Daniela Irrera (International Relations), and Özden Ocak (Sociology).
By Felix Meyer-Christian
Within the context of the world-wide refuge crisis, as well as the rising populism in the U.S. and Europe, one can clearly observe a distinct re-politicization of artists and their works, and the question of how to deal with the current state of uncertainty and urgency has been strongly reinforced in artistic discourse.
Interviewed by Nicole Shea
The long-term goal of our cross-border university alliance focuses on innovation and transformation.
Interviewed by Camilla Carlesi
Drawing from the main academic interests of its founders, this interview particularly focuses on the connection between environmental problems and the fields of law, the economy and energy transition.
By Julie Reiss
Like many people, I had been concerned about the frightening implications of the Anthropocene long before I even heard the word. As I worried about the widespread destructive impact of human activity on the earth, I became aware that geologists were debating whether that impact was so far reaching that it had caused a distinct geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
By David Idol
The nineteenth century boom in Mediterranean agriculture was not just a phenomenon of low-lying plains.
Reviewed by Alexis Almeida
The language moves unapologetically through various stages of hunger, arriving at resting points rather than states of knowing.
Reviewed by John Parham
Taylor’s literary criticism is supported by a historical frame, geographical foundation, and thematic focus, the latter encompassing the sophisticated engagement with environmental science, which characterizes the best ecocriticism.
By Charmaine Craig
Khin had seen him before, the young officer. She had noticed his hands, strong and clenched by his sides, and the restless way he charged from one end of the seaport to the other.
Translated by Megan Matich
There are deep-cut valleys,
narrow and untraveled.
No grass grows here,
only ashy gray moss
Reviewed by K.T. Billey
Translated by Lytton Smith, the third and final volume in Gnarr’s autobiographical trilogy is a glimpse into a sensitive, often miserable teenage mind. Devastating candor pulls the reader into the emotional whirlpool of a young thinker as he grapples with normalcy, loneliness, his own limitations, and life’s unexpected possibilities.
By Chiara Bertolin and Dario Camuffo
The Medici Network, which emerged in 1654, can be considered the first European weather service. It can also be linked to the scientific motivations and activities which led to the creation of another important scholarly institution, the Academy of Experiments.
Translated by Jan Pytalski
The city was rebuilt to restore its previous look, sometimes down to exact details, following a naive belief that that would turn it back into what it used to be before the war. It was an exercise in fidelity without purpose, an empty gesture of men in love with history.
Translated by Mirza Purić
for breakfast I’ve had
a small coniferous forest
and in it a squirrel
I pressed him on a serviette
stored him between two leaves of newspaper
Translated by James Sutherland-Smith
Crystals grown too quickly to champ with teeth
scratch throat. with narrow fingers across
canvas voiceless retrace twists and turns.
By John Parham
This module looks at the media’s role in raising environmental awareness. It will also ask you to think about how far popular culture can encourage us towards applying ecological values in our everyday lives.
Translated by Frederika Randall
They caught her because she made a mistake. For months she had sailed right through their nets with her false passport, her bleached hair, her little heart-shaped medal reworked as a cross, her Polish spoken like a Pole and even her school-taught German spoken badly as only the Poles in Slesia did.
Interviewed by Hélène B. Ducros
The Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago is an illustration of how productive disciplinary crosspollination can be in addressing global complexities of our time such as climate change.
Reviewed by Brídín Carroll
This book aims to address a gap in scholarship on European rural history. Specifically, it tackles a dearth of academic work on the emergence of modern agriculture in Western Europe, which occurred rapidly following World War II.
Reviewed by Lada V. Kochtcheeva
The rise of global information age impacts power relations in the world, boosts the spread of global norms and principles, and affects political structures and cultures of states. In addition to the spread of global information networks, globalization fosters economic interdependence, technological innovation, multilateral institutions, and the proliferation of non-state actors, which are deemed to weigh profoundly in global affairs.
Curated by Nicole Shea
This series illuminates the dangers confronting our waters, from leaking pipes to discarded plastics.
By Hélène B. Ducros
Our global dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear power, intense resource extraction economies, genetic manipulations, air, soil, and water contamination, and byproducts of modernity such as waste material like plastics and other synthetic polymers have caused great disturbances in the Earth ecosystems on which many species depend, including the human species.
Translated by Michael Hofmann
On my lap the animal knows neither fear nor persecution. It feels happiest when pressed against me; it is loyal to the family that has nurtured it.
Translated by Kirkwood Adams and Elizabeth Clark Wessel
Ask: the hum of branches ringing in the body, a nervous shimmer, change inside a frequency.
By Tracey Heatherington and Bernard C. Perley
We now constantly think and talk of the prospects ahead for a planetary ecology essentially defined by human activity.
By Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Benjamin Morgan, and Emily Lynn Osborn
View these course syllabi for Climate Change: Disciplinary Challenges to the Humanities & the Social Sciences at The University of Chicago.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Kelly McKowen (Anthropology), and Mihai Sebe (Political Science).
By Hélène B. Ducros
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of Chicago.
By Jan Čulík
While the Czechs as members of a ten million nation know very well their international influence would be greatly diminished if the EU ceased to exist, their dissatisfaction of what they increasingly see as a position of second rate citizens within the EU could in future become a deeply destabilizing factor.
Curated by Antonio Laruffa
When you talk about Nik Spatari, it is a very complex figure you are dealing with. Like the pagan god Janus, this artist might be seen as a man with two faces; like the god that can look to the past and the future, Spatari has been and still is a protagonist of artistic movements that span two centuries, both representing 20th-century Avant-garde and being an independent pioneer in 21st-century art.
By Emilia Salvanou
This article is based on life stories collected by migrants and refugees that settled in Greece after crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
By Morten Høi Jensen
Wary of the youthful temptations of novelty, Mann argued eloquently for a political-spiritual renaissance, a rekindling of faith in the long project of democracy. He reminded his audience that it was “your American statesmen and poets such as Lincoln and Whitman who proclaimed to the world democratic thought and feeling, and the democratic way of life, in imperishable words.”
By Roland Benedikter and Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski
The European Union is marking the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which was signed on 25 March 1957. But is there a bleak future for the integration process? Roland Benedikter and Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski argue that the EU is in a significantly healthier position than it appears, and that far from grinding to a halt, European integration will continue to be relevant in the coming decades.
Translated by Frederika Randall
He didn’t want to drop dead in that room. In the dark. Alone, without a helping hand: it was pure misery. The sound of his breathing did not seem to be him, but a machine.
Translated by Monika Cassel
The linden tree has lost all its leaves
and nothing is left of the summer but
the wish to stroke old Germany’s
head one more time
Translated by Janet Livingstone
The river draws closer and closer to the stream of gawking people. They jump onto the sandbags so they can see themselves in it. And at night they dream dreams on the shore. Dreams in which clouds of dust whirl behind herds of galloping animals.
Reviewed by Poupeh Missaghi
The narrative is fluid, perhaps to mirror the nature of migration, the movement and the instability; but also because this is how our memories and histories reach us.
Reviewed by Alexander Angelov
As the cultural pendulum moves from one direction to the other, we experience a radicalization of values because the amplification of convictions on one end triggers reactions on the other. Construed as polar opposites in popular imaginaries since the Enlightenment, religion and secularism have generated different anthropologies and modes of being.
Reviewed by Garret J Martin
Geopolitical Constructs challenges our conception of war by emphasizing a number of key and interrelated themes. This includes underlining the ways by which war transforms individuals and places, reshapes interactions between government and businesses, or leads to the creation of new bureaucracies.
Reviewed by Amy Hubbell
As Europe continues to face the largest wave of refugees pouring into its borders since World War II, past influxes of migrants across the continent offer important lessons about national identity and integration. With Germany receiving the vast majority of refugees, and France ranked in the top three destinations, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar Germany and France is particularly timely.
Reviewed by Marten Boon
This book is as inspiring as it is bewildering, mainly because of the sheer scope of the book and its transnational ambitions. The authors, Portuguese historian of technology Maria Paula Diogo, and German historian Dirk van Laak, aim for a transnational history of technology of Europe’s global relations since 1850.
Reviewed by Brittany Lehman
Working with French, German, and English language sources, she demonstrates the complex and often lethal relationship between the West German, French, and Algerian states. Part of a recent branch of scholarship exploring West Germany beyond the East-West divide, von Bülow deftly demonstrates that the Cold War was a global conflict, which influenced independence movement and decolonial projects.
By Aline Sierp and Jenny Wüstenberg
As Michael Rothberg recently pointed out, we currently appear to be living in a “moment of danger” in which memory has become particularly salient–both in terms of being abused by authoritarian and populist forces, and in terms of its importance in resisting them.
By Angelika Bammer
The strength and potential of memory research arguably lies in its interdisciplinary scope: the fact that it brings people from across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences together to identify problems and explore solutions. But this cross-disciplinary collaboration is often easier said than done.
By Jonathan Bach and Sara Jones
The question of teaching memory extends beyond the question of competing canons from those disciplines for whom memory tends to be a discrete object of study, such as psychology, literature, sociology, and history (though of course not limited to these). Following the spirit of the conference, we were interested in thinking about the teaching of memory from within and across such disciplines, and what it would mean to create interdisciplinary sub-fields.
Interviewed by Sherman Teichman
For heritage is central to understanding some of the most pressing societal issues: responses to and consequences of crisis moments, the rise of fundamentalism and xenophobia, the future of cities, the increasingly fragile social contract, tensions between universal and local visions, developing strategies towards climate change, unpacking the ever more numerous claims over historical injustices, and rebuilding fractured societies.
By Nicole Shea, Aline Sierp, and Jenny Wüstenberg
In this issue, we have invited research, artistic explorations, and campus initiatives to look at how different entities are dealing with the problem that eyewitnesses are dying and that memory starts to move from social memory into cultural memory.
Curated by Manca Bajec
The question of voyeurism and victimization of narrative often comes into question when artists are working with topics of war.
Translated by Sean Bye
It was right before the war, and we’d put all the poverty and deprivation of the Great Depression behind us. The whole economy was doing better, hardly anyone was unemployed, they’d get jobs building the Autobahn or could get permits to work abroad. The craftspeople in town got plenty of commissions.
By EuropeNow Editors
In this issue of EuropeNow Campus, we feature a spotlight on the University of Kansas.
By Alena Pfoser
Investigating the dynamics of memory produced and circulated in the field of tourism clearly emerges as an important site of study.
By Dr. Dale Urie
Dr. Dale Urie, Senior Lecturer at the University of Kansas Humanities Program, teaches a First-Year Seminar entitled How World War I Changed the World.
By Sacha van Leeuwen
On May 8, 1945, three days after the liberation from Nazi Germany, the State Institute for War Documentation (Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie; RIOD) was founded in the Netherlands. Led by historian, Loe de Jong, RIOD was tasked by the government to write the official history of the Dutch kingdom during World War II.
By Lorie A. Vanchena
The World War I American Immigrant Poetry project at the University of Kansas creates a single source for these digitized poems as well as for accompanying scholarly annotations and contextual material. We seek to preserve these historical voices by making the poetry available online to academics, teachers, students, and the general public.
By Carl Strikwerda
World War I created a watershed in world history. It punctured belief in progress and radically shifted art, theology, psychology, and literature.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography) and Louie Dean Valencia-García (History).
Interviewed by Lillian Klein
Munich was called the capital of amnesia as it took the city very long to put up memorials dedicated to the victims of the Third Reich.
By Lorie A. Vanchena
The KU World War I Centennial Commemoration 2014-2018, coordinated by the European Studies Program, explores the historical dimensions of the war and the ways in which the war continues to shape our lives.
Reviewed by Yasmin Roshanian
With language, Mandell encompasses this urgent tie to the past. The history is fed to us in visceral images of women required to veil, drug rings flowing with opium, rotting buildings crippled with rickety bedframes, and cigarette burns dented in wood. As Franz recollects his most poignant memories from Tehran, he revisits a city still reeling from a revolution.
By Agostino Petrillo
There is nothing more vague and ambiguous than the concept of the suburb; it cannot exist on its own, it can only do so in connection with the center, in a never-ending and repetitive connection of meanings, a spiral of reciprocal definitions that Saint Thomas Aquinas called infinitum ad quem.
By Michal Kotnarowski and Michal Wenzel
On December 16, the Sejm debated on a number of bills, including one of the most fundamental laws, the budget bill for 2017.
By Margaret Tejerizo
As we have noted above, there are very many features of Codina’s life which remain both unexplained and poorly researched. She was reluctant, as noted, to speak about her experiences in the Gulag, so most of the information that exists about her time there comes from reports family members, especially her grandsons.
By
I was a sort of upstairs-downstairs person in the crew. My role as journalist and anthropologist afforded me precious access to both worlds.
By Anna Tihanyi
The scenes take place in different interiors of a fictive Berlin, showing feelings and relations through moments of transition, and emphasizing that the image is frozen in time.
Interviewed by Özden Ocak
Based on ethnic profiling, dozens of people have been arrested by the police around the train stations in the Calais and Lille areas.
Reviewed by Jonathan Durrant
Davies shows how Renaissance maps illustrated human variation across the globe as diplomats, soldiers, merchants, and travelers understood it.
By Katrine Øgaard Jensen and Mirza Purić
This month’s special feature investigates how language, lyrics, poetics, and politics speak to and push against each other in a politically charged climate, which to many Europeans echoes eerily of a not-too-distant past
Interviewed by Morten Høi Jensen
Indeed, many of Zagajewski’s poems strive to rescue moments of apparent insignificance from the weight of history.
Translated by Bill Johnston
I’d like to say—to her, to both of them—
let’s lie down beneath the grass, lie in the shade
of dried-out ships, let matters of fate be left
to those plane trees, I’d like to say, look over there!
Translated by C.J. Collins
I took the big bag that I had inherited from my grandfather down from the attic. It was brightly colored like a storm of rainbows. I hoisted it onto my back and went out into the street. I closed my eyes and began to choose samples at random from everything that was inside: humans and stones and dust and flowers and wind and the past and the present and the future.
Reviewed by Theophilus Kwek
Throughout the nineteenth century, as the British Empire and its official tongue extended across the world, the word “expatriate,” which, as late as 1818 referred to “one who has been banished,” acquired a new definition: “one who chooses to live abroad.”
Translated by Mirza Purić
My beautiful triune people, you’re fairest
in the morning when you gush forth
from your colon-colonies
and your public transport vans
– thank you.
Translated by Sherilyn Hellberg
The face, the voice, the hands press against the wall. Celestine up in the south-facing attic, in front of the stained mirror—and there is also a dried wreath there. In the darkness inside the wall, a glimpse of Celestine’s eyes. In one eye a nettle grows. The forest around the castle sparkled like silver, carrying Celestine’s name within it. She is furious; she hunts down the guests at the hotel when they sleep. She slides down the corridors. She licks their faces. She licks the sleep out of their eyes. She cries no no when the wall closes in on her.
Reviewed by Nathan Delaney
Fugger’s impact on contemporary politics and business practices during the Renaissance was arguably as great as any shaped by members of the Medici, de Rothschild, or Rockefeller families.
By Phil Jackson
The true phenomenon of Eurovision is that, despite political divides and culture clashes, it has fostered European integration and togetherness.
Translated by Angela Rodel
I’ll try to introduce to you the six hunters individually and I’ll start with him, since he was the reason they set off in that miserable weather to track wolves.
Translated by Mirza Purić
You’re always on the edge between two chasms, cradle-ladles,
as your limping legs laze on the wall.
There are wider spaces in you, their evening chill
callously presses your palms
as if to pierce your insides, spill into the night,
into the rivers above the roofs, into the rotten orchards of the sky.
Translated by Eliza Marciniak
Cold surfaces of mirrors stubbornly hold their form.
Beyond the looking-glass, atoms have combined
into impenetrable worlds.
I found warm newborns in the rabbit-hole.
Translated by Mirza Purić
When we wet the bed
for three nights in a row
they put a shroud
over our heads
and brought the lead
to our eyes
Translated by Mirza Purić
I’ve got all the necessary qualifications to become stateless I’ve got
an expired passport of a state which no longer exists and a birth certificate
from a city in a country no one will recognise
By Meghan Forbes
The contested construct of Central Europe, the violence of the two world wars, and the turbulent political environment in the region throughout the twentieth century has produced a distinct body of literature that expresses both cultural specificity and a more universal tension between unease and optimism brought about by a constant state of flux.
By Meghan Forbes
The period between the two world wars in Europe marked a moment of intensive artistic and intellectual exchange as new nations were formed, such as Czechoslovakia’s First Republic and Weimar Germany. This active learning course will examine how the Czech, German, Polish, Hungarian, and Serbo‐Croatian avant‐garde magazines contributed to international discussions about what a new Europe should be through their innovative use of photography, international typographic conventions, and translation.
Translated by Mirza Purić
beggars at my door
I’m not opening
the spyhole is a safe space
a worldview
in my fridge
fungi and mould
Translated by Mirza Purić
Says
All things
When you lay them
One across the other
Make a cross
Only a man
Dropped as a perpendicular
Onto another man
Interviewed by Jake Purcell
Our discussions vacillate between various conceptions of the region as a geo-political construct, a shared culture across small nations, or a group of fierce individuals resistant to any idea of a shared culture.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), Samantha Lomb (History), Mihai Sebe (Political Science), and Daniela Irrera (International Relations).
Interviewed by Jake Purcell
Director of the World of Film International Festival Martin Petrov, discusses EuropeNow Festival; a collaboration with WoFF and the Council for European Studies.
By Jan Čulík
The significant upsurge of refugees, which came into Europe in 2015, was met with unprecedented anger and hostility from an overwhelming majority of citizens of most of the post-communist Central European countries. It would appear that a synergy of several historical, cultural, political, and economic factors has created this fiercely hostile reaction.
Reviewed by Samantha Fox
The Berlin Wall may have fallen twenty-five years ago, but Germans still talk about “Die Mauer im Kopf”—the wall in the head—the cultural and psychological divisions between East and West that continue to endure. Ben Gook’s Divided Subjects, Invisible Borderlands: Re-Unified Germany After 1989, examines the unfinished business of reunification.
By Sheri Berman
Economically, much of the continent suffers from low growth, high unemployment and rising inequality, while politically, disillusionment with the European community as well as domestic institutions and elites is widespread. Partially as a result, right-wing populism is growing, increasing political instability and uncertainty even further.
By Turhan Canli
As Europe copes with the presence of nearly a million refugees, national medical care systems have become strained.
By Maria Höhn
If we want to prepare our undergraduate students for this new reality, we need to be a part of researching, analyzing, and designing curriculum innovations that give our students the capacities and skills to engage with what will be global challenge for decades to come.
By Nicole Shea and Turhan Canli
In political analysis, scientific inquiry, literature, poetry, language, and the arts, we examine the loss of culture and identity and the effects of trauma on the human mind, as well as the healing power of artistic expression.
By Morten Høi Jensen
It would take many rigorous and carefully administered lessons in world history to cover the vast and chilling tundra of President Trump’s ignorance. European history might not be a bad place to start, however, especially if you believe, as President Trump does, that the European Union was created in order to “beat the United States when it comes to trade,” or that it is merely “a vehicle for Germany.”
Translated by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping
Nights on the riverbank were terrifying: it was as if the violent wind would blow the boxes into the river at any moment. Mixed with this strong wind were many howling wolves.
Curated by Nisha Sajnani
Through resettled media, each artist contemplates the psychological, social, and physical effects of forced migration.
By Maria Höhn
Currently, around 60 million people across the globe are displaced by war, violence, and environmental destruction; half of them are children. This worldwide refugee crisis of forced migration is the largest displacement of people since WWII. View Maria’s course syllabus for The 21st Century Worldwide Refugee Crisis at Vasaar College.
By Elena Lappin
No one except my brother seemed to be concerned about how this bombshell was affecting me. My parents were the core, I was the periphery. Whose story was this, really?
By James Fitzgerald
This article critically interrogates the “terrorist/refugee” narrative that has become a mainstay of increasingly right-wing political and (social) media discourse. It contextualizes the conflation of “refugees” with “terrorists” by reference to logics of contemporary counterterrorism practices, which tend to securitize entire populations based on the threat that they might produce.
Translated by George Henson
I was in Vienna this year, after a twelve-year absence. My arrival coincided with a mass rally of three hundred thousand people who protested against the return of Nazism to the country, precisely in Heroes’ Square, the same one where one million Austrians frenziedly cheered Hitler.
By Arturo Desimone
The November 13, 2015 attack summoned unlikely mourners from the political elite. A towering human mausoleum rose above the French ground-zero, propped with flags of causes that were alien and alienating to the leftist ideology of the Hebdo family, whose hard-earned infamy had preceded them for decades, only to be trivialized into consensus and tricolor shrouds.
Translated by Saskia Vogel
Her fatigue was bright and jagged. It rained down on her, dispersing her thoughts until they were but white noise. She had no idea how long she’d slept last night.
By Eamonn Butler
National identity and its cultural, ethnic, and constitutional components are now used to justify and shape political decision-making.
Reviewed by Poupeh Missaghi
Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia is a gorgeous memorial for a lost loved one, from one brother to another, from one man who finds beauty and love in the arms of another man.
Reviewed by Peter Clark
This book combines recent research on the history of gardening and arboriculture, as well as urban and environmental approaches.
Interviewed by Mount Saint Mary College
The challenges of forced migration and displacement are at front and center of our political and social tensions.
By Claire Needler
This project aims to influence policy and practice, and to make tangible improvements to the lives of migrants who have settled in Scotland. Our focus is participatory action research, working with migrants and stakeholders to find local, grassroots solutions to issues they have identified.
Interviewed by Sherman Teichman
Mike Niconchuk reflects on some of the intimate lessons he has learned on healing and coping from refugees he has developed friendships with over the last five years working in post-conflict and displaced communities in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.
By Marjorie Agosín
Suddenly,
That night became longer still.
Around us the silence turned dark as well,
An opaque hue of gray without blue.
Bewildered girls asked what had happened.
All their mothers knew to do was play with their disheveled hair.
Produced by Daniel Goulden
In this episode of the Europe Now Podcast, we take a look at the refugee crisis in Europe from a historical perspective. We’ll travel to the last ice age, the Roman Empire, and America during WWI to discuss other refugee crises and look at their effects.
Reviewed by Fabian Frenzel
At times Berlin feels overburdened with history. Every stone in the city has a story to tell, and often these stories are grim.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Hélène Ducros (Geography), Ozden Ocak (Sociology), Mihai Sebe (Political Science), and Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science).
By Mary Wang
In European countries with growing right-wing movements, the upcoming elections should serve as a reminder that merging bodies into one space isn’t always enough. Instead, those in countries like France and the Netherlands, who will elect new governments in March, will need to understand that even in countries where the female body isn’t immediately under threat, female solidarity means voting against the politicians who will hurt immigrant and colored bodies more.
By Thomas Henökl
Never before has the change of administration in the United States caused this much concern globally, and never before has a US President incited so much tension ahead of taking office. As the hopes for a Damascene conversion for the new POTUS are waning, one thing has become evident by now: the path of naive unilateralism that the forthcoming American government is set to follow will prove to be of little help for international development or a burgeoning global policy of common good.
By Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough
While city attitudes toward women cutting their tresses had by then become more liberal, in small towns and villages the daring ones were branded morally delinquent and sentenced a priori to eternal damnation. A popular saying: “Short hair, short on brains” expressed prevalent attitudes.
By Danilo Mandić
From the Vatican to Downing Street, the refugee crisis has been acknowledged as a fundamental test of European politics and identity.
By Morten Høi Jensen
The experience of the people of Lvov is an important rejoinder to the resurgent ethnic nationalism now tightening its grip on Europe—with its nostalgia for some illusory cultural and ethnic homogeneity, for a lost golden age that never existed and to which it would not be desirable to return if it did.
Reviewed by Angelos-Stylianos Chryssogelo
The first half is a Keynesian analysis of the flaws of the Eurozone architecture; the second half is a condensed political program of how a country could negotiate and implement an exit from the euro.
Reviewed by Shawn Donnelly
Instead of focusing on stable prices as the benchmark of a working monetary union, Flassbeck and Lapavitsas argue for coordination of unit labour costs instead, following observations of how economic growth in Europe closely follows wage growth.
Reviewed by Michele Chang
Written in an accessible style, this hybrid treatment risks not engaging extensively enough with economic theory (there are not a lot of references for the various economic arguments they mention, for example) to convince those who are not already sympathetic to their cause.
By Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager
The series became a hit in many European countries and later in the USA. John Powers, a reporter from the US National Public Radio claims that Borgen is Denmark’s West Wing (but even better). Borgen harvested an impressive amount of international awards in various categories—ranging from Best Drama Series and specifically Best European Drama TV Series to the Outstanding Actress in the Drama Series by Sidse Babett Knudsen (better known to the audience as Birgitte Nyborg).
By Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn
Three scholars of European politics find Against the Troika to provide a refreshing, if not entirely original, analysis of what has gone wrong in the euro area.
By Leonora Carrington
Various events were taking place in the outside world: the collapse of Belgium, the entry of the Germans in France. All of this interested me very little and I had no fear whatsoever.
By Viktoria Sorochinski
This series portrays the last remains of the authentic Ukrainian villages and their elderly inhabitants.
By Matteo Laruffa
Today, we observe the emergence of a new type of contemporary policy, which represents a challenge for the stability of our institutions.
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Mudugan was a typical village of thieves, built in the middle of the forest in a gap that barely deserved to be called a clearing, so tightly did the trees encircle the log houses. There weren’t any paths that had been marked to get there and it was inaccessible to anyone who didn’t know exactly where the ravines and undergrowth were. That was where Umrug Batyushin learned to live his life as a self-sufficient child, there where he learned to shoot rifles, to carve up elk, and endure cold and hardship, as well as bear the howling of the wolves…
By Jacob Høi Jensen
In their desperate attempt to promote a vision of a United Kingdom, which is based on a glorified and nostalgic interpretation of the past, Brexiteers have unleashed a process that risks upending the legal, economic, and political foundations of the modern UK. Furthermore, they have yet to offer a coherent and realistic vision of what will replace it.
Translated by Mirza Purić
My husband is burly, and when he walks, it’s as if his steps are yawning. He stumbles over me as if over a pet. I sometimes hide behind a tree and wait for him to turn around. Or leave. If we’re going to a birthday party, I’m the one who wraps and carries the present. If he’s had a lot of wine, the room takes on a smell which makes me put on my shoes and walk up and down the street.
Reviewed by Kelly McKowen
Though Sweden has lost little of its luster, it is no longer the favored synonym for egalitarian prosperity it once was.
Translated by Masha Udensiva-Brenner
I want to scream something
Into its dark, open jaws,
To bring my ear to it,
Press up against it with my tremulous heart.
Interviewed by Kayla Maiuri
The PhD candidate aims to discover what the world needs to look like in order for the seemingly bizarre to make sense.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Julian Garritzmann (Political Science), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), and Hélène Ducros (Geography).
Reviewed by Thaddeus Sunseri
Bernhard Gissibl’s work is the first comprehensive treatment of the origins of big game hunting, national parks, wildlife reserves, megafauna protection, and even “safari tourism” under German colonial rule in the former German East Africa.
By Robert van Voren
The tragedy of Leonidas’ death is the fact that he did not have to die. The fact is that Vilnius airport has three defibrillators and none of them was touched. As I said, none of the airport staff tried to resuscitate him, and instead waited until the ambulance arrived–too late to save his life.
Translated by Jordan Stump
But just then a crowd appeared, bellowing, with machetes in their hands, and spears, bows, clubs, torches. We hurried to hide in the banana grove. Still roaring, the men burst into our house. They set fire to the straw-roofed hut, the stables full of calves. They slashed the stores of beans and sorghum. They launched a frenzied attack on the brick house we would never live in. They didn’t take anything, they only wanted to destroy, to wipe out all sign of us, annihilate us.
By Paolo D’Odorico
Since the 1960’ the human population has been increasing by one billion every 12-14 years and is projected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050. More people will require more food and water while the increasing affluence in emergent economies will further enhance human appropriation of natural resources.
By Peter Debaere
Soaring food prices and the recent droughts in Australia, India and the United States underscore that freshwater scarcity is a major challenge in the 21st century. Almost one-fifth of the world’s population currently suffers the consequences of water scarcity, and this number is about to increase.
By Paolo D’Odorico
This course introduces the fundamental physical principles that are necessary to understand the interactions of hydrological processes with forest ecosystems. The course focuses on hydrologic processes characteristic of forested watersheds, including the impact of forests on evapotranspiration rates, soil infiltration, soil water redistribution, shallow water table variability, runoff generation, streamflow dynamics, and soil stability and erosion.
By Jim Smith
Potable water is essential for human life. Throughout most of the industrialized world, advanced water treatment systems incorporate fundamental physical, chemical, and biological principles into engineering designs to produce high-quality water at relatively low cost to consumers.
By Brian Richter
In this course we will explore the dimensions of what “sustainability” and “sustainable development” mean in the context of water use and management. We will examine the different ways in which water is used, valued, and governed, examining sustainability through different lenses and perspectives.
By Jake Purcell
On December 1 and 2, Columbia University hosted Brexit: Before & Beyond, a set of panels and events that brought together journalists and scholars from both European and American universities to discuss the events that precipitated the UK’s vote to leave the EU, as well as the continuing fallout from that referendum.
By Mary Wang
John Lancester’s “Brexit Blues,” published in the London Review of Books starts with an explanation of the “Overton window,” a concept in political science that describes the range of ideas that are deemed acceptable by the public at one time. The crucial insight of Joseph Overton, the inventor who lent his name to the concept, was that this window of acceptability could be shifted.
Reviewed by Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay
The author combines innovative archival research with multi-sited ethnography to analyze the growing Islamic fashion market and how Muslim individuals, particularly young women, engage with fashion as they negotiate the politics of identity and belonging.
By Dan Beachy-Quick
In the summer of 2012, James Eagan Holmes walked from the midnight alley through the propped open door of the movie theater into which he would throw gas canisters and, wearing a black assault vest, his hair dyed an acid orange, he opened fire.
By Nicola Francesco Dotti and André Spithoven
While knowledge is intangible, research and development (R&D) activities are known for being unevenly distributed across space. Since the 1980s, cross-national knowledge flows have dramatically increased, and the EU has played a major role in this field with policies such as the Framework Programmes (FP).
Reviewed by Lukas Haffert
In the post-Piketty world, economic inequality has returned to the top of the agenda of political economists with a vengeance. A flurry of research projects has started to investigate the sources and the consequences of growing disparities between the rich and the poor.
By Christopher Impiglia
Mussolini’s skewed image of the past and his romanticizing of Imperial Rome, without considering its flaws and understanding the reasons for its downfall, ultimately helped lead to his downfall.
By Justin J.W. Powell and Jennifer Dusdal
European countries have increasingly invested in higher education and science systems, leading to rising numbers of scholars and scientists, considerable infrastructure development, and dense cross-cultural networks and collaboration.
Reviewed by Lucy J. Wishart
Waste has traditionally been managed in two ways: buried or burnt. These forms of waste management have caused a myriad of environmental problems including polluting water, air, and soil; endangering wildlife and waterways; and contributing to climate change.
By Tobias Schulze-Cleven
Having outgrown the ivory tower, higher education has moved to the center of societies’ efforts to sustain economic growth and provide social security. This rise to prominence has also turned the sector into a key battleground for social conflict.
By Inga Ulnicane
Global research collaboration and competition plays an increasing role in everyday life of contemporary academia.
Translated by Chenxin Jiang
Europe is disintegrating, the old lady is falling apart. She recently appeared at the Museum Festival with a terrible heap of jewelry around her neck; she’d just dyed her hair blond; above her fake gold necklace hung her wretched, worn face, and then she laughed, walked up to the bar, embraced a tall young man and kiss him artfully.
By David Constantine
During the funeral, and after it when the mourners came back to her house, Katrin continued in the almost rapturous state she had been lifted into by the last hours of Eric’s life. It was over, accomplished, her strength had sufficed. And now meticulously she would attend in every detail to every thing that needed to be done. She allowed advice, but followed it her way; help, but she directed it. She accepted condolences, and herself extended them to whoever had been saddened by Eric’s death.
By Alia Ali
The multi-media artist invites the viewer to analyze their subjective perception in regards to inclusion and exclusion, and the threshold in which the transition between the two occurs.
By Inga Ulnicane and Nicola Francesco Dotti
Contributors to this special feature address theoretical and empirical aspects of some of the key transformations: massification of higher education, reforming academic careers, and increased focus on international collaboration and productivity in research.
Translated by Julia Sanches
She continues to divine the future—more so than the past, which she has almost completely forgotten. She has herself turned into Linka, the gypsy from Debrecen. Her Jewishness is a mixture of faith and superstition; a religion she has partly invented herself.
Interviewed by Özden Ocak
Fischer discusses France’s policies on immigration, the political climate after the terrorist attacks in Paris, and the possibility of a far-right victory in the elections.
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet
At the time I had no answering machine, so
I couldn’t call myself. Ludicrous, perhaps,
even morbid, how secure it made me feel to know
at any time I could hear my own voice. There is a voice, however
mechanical, which is mine.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), Hélène Ducros (Geography), and Daniela Irrera (International Relations).
Interviewed by Jake Purcell
Council for European Studies chair Sheri Berman, discusses the rise of populism and the inclusion problems of the center-left.
By Jake Purcell
Columbia University’s Department of History kicked off the academic year with an “air-clearing” conversation about the Brexit vote.
Reviewed by Margaret Galvan
In focusing on the readership patterns of comics among British girls in the second half of the twentieth century, Mel Gibson recuperates a richly textured subject that has, by her account, “been largely neglected as a research subject within the academy and in popular accounts of youth culture.”
By Sheri Berman
Europe today is a mess. The strongest countries face lackluster economic growth, while the weakest, like Greece, are struggling to recover from depression-like downturns. Politically, things are even worse, as disillusionment with European and domestic institutions and elites is at record levels, and support for far-left and far-right parties is growing, creating political instability.
Reviewed by Julie Hemment
Oil, corporate power, and shifting corporate/state alignments are all urgent twenty-first century themes, implicated and embedded in Europe’s current intersecting crises.
By Erik R. Sund and Terje A. Eikemo
That the Nordic welfare regime does not succeed in reducing health inequalities would have serious implications for policies worldwide. If Norway cannot reduce health inequalities, who can?
By Arturo Desimone
“With all due respect for the talents of Mr. Kusuma, we have found no indication that his presence in the Netherlands is of any cultural importance.”
By Ted Schrecker
The negative health impacts exist on such a scale and have spread so quickly across time and space that if they involved pathogens they would be seen as of epidemic proportions.
Translated by André Naffis-Sahely
Venice multiplies itself and refracts, like light bounces off the shards of a mirror that has broken into a thousand pieces.
Reviewed by Lorenzo Genito
Due to the Euro crisis, the Eurozone has become divided between a relatively wealthier, more successful core and the economically disadvantaged periphery.
Reviewed by Kraig Larkin
Fumo tells a fascinating tale about smoking, health, and risk during Italy’s cigarette century.
Translated by Kelsi Vanada
love’s cry lingers incomplete like a half-articulated sneeze love is a half-sneeze cut off by another sneeze creaking a reflex scandalously i rest my skull on your sweet skull a phonograph before the sonata in C major accentuates and duplicates the cravings and increases wellbeing and exists
Translated by K.T. Billey
Gray carpet and gray chairs and
gray walls and gray table and
gray cocktail glasses
and gray fax machine and gray
door frame and gray neighbors
Translated by Derick Mattern
Once poetry was like a faithful hound
whenever I was sad he’d sense it
and come comfort me
By Sarita Zaleha
Zaleha’s creative research explores environmental agency and our emotional engagement with the environment.
By Nadine Reibling
Unlike other rich countries in Europe, such as the United Kingdom, Denmark, or the Netherlands, Germany has no comprehensive political strategy or program that specifically aims to reduce such inequalities. Political attempts to address health inequalities are limited to small health promotion initiatives targeted at socially disadvantaged groups.
Translated by Susan Bernofsky
As soon as he entered the sleepers’ realm, the air around him grew sharply colder, with glittering silvery particles of light falling all around him. He watched the miniature flakes floating, they danced, liberated from gravity, yet still went on falling: falling ever farther until at last they alighted on the frozen earth and disappeared.
By Tayfun Kasapoglu
The power struggle between secularists and “Islamists” has marked the history of Turkish politics. In this struggle, the Turkish military has acted as the guardian of the state, staging coups and banning certain political parties and figures in order to protect the secular system of the country (Jung 2008).
By Jonathan Stillo
This post is less about poverty at the individual, community, or even health-system level, and more about the things we miss when we fail to investigate contributing factors beyond those most visible.
Translated by Martin Aitken
We come no closer, only the opposite—we are moving away. Moving backwards, losing the pores of the woman’s skin, we lose the pores, the fair down of her upper lip that you discovered, the lines of her skin reminding you of some other age—youth, funnily enough, that couldn’t quite be placed.
By Mette Fallesen
It is almost impossible to speak of Turkish politics without to some degree addressing the conspiracy theories regarding the inner workings of the state. By calling them conspiracy theories, I intend to draw attention to how they are formed and in what way they reflect on how the state is imagined.
Interviewed by Kayla Maiuri
The PhD candidate discusses the roadblocks minority asylum seekers face, and the narrow patterns and behaviors they must conform to in order to be granted safety.
By Courtney McNamara and Jennifer J. Carroll
The essays presented in this special feature address the growing public and political concern over increasing levels of social stratification and reveal the political relevance of health inequalities across Europe. Specifically, we asked health inequality experts to reflect on some of the biggest challenges surrounding health inequalities in different European countries.
By the EuropeNow Editorial Committee
Here are this month’s editor’s picks from Research Editorial Committee members Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (Political Science), Louie Dean Valencia-García (History), and Hélène Ducros (Geography).
Produced by Daniel Goulden
Welcome to the EuropeNow Podcast. In this inaugural episode we try to answer the seemingly simple question: What is Europe? We’ll take a look at the geographic, historical, and political definitions of Europe and see if any of them are satisfactory. We’ll also take a look at the potential for the dream of a unified Europe and the threats to that dream.
By Teresa Culver
Emphasizes the management of stormwater quantity and quality, especially in urban areas. Course includes impacts of stormwater on infrastructure and ecosystems, hydrologic and contaminant transport principles, stormwater regulation, structural and non-structural stormwater management approaches, and modeling tools for stormwater analysis and management.
Reviewed by Hanspeter Kriesi
Although they only indirectly speak to the topic of the volume, some of the conceptual discussions of populism in the country chapters are of more general interest, because they clarify the sources of confusion that exist in the debate on populism.
Directed by Maria Hengge
Sin and Illy have a plan: on a Greek island they want to get ‘clean’ on their own. But the intention of the two girls fails already on the way to the airport. Finally Sin realizes she has to go the way out of heroin addiction all alone.
Directed by Mike Day
The Faroese are among the first to feel the affects of our ever more polluted oceans. They have discovered that their beloved whales are toxic, contaminated by the outside world. What once secured their survival now endangers their children and the Faroe Islanders must make a choice between health and tradition.
Directed by Timothy George Kelly
A portrait of a democracy in all its impossible and ugly glory. With subtle force, yet without judgement, it presents the people of a once powerful empire as they negotiate their identities in a world that is changing faster than, ever and in which power appears to lie further and further from people’s own hands.
By EuropeNow Film Festival
Untold stories of men, women, and families; their mission to embrace the change and fight for the unknown while nostalgically reminiscing all those unkept promises from the past.
Directed by Mihajlo Jevtic
This film is a story of immigration and identity after the dissolution of former Yugoslavia, as seen through the eyes of filmmaker Mihajlo Jevtic. It follows the period of transition of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into today’s Serbia and Mihajlo’s transition from a child into a middle aged man. It is a film made by a man who is about to leave his country for good and about the contents of his immigrant’s suitcase.
By EuropeNow Film Festival
A selection of short films from to be screened at the inaugural EuropeNow Film Festival.
By Teresa Culver
The emphasis in the course is on the behavior of water, including closed conduit flows and open channel flows. It is hoped each student will gain proficiency with equations of energy, momentum and force as applied to fluids.
By Matt Reidenbach
Studies the physical properties, processes, and structure of the oceans; mass and energy budgets; methods of measurements; and the nature and theory of ocean currents, waves, and tides in the open sea, near shore and in estuaries.
By Christian McMillen
This is part of our Campus Spotlight on the Global Water Initiative at the University of Virginia.
By Christian McMillen
This is part of our Campus Spotlight on the Global Water Initiative at the University of Virginia.
Reviewed by Stephen Banks
Indeed, the whole book is entertaining, and during the course of its excursions from Southern Italy to the western shores of Ireland, or the eastern fringes of Russia, there is much wry humor on display reflected in a wealth of memorable anecdotes.
