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Europe Made the World and Vice Versa: Toward a Global History of Europe

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.

The End of Europe’s Immigration Dream?

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.

A Roundtable on Forced Migration

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.

Promises and Pitfalls of Multifaith Cooperation for Integration

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.

The Impact of the Ukraine War on the Transatlantic Relationship

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.

The Spirit of Parochialism and Imperial Teleophilia

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.

The Return of the Russian Gulag

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.

Two Divided Countries in the Divided Supercontinent: Hungary and Ukraine in Eurasia

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.

A Roundtable on the European Capitals of Culture

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.

Conference Dispatch: An Anticolonial Museum

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.

The Banality of World War “Z”

By Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager and Evgeniya Pyatovskaya

This essay illuminates how—in the words of Nietzsche—“the use and abuse of history” (and of cultural memory) in Putin’s Russia has naturally led to what Hannah Arendt so brilliantly coined The Banality of Evil.

Living with Bear

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.

Europe’s Pandemic Failure

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.

Politics of Memory Under Two Pandemics

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.

The Fabric of Healing

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.

The Humanitarian Ideology

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.

A Roundtable on Marc Crépon’s Murderous Consent: On the Accommodation of Violent Death

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.

Murderous Consent: A Translator’s Note

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.

The Autoimmunity of Murderous Consent

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.

A Roundtable on European Integration

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.

Illusory Enlargement of the European Union

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.

Post-Imperial Permutations of the Hong Kong Protests

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.

Remembering and Forgetting Vichy

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.

Vichy: The Dark Legacy of an Accidental Capital

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.

The Town That Deleted Its Past

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.

Vichy versus France: A Defiant Refusal to Remember

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.

Life After War: Disturbed

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.

#MeToo and the Weakness of Manhood

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.

Nativist Nationalism and the Specter of Fascism in Italy

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.

Sanctions on Russia: Effectiveness and Impacts

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?

Reflections on the Soviet Politics of Water in the 1930s

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.

Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Water?

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.

Notes on Teaching in Prison

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.

Britain First: Banned on Facebook but not Solved

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?

Mapping the Radical Right in Hungary

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?

Protecting the Natural Environment? A Look at the Radical Right

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.

Hearing Hate: White Power Music

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.

Baltic Agriculture: The Political Economy of Extremes

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.

“Let Them Eat Cake:” European Austerity, Food Insecurity, and Food Fraud

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.

Superfood or Dangerous Drug? Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate in the Late 17th Century

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.

“Eurafrica” is Dead: In Fact, It Never Existed

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.

Dark: Energy Politics in an Age of Latency

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.

Reflections on the Czech Election

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.

The Essence of our Era: Yukio Mishima, Steve Bannon, and the Alt-Right

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.

The City is in Ruins

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.

Narratives of Belonging: Polish Immigrants in the UK After Brexit

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.

Lviv in Wartime

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.

Ten Years After Romania’s Entry into the EU

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.

Morten Høi Jensen

Saul Bellow and the Moronic Inferno

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.

Recognizing the Revolution: Thoughts on Genetic Distractions to Prenatal Care

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.

 

The Role of Values in EU Governance

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.”

Collaboration in Refugee Education: Field Notes from Bard College Berlin

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.

Encircling the Now by Felix Meyer-Christian

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.

Thomas Mann in America

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.”

The European Union at 60: The Future Will be Brighter Than Many Expect

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.

Can We Talk? Neuroscientists and Humanists on Memory

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.

President Donald Trump EuropeNow

Trump Against Europe

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.”

Untranslated Fire: Francophone Responses to the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

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.

Praise the Mutilated World

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.

Borgen and the Double Bind: The Haunted Princesses of the Danish Castle

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).

Brexit EuropeNow

Past Imperfect: The Brexit Gamble

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.

Sunlight and Arrows: Five Invocations for the Silent Muse

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.

The Past Makes Its Appearance Once Again

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.

Secularism and Religion: The Attempted Coup in Turkey

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).

Political Landscape in Turkey: Suspicion Against the Hizmet Movement

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.