Europe in Its Own Eyes, Europe in the Eyes of the Other

by David B. MacDonald (Editor), Mary-Michelle DeCoste (Editor)

Overview

What is Europe? Who is European? What do Europe and European identity mean in the twenty-first century? This collection of sixteen essays seeks to answer these questions by focusing on Europe as it is seen through its own eyes and through the eyes of others across a variety of cultural texts, including sport, film, literature, dance, cartography, and fashion. These texts, as interpreted here by emerging researchers as well as well-established scholars, enable us to engage with European identities in the plural and to understand what these identities mean in larger cultural and political contexts.

The interdisciplinary focus of this volume permits an exploration of European identity that reaches beyond the area of European studies to incorporate understandings of identity from the viewpoints of both insider and other. Contributors explore diverse understandings of what it means to be “other” to a country, a culture, a society, or a subgroup. This book offers a fresh perspective on the evolving concept of identity—in the context of Europe’s past, present, and future—and expands on the existing literature by considering the political tensions and social implications of the development of European identity, as well as its literary, artistic, and cultural manifestations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554588671
Publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publication date:	04/23/2014
Series:	Cultural Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	322
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

David B. MacDonald is an associate professor in political science at the University of Guelph. His publications include Introduction to Politics, The Bush Leadership, the Power of Ideas and the War on Terror, Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide (2008), and Thinking History (2009). His website is www.davidbmacdonald.com.

Mary-Michelle DeCoste is an associate professor of Italian studies at the University of Guelph, and in 2010 she held a Craig Hugh Smyth Visiting Fellowship at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University’s Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence, Italy. Publications include Hopeless Love: Boiardo, Ariosto, and Narratives of Queer Female Desire (2009), as well as articles in journals Quaderni d’Italianistica and Heliotropia and chapters in a number of edited books.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents for
Europe in Its Own Eyes, Europe in the Eyes of the Other, edited by David B. MacDonald and Mary-Michelle DeCoste

Introduction: Identity, Memory, and Contestation in Europe | David B. MacDonald and Mary-Michelle DeCoste

Section I: Politics, Philosophy, and Sociology

1. Yet Another American Exceptionalism: The Minor Role of Counter-Cosmopolitan Fan Behaviour in North American Venues Compared to Their Salient Quotidian Existence in Europe's Soccer Stadiums | Andrei S. Markovits

2. French Jewish Identity, 1898–1931: The Story of Edmond Fleg | Sally D. Charnow

3. The Legal Culture of Civilization: Hegel and His Categorization of Indigenous Americans | William E. Conklin

4. Retrospective, Myth, and the Colonial Question: Twentieth-Century Europe as the Other in World History | David B. MacDonald

5. Gender Equality Identity in Europe: The Role of the EU | Kimberly Earles

6. The Emptiness of European Identity and the Discourse on Turkish EU Membership | Dirk Nabers

Section II: Memory and Identity in Europe

7. Diversity in the Homeland: The Changing Meaning of Transylvania in Mihail Sebastian's The Accident | Stephen Henighan

8. “Rome was in ruins”: Transatlantic Urbanism in Heller's Catch-22 | Spencer Morrison

9. Postcards from Europe: Representations of (Western) Europe in Romanian Travel Writing, 1960–2010 | Oana Fotache Dubǎlaru

10. On the Ruins of Memory in Miron Białoszewski's A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising | Jeannine M. Pitas

Section III: Geography and Cartography

11. The Dynamics of European Identity: Maps, Bodies, Views | Fernando Clara

12. Neighbourhood Identity and the Larger World: Emir Kusturica's Underground | Gordana Yovanovich

13. Italian Food on Foreign Tables: Giacomo Castelvetro's Exile | Mary-Michelle DeCoste

Section IV: Visual Culture and Fashion

14. Mediterranean Seafarings: Pelagic Encounters of Otherness in Contemporary Italian Cinema | Elena Benelli

15. Euro Chic: Fashion's Bread&Butter | Susan Ingram

16. Dancing Up a Storm: Canadian Performance at the Nazi Olympic Games (1936) and the Notion of Cultural Translation | Alla Myzelev

Contributors

Index