Global Arc

The critical developments of 20th-century Europe and the consolidation of democracy in European countries, including the legacy of the two world wars, Nazism, Stalinism, the Cold War, colonialism and decolonization, the birth and development of the European Community, the development of the welfare state, the problems confronting the European Union (immigration, enlargement, political institutions, military role), and the varieties of democratic institutions in Europe. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This course gives a broad and interdisciplinary perspective on some of the very diverse cultural and historical roots of European identity. It examines contemporary debates over contested identity in the light of long historical trajectories in which identities were continually defined and reshaped. It is conceived as an introduction to many of the courses in Princeton dealing with European issues. The landmarks include, but are not restricted to, written texts. They include Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Marx, and J.S. Mill, but also Fra Angelico, Beethoven and Thomas Mann. One three-hour seminar.

What kind of polity is the European Union? Is it a form of economic and political integration, an actor at the global scene, an interlocutor of the United States? What is its relationship to its Member States? How is it organized? What do democracy, citizenship, and fundamental rights mean for the EU? The seminar is designed to help better understand this organization--its political roots and objectives, its legal foundations and development, and its existence as a new kind of a federal system "beyond statehood". We will study the case law of the European Court of Justice and other writings about the constitutional process of the EU.