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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
List 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
About the author
Edited by Evlyn Gould and George J. Sheridan Jr.
Summary
What and where and who is Europe? This 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.
