Nations, cultures and religions in Europe

leusl2201  2017-2018  Bruxelles

Nations, cultures and religions in Europe
3 credits
15.0 h
Q2
Teacher(s)
Dujardin Vincent; SOMEBODY;
Language
French
Main themes
From a historical and political perspective, lectures will deal with the impact of European peoples' various senses of belonging - ethnic, linguistic and religious- on the European construction. The attention will also be drawn on how these senses of belonging are generally expressed and on how the European Union copes with them. Lectures will also attempt to point out the evolution of discourses defining Europe's values, identities and representations. It will underline how those discourses have been redefined in order to promote or to hinder the European process and how they have been used to stimulate or to hamper the European commitment of peoples living in Europe. Electoral issues will also shed light on the debate.
Aims

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

1 Lectures intend to provide students with tools that will help them to understand and analyze connections between European citizens and local, regional, national/supranational identities. Thanks to historical and sociological concepts, lectures will underline what these identities are made of and the way they are continuously used in the present time.
 

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.
Content
The lecture will be divided into several parts. First, concepts will be deeply defined. Representation, identification as well as legitimation processes will be part of the theoretical approach. Second, connections between Europeans and European projects in the long run will come under scrutiny. Political cultures, democratic practices and their representations before 1945 will be analyzed. This switch from the present-day world to the period preceding 1945 will help better understand such factors as imagination, practices or customs brought out by the European project. Thirdly, a discourse analysis will underline the reappropriation process that is at work in the European space. Thanks to many texts and images, the lecturer will illustrate what is at work while the European governance is developing.
Evaluation methods
Written or oral examination.
Faculty or entity
EURO