European Union

 

 

Eurospective ...

A series of conversations with European artists and writers

January 2009 - December 2009

Politicians take their language from the stock of ideas generated by local citizens – writers and artists in particular. As the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his Defense of Poetry, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” In our conversations with European artists and writers, moderated by Askold Melnyczuk, founder and former editor of AGNI and Mark Feeney, Boston Globe Living Arts reporter and winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, we ask artists and writers inhabiting different cultural circles, so to speak, to reflect as Europeans on such questions as what constitutes the European “we,” what keeps “us” together, and where do “we” want to go in the future. And further, to what extent are Europe’s cultural and linguistic diversity linked? Has the growth of the European Union threatened Europe’s cultural diversity and if so, to what extent? Or, on the other hand, has increased mobility and movement across borders led to greater appreciation of Europe’s cultural diversity? To what extent has the European project in Brussels engaged European artists, writers, and intellectuals? What has been the impact of the creation of a transnational “European” space on national, regional, and ethnic identities?

In essence, we are asking some of the most creative and influential voices on the European continent to imagine forms of identity and political participation that could become templates for future European Union politics. Europe’s engagement with these important questions of place and identity holds valuable lessons for Americans.

The series was directed by Institute for Human Sciences (IHS) manager Elizabeth Amrien and organized in cooperation with the Center for International Relations at Boston University, the literary journal AGNI, Zephyr Press, and the American Literary Translators Association.

To view the list of speakers please visit the IHS archives, where you will also find audio and video transcripts of the conversations.

Transcripts of the conversations, edited by Dr. Chandler Rosenberger, are being published by Zephyr Press as a volume entitled Eurospective.