Engaging Europe

Rethinking a Changing Continent

Edited by Evlyn Gould and George J. Sheridan Jr.

What and where and who is Europe? This unique collection contends that Europe cannot be defined as simply a particular geographic location or a group of citizens who inhabit the same place and share a culture. Instead, Europe is a question to be answered by the teachers and students who study it. A collaborative and multidisciplinary collection, Engaging Europe explores Europe through history, literature, philosophy, music, and ethical narratives. A set of imaginative contributors investigates European identity through a variety of cases, including Greece and Rome, the Bible, the Enlightenment, and the Shoah. Scholars of literature, history, and classics, as well as a composer, grapple with students' doubts about Europe's future relevance. The complexity of the topic leads to creativity in each chapter, from a musical composition in words to poetry to a dialogue between Baudelaire and Adam Smith. Engaging Europe is a major part of an experiment that hopes to find more intellectually exciting ways to teach Europe to students in American higher education.

Contributions by: Evlyn Gould, Joseph Krause, Robert Kyr, Massimo Lollini, Alexander B. Murphy, John Nicols, Steven Shankman, George J. Sheridan Jr., and Malcolm Wilson

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-0-7425-3780-4 • Hardback • May 2005 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-0-7425-3781-1 • Paperback • May 2007 • $41.00 • (£32.00)

978-0-7425-7834-0 • eBook • May 2005 • $39.00 • (£30.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / General, History / Europe / Eastern, Political Science / Comparative Politics, Political Science / World / European

Engaging Europe

Rethinking a Changing Continent

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

What and where and who is Europe? This unique collection contends that Europe cannot be defined as simply a particular geographic location or a group of citizens who inhabit the same place and share a culture. Instead, Europe is a question to be answered by the teachers and students who study it. A collaborative and multidisciplinary collection, Engaging Europe explores Europe through history, literature, philosophy, music, and ethical narratives. A set of imaginative contributors investigates European identity through a variety of cases, including Greece and Rome, the Bible, the Enlightenment, and the Shoah. Scholars of literature, history, and classics, as well as a composer, grapple with students' doubts about Europe's future relevance. The complexity of the topic leads to creativity in each chapter, from a musical composition in words to poetry to a dialogue between Baudelaire and Adam Smith. Engaging Europe is a major part of an experiment that hopes to find more intellectually exciting ways to teach Europe to students in American higher education.

Contributions by: Evlyn Gould, Joseph Krause, Robert Kyr, Massimo Lollini, Alexander B. Murphy, John Nicols, Steven Shankman, George J. Sheridan Jr., and Malcolm Wilson

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-0-7425-3780-4 • Hardback • May 2005 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-0-7425-3781-1 • Paperback • May 2007 • $41.00 • (£32.00)

978-0-7425-7834-0 • eBook • May 2005 • $39.00 • (£30.00)

Subjects: History / Europe / General, History / Europe / Eastern, Political Science / Comparative Politics, Political Science / World / European

Author

Evlyn Gould is professor of Romance languages at the University of Oregon. George J. Sheridan Jr. is associate professor of history at the University of Oregon.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Idea of Europe: A Collaborative Pedagogical Project
Part I: What Is Europe?
Chapter 2: A Story of Europe
Chapter 3: The Idea of Europe, Levinas, and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice
Part II: Where Is Europe?
Chapter 4: Relocating Europe
Chapter 5: Idea of Rome, Idea of Europe
Chapter 6: Provincia Gallia Narbonensis
Part III: Testimony and Witness
Chapter 7: Listening and the Art of Survival
Chapter 8: Primo Levi's Testimony, or Philosophy between Poetry and Science
Chapter 9: Europe in the Wake of the Shoah
Part IV: Disciplines, Borders, Crossings
Chapter 10: Autonomy and the Mistress Discipline in European Thought
Chapter 11: Does Baudelaire Read Adam Smith?
Chapter 12: On Charting Europeanness
Further Reading: A Bibliographical Essay

Reviews

Taking a welcome interdisciplinary approach, this brief yet insightful book succeeds in its stated ambition of making readers contemplate 'rethinking a changing continent.' Highly recommended.
— CHOICE

This is a delightful volume. Fascinating, illuminating, always intelligent, it collects together a variety of thoughtful reflections that probe the 'Europe' of our history, science, imagination, hopes, fears, dreams, values, and, above all, of our minds. If it is true that one cannot go home again, apparently one can still return for the first time.
— Richard A. Cohen, author of Out of Control: Confrontations between Spinoza and Levinas

This lively, wide-ranging, splendid assortment of essays highlights Europe's grand intellectual traditions, its tragic passions and moral dramas. It casts European history and its future as both a deeply familiar and a de-familiarized, largely uncharted terrain—a space of the mind and a riddle to try to solve.
— Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University

An interesting, novel, and stimulating scholarly contribution to our way of conceptualizing the European experience.
— Ulf Hedetoft, Aalborg University, Denmark

Engaging Europe

Rethinking a Changing Continent

Edited by Evlyn Gould and George J. Sheridan Jr.

Engaging Europe

Rethinking a Changing Continent

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