Imagining Europe

Contemporary Europe and the European Union face existential challenges today that seemed unimaginable even a few years ago. With Britain’s “Brexit” from the EU, the discord over refugees, the debt crisis, and the rise of far right populist movements across the continent, unity is no longer a given. In light of these challenges, our “Imagining Europe” events will draw attention to the role of the truly visionary imagination that inspired European unity after World War II and continues to sustain bonds between European nations and regions today. We often understand European unity as an elite-driven political project to increase peace and prosperity on the continent. But the cultural imagination of European unity was just as instrumental in helping ordinary people to see their nation, their neighbors, and their continent as a whole in a new light.

"Literature in the Age of European Integration" A lecture by Maria Mayr, Ph.D.

Date: April 19, 2018
Time: 12:30-1:45 p.m.
Location: TBA

As recent events such as the Brexit and the rise of nationalism in many European countries show, Europe is dealing with an integration crisis. In part, European integration is based on constructing a common European memory on which to build a common identity. As numerous EU-funded projects such as the House of European History in Brussels (which opened earlier this year) indicate, the EU takes the goal of creating a common memory very seriously. Thus, historian Tony Judt has gone as far as to suggest that memory has become the ‘common currency’ of the EU project.

An important criterion for accession to the EU is for countries to successfully address their past national traumas such as violent dictatorships and war. Yet, critical voices observe that this process is partly based on the EU’s unofficially imposed memory standards, which risks creating a politically convenient, top-down ‘Europeanized’ memory. Such a unified memory potentially erases, rather than accommodates, the diverse ways in which different communities actually remember their past. This forms the context for my current research, which analyzes the relationship between the EU’s Eastern expansion and the formation of a transnational European memory. As collective memory is reflected and shaped by literature, I evaluate the impact of the EU’s expansion on post-Cold War German-language literature. In my talk, I will provide an overview of the role German-language literature plays in contributing to and/or subverting dominant narratives about Europe’s past. 

Speaker Bio: Dr. Maria Mayr is Associate Professor of German at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Her research analyzes contemporary German-language literature written by non-ethnic German authors. Currently, her SSHRC funded research focuses on transnational European memory discourses in German-language literature by authors from Eastern Europe. She has published on transnational European memory and on authors such as Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Yoko Tawada, Doron Rabinowich, Zafer Şenocak, Nicol Ljubić, and Marica Bodrožić. Most recently she co-edited and co-authored the introduction to The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures – Usable Pasts and Futures (Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies Series 2017).

Faculty Bios

Emily Schuckman Matthews, Associate Professor, European Studies at San Diego State University

Emily Schuckman Matthews received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures and her Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Washington. She also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Russian Far East from 1999-2002. Her primary research area is examining the representation of prostitution in Russian literature and film. Other areas of interest include late and post-Soviet Russian literature and cinema, gender and feminist cultural studies and human trafficking. Recent publications include: “The prison beauty pageant: documenting female prisoners in Miss Gulag and La Corona.” Studies in Documentary Film ; “Portraying the Trafficking Victim in Lilya 4-Ever,” Feminist Media Studies and “The (D)evolution of the Prostitute in Russian Beauty,” Russian Review.

Kristin Rebien, Associate Professor or German and European Studies at San Diego State University

Kristin Rebien is Associate Professor of German and European Studies. She directs the German Program and has been teaching at SDSU since 2006. She held a previous faculty appointment at Princeton University and earned her Ph.D. in German Studies at Stanford in 2005. Her research focuses on the intersection of literature and politics, philosophy, and the visual arts in modern and contemporary German culture. She has published articles on iconic postwar writers, such as Heinrich Böll and Paul Celan; on literary institutions, including Gruppe 47 and the Ingeborg Bachmann Preis; on theories of reading; and on globalization and transnationalization in contemporary German literature. She is currently working on a book about concepts of European unity in postwar German literature.