Professor Dorothy Noyes has developed a new course to be offered this Spring 2021!  This course is approved for all specializations.

 

 

INTSTDS 4195   Belonging in Europe

Class number:  33389

W 9:35-10:55  Hagerty Hall Room 180

F   9:35-10:55   Online

Prof. Dorothy Noyes

 

This class will be a tour across the countries and cultures of Europe.  We will study how the peoples of this varied region view their histories, class, race, gender and identity.  What stereotypes and conflicts shape a sense of “belonging” in Europe?  We will delve deeply into the how the citizens of Europe view themselves and Europe’s role in a rapidly changing world. 

 

This course introduces you to the everyday habits and everyday contradictions of life in Europe. We will be thinking about the big political and existential issues--identity, coexistence, attachment to place, coping with change--not through the operations of institutions but as lived on the ground and considered in culture. You'll learn some basic approaches to interpretive and ethnographic methods in the humanities as we compare forms and strategies across a wide range of cases - street life in Estonia, wine festivals in Spain, parades in Northern Ireland and Caribbean London, tourism in Venice, weddings in Macedonia, football fandom in Italy, name changes in Turkey, and the Eurovision Song Contest. National stereotypes and conflicts run deep in the stories that Europeans tell about themselves, but internal difference is just as important, and we'll look at the historical construction of gender, class, race and ethnicity, and religion across the region, as well as the complex interactions with the Arctic, the Americas, the Mediterranean, and Asia that have fostered both a certain idea of Europe and its present dilemmas and opportunities. Our central concern is the sense of belonging as a compound of ideas, experiences, and social interactions.

 

This class is approved for all specializations.  The INTSTDS 4195 topics class can be taken up to 3 times as long as the topics are different.

 

Prerequisites:  None