European Studies

The European Studies minor provides an intellectual meeting ground for students interested in exploring Europe from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Drawing courses from a number of different departments, the program in European Studies allows students to integrate their study of a European language and off-campus experiences in Europe with a coherent set of courses on campus to achieve a greater understanding of both new and old Europes.

Requirements for the European Studies Minor

  • One of the following gateway courses:
    • EUST 110 The Power of Place: Memory and Counter-Memory in the European City (not offered in 2017-18)
    • EUST 111 The Age of Cathedrals
    • HIST 141 Europe in the Twentieth Century (not offered in 2017-18)

  • Four transnational supporting courses that

    • approach a theme or issue from a pan-European perspective OR
    • compare European countries or regions OR
    • compare Europe (or parts of Europe)

    with another part of the world. These courses will engage in an examination of such overarching issues as the relation between individual and community, cultural and linguistic diversity, and globalization. The list below is not exhaustive; students should consult with the minor director regarding other courses that may fulfill this requirement.

    • AFST 125 New African Migrations
    • ARTH 101 Introduction to Art History I
    • ARTH 102 Introduction to Art History II
    • ARTH 172 Modern Art: 1890-1945
    • ARTH 228 The Picturesque: Landscape between Nature and Artifice (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ARTH 234 Experiencing Early Modern Sculpture
    • ARTH 236 Baroque Art (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ARTH 240 Art Since 1945 (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ARTH 255 Islam in the Eyes of the West (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ARTH 263 European Architectural Studies Program: Prehistory to Postmodernism
    • ARTH 264 European Architectural Studies Program: Managing Monuments: Issues in Cultural Heritage Practice
    • CAMS 211 Film History II
    • CAMS 214 Film History III (not offered in 2017-18)
    • CCST 270 Creative Travel Writing Workshop (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ENGL 135 Imperial Adventures
    • ENGL 350 The Postcolonial Novel: Forms and Contexts
    • EUST 100 Allies or Enemies? America through European Eyes
    • EUST 159 "The Age of Isms" - Ideals, Ideas and Ideologies in Modern Europe (not offered in 2017-18)
    • EUST 279 Cross Cultural Psychology in Prague: Nationalism, Minorities, Migrations (not offered in 2017-18)
    • FREN 206 Contemporary French and Francophone Culture
    • FREN 243 Cultural Reading of Food
    • FREN 255 Paris Program: Islam in France: Historical Approaches and Current Debates
    • FREN 259 Paris Program: Hybrid Paris
    • FREN 309 Communication and Stylistics
    • FREN 353 The French Chanson
    • FREN 357 French and Francophone Autofiction
    • GERM 241 Crisis of Identity/Identity of Crisis: Introduction to German Jewish Literature and Thought (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 100 Migration and Mobility in the Medieval North
    • HIST 100 Exploration, Science, and Empire
    • HIST 138 Crusades, Mission, and the Expansion of Europe (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 141 Europe in the Twentieth Century (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 142 Women in Modern Europe (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 202 Icons, Iconoclasm, and the Quest for the Holy in Byzantium and Its Neighbors
    • HIST 209 The Revolutionary Atlantic (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 231 Mapping the World Before Mercator
    • HIST 236 Women and Gender in Europe before the French Revolution (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 238 The Viking World (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 249 Two Centuries of Tumult: Modern Central Europe (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 287 From Alchemy to the Atom Bomb: The Scientific Revolution and the Making of the Modern World
    • HIST 341 The Russian Revolution: A Centenary Perspective
    • MUSC 111 Western Art Music: The Last 1000 Years
    • MUSC 211 Race, Gender, and Classical Music (not offered in 2017-18)
    • PHIL 272 Early Modern Philosophy
    • POSC 120 Democracy and Dictatorship
    • POSC 255 Post-Modern Political Thought
    • POSC 265 Public Policy and Global Capitalism
    • POSC 268 Global Environmental Politics and Policy
    • POSC 283 Separatist Movements
    • POSC 325 Corruption, Clientelism, and Political Machines*
    • POSC 352 Political Theory of Alexis de Tocqueville (not offered in 2017-18)
    • POSC 358 Comparative Social Movements*
    • POSC 359 Cosmopolitanism (not offered in 2017-18)
    • RELG 329 Modernity and Tradition

  • Two country-specific supporting courses in the participating disciplines, each of which focuses on a particular European country or region. Country-specific courses need not address pan-European issues, but students will be expected to bring a comparative awareness of Europe to their learning experience.
    • ARTS 116 Ireland Program: Visualizing Ireland
    • ECON 221 Cambridge Program: Contemporary British Economy (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ENGL 144 Shakespeare I
    • ENGL 210 From Chaucer to Milton: Early English Literature (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ENGL 213 Christopher Marlowe
    • ENGL 214 Revenge Tragedy
    • ENGL 216 Milton
    • ENGL 218 The Gothic Spirit
    • ENGL 222 The Art of Jane Austen
    • ENGL 244 Shakespeare I
    • ENGL 249 Modern Irish Literature: Poetry, Prose, and Politics (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ENGL 256 Ireland Program: Performing Ireland
    • ENGL 274 Ireland Program: Irish Literature in Ireland
    • ENGL 281 London Program: Imagining Nineteenth Century London
    • ENGL 282 London Program: London Theater
    • ENGL 319 The Rise of the Novel
    • ENGL 323 Romanticism and Reform (not offered in 2017-18)
    • ENGL 327 Victorian Novel (not offered in 2017-18)
    • FREN 204 Intermediate French
    • FREN 208 Paris Program: Contemporary France: Cultures, Politics, Society
    • FREN 233 French Cinema and Culture (not offered in 2017-18)
    • FREN 241 The Lyric and Other Seductions (not offered in 2017-18)
    • FREN 243 Cultural Reading of Food
    • FREN 250 French History in 10 Objects
    • FREN 254 Paris Program: French Art in Context
    • FREN 259 Paris Program: Hybrid Paris
    • FREN 340 Arts of Brevity: Short Fiction (not offered in 2017-18)
    • FREN 341 Madame Bovary and Her Avatars (not offered in 2017-18)
    • FREN 351 Love, War and Monsters in Renaissance France (not offered in 2017-18)
    • FREN 353 The French Chanson
    • FREN 359 Paris Program: Hybrid Paris
    • GERM 175 Berlin Program: Berlin Field Studies in English
    • GERM 254 Berlin Program: The World's a Stage -- Theater in Berlin
    • GERM 372 The Latest--Current Themes in German Literature, Film and the Media (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 100 Soot, Smog and Satanic Mills: Environment & Industrialization
    • HIST 201 Rome Program: Building Power and Piety in Medieval Italy, CE 300-1150 (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 206 Rome Program: The Eternal City in Time: Structure, Change, and Identity (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 207 Rome Program: Roman Journal: The Traveler as Witness (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 243 The Peasants are Revolting! Society and Politics in the Making of Modern France
    • HIST 248 Berlin Program: A German Crucible of European and Global Culture
    • HIST 250 Modern Germany (not offered in 2017-18)
    • HIST 250F Modern Germany-FLAC German Trailer (not offered in 2017-18)
    • RUSS 205 Russian in Cultural Contexts
    • RUSS 226 Moscow Program: Russia's Hallowed Places
    • RUSS 237 Beyond Beef Stroganoff: Food in Russian Culture
    • RUSS 266 The Brothers Karamazov (not offered in 2017-18)
    • RUSS 267 War and Peace (not offered in 2017-18)
    • RUSS 337 Russian Kitchen Culture
    • RUSS 345 Russian Cultural Idioms of the Nineteenth Century
    • RUSS 351 Chekhov (not offered in 2017-18)
    • RUSS 395 Senior Seminar: The Cult of Stalin (not offered in 2017-18)
    • SPAN 229 Madrid Program: Current Issues in Spanish Politics
    • SPAN 244 Spain Today: Recent Changes through Narrative and Film
    • SPAN 247 Madrid Program: Spanish Art Live
    • SPAN 328 The Contemporary Spanish Fictional Essay (not offered in 2017-18)
    • SPAN 330 The Invention of the Modern Novel: Cervantes' Don Quijote
    • SPAN 349 Madrid Program: Theory and Practice of Urban Life
    • SPAN 358 The Spanish Civil War
  • Minors must normally participate in an off-campus study program in Europe.
  • The overall balance of courses must include a mix of disciplines and course levels (100s, 200s, 300s). While this balance will be established for each individual student in consultation with the minor coordinator, no more than half of the required minimum of courses may be in one department, and at least half of the required minimum of courses must be above the 100-level.

The total number of credits required to complete the minor is 45.

European Studies Courses

EUST 100 Allies or Enemies? America through European Eyes During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, America often served as a canvass for projecting European anxieties about economic, social and political modernization. Admiration of technological progress and political stability was combined with a pervasive anti-Americanism, which was, according to political scientist Andrei Markovits, the "lingua franca" of modern Europe. These often contradictory perceptions of the United States were crucial in the process of forming national histories and mythologies as well as a common European identity. Accordingly, this course will explore the many and often contradictory views expressed by Europe's emerging mass publics and intellectual and political elites about the United States during this period. 6 credits; AI, WR1, IS; Fall; Paul Petzschmann
EUST 110 The Power of Place: Memory and Counter-Memory in the European City This team-taught interdisciplinary course explores the relationship between memory, place and power in Europe’s cities. It examines the practices through which individuals and groups imagine, negotiate and contest their past in public spaces through art, literature, film and architecture. The instructors will draw on their research and teaching experience in urban centers of Europe after a thorough introduction to the study of memory across different disciplines. Students will be challenged to think critically about larger questions regarding the possibility of national and local memories as the foundation of identity and pride but also of guilt and shame. 6 credits; HI, IS; Not offered 2017-18
EUST 111 The Age of Cathedrals Arising over a period of two medieval centuries, the gothic cathedrals of Europe symbolize at once faith, political and economic power, local identity, and technological and artistic achievement. Later generations commemorated them in literature and art, destroyed them in their political and religious zeal, and restored them (and continue to restore them) out of different sort of political zeal as well as a sense of duty and opportunity to preserve a national and European cultural inheritance and tourist treasure. In this course, we seek to understand the cathedral and its enduring legacy in Europe, and especially in France, from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and using a variety of media and sources.  6 credits; HI, IS; Fall; William L North
EUST 159 "The Age of Isms" - Ideals, Ideas and Ideologies in Modern Europe "Ideology" is perhaps one of the most-used (and overused) terms of modern political life. This course will introduce students to important political ideologies and traditions of modern Europe and their role in the development of political systems and institutional practices from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will read central texts by conservatives, liberals, socialists, anarchists and nationalists while also considering ideological outliers such as Fascism and Green Political Thought. In addition the course will introduce students to the different ways in which ideas can be studied systematically and the methodologies available. 6 credits; SI, IS; Not offered 2017-18
EUST 249 The European Union: Constitution, Crisis and Conflict It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the experience of war and conflict for the founding of the European Union. The enlargement of the EU to include the much of Eastern Europe has brought this kind of “History” once again to the fore of policy-making in Brussels and in Europe’s national capitals. It has also exposed the contradictions that have made a coherent European Foreign and Security Policy so difficult to achieve. In this course we will examine the history of the EU’s founding alongside an introduction to the history and politics of Eastern Europe, culminating in an examination of the ongoing war in Ukraine. We will benefit from multiple class visits by Ukraine scholar Prof Komarenko of Tarras Shevchenko University, Ukraine. 6 credits; SI, IS; Not offered 2017-18
EUST 279 Cross Cultural Psychology in Prague: Nationalism, Minorities, Migrations In this course students will be introduced to the complex phenomena of migration, nationalism, and the formation of ethnic minorities in modern Europe through theory and historical examples. among the topics covered will be European attitudes and policies toward minorities (including Jews, Roma, Muslims, and Africans) and the responses of those minorities to them from assimilation to dual identity to nationalism. 6 credits; HI, IS; Not offered 2017-18
EUST 398 Senior Colloquium Culminates in a final oral presentation that will allow concentrators to synthesize and reflect upon their diverse European studies, including on-campus and off-campus classwork, internships, and cross-cultural experiences. 2 credits; NE; Spring; Paul Petzschmann