KL: Randall Halle: Framework for a Critical European Culture Studies

Over a long history, Europe and culture are interwoven as terms. And within the contemporary context of European Unionization, the complex connection of the two has taken on new forms.  The EU project is a singular project because it strives for economic, political, and cultural union. The globe is crisscrossed by free market-oriented projects to foster economic union, as well as supranational organizations that strive to accomplish various forms of political agreement. Only in the space of Europe does the project include a cultural component and of the three aspirational dynamics that drive European unification, culture remains both the least studied and yet the most compelling of the three. Nevertheless, Europe is not the EU, nor is culture equivalent to the current EU culture industry policy. 

This presentation will propose a framework for critical studies of European culture through attention to each of the terms: critical, Europe, and culture. Such a framework helps us better answer a number of questions. How do we approach culture in this political and economic context? How do we assess the European commercialization of cultural heritage? How does the striving for transnational cultural union differ from that cultural union produced in the nation state? In what way does the contemporary understanding of Europe call forth new histories? Among others. 

// Prof. Randhall Halle (University of Pittsburgh, United States)