European Culture and the Media

The research group sets out several aims:

• Understanding the emergence of European cultures, the unity and diversity of European identities, civilisations and public spheres
• Understand the conflict lines in contemporary Europe, social and cultural cleavages
• Developing methodological skills for the comparison of national cultures and societies, finding relevant data sources and interpreting quantitative and qualitative indicators
• Assessing the scope of inter-media and intercultural communication and its effects
• Understand the effects of social transnationalism as measured in everyday interactions of the Europeans
• Understand recent developments of European society, culture and the media, with a particular emphasis on popular culture, the internet and the use of digital technologies
• Exploring areas of actual and potential threats to media freedom and pluralism (and the potential responses) in Europe

Internal Seminar: Contested European pasts 

2 Maj 2018

Organiser: Cemes research group European Culture and Media

Different readings of history have become one of the major fields of conflict in a number of European countries in the 21^th century.  In Eastern Europe, after the revolutions of 1989-91, the most fervent debates were triggered by the issue of the Communist past as well as the question of (complicity in) the Holocaust, the meaning and the aftermath of the First, and Second World War, and the legacies of earlier authoritarian pasts. Some of the debates and controversies exceeded the realm of the Academia and elicited extensive debates in the public sphere: in the media, in the Internet, and the like. The resultant “Culture Wars” resonated in the domestic realm as well as transgressing national borders.

Speakers

Krzysztof Stala: Introduction

Tea Sindbæk Andersen: The First World War centenary in Serbia and Bosnia: political disputes and memory conflicts

Mikhail Suslov: Tightrope walker with a cross: Russian Orthodox Church is (re)writing the history of the revolution 1917

Leszek Koczanowicz: Memory of Politics Revisited

Workshop/public seminar: Contesting pasts, contesting Europe

Open Lecture Series: 3 May and autumn 2018

Organizer: CEMES research group European Culture and Media

Contestations of the past have recently resurged in many parts of Europe. Nationalist parties, populist leaders and the media are increasingly trying to impose their reinterpretations of the national past with the aim to contest current positions in Europe. The dynamics of such debates is often media-driven with explicit attempts of manipulating facts, distorting history, and launching conspiracy theories.  Contested parts are in this sense related to the contested futures of Europe not only in the ways such debates are dividing populations within countries, but also in the ways such debates are antagonising countries and populations in Europe.

In this lecture series, we wish to explore how such recent calls to rewrite national pasts are linked to controversies about Europe and calls to rewrite the European project. The House of European History in Brussels, for instance, attempts to prompt a vision of a common European past by merging the national narratives of member states.  Evidence for contested pasts are also found in many national contexts, such as the new Holocaust law in Poland or the nostalgia of a lost national glory that drives Eurosceptic campaigns. The proposed guest lecture series is intended as a debate on Europe’s future in the context of contested pasts. Why are national discourses growing in significance and power in many countries? How are such reinventions of the glorious/heroic/totalitarian/shameful used as an instrument in the political struggle about the future Europe? And how do the processes of reinventing or rewriting the national/European histories affect the prospects of the future of Europe?

The first lecturer in the series is prof. Leszek Koczanowicz, University of Wroclaw:  Making an Illiberal Democracy: The Polish Case (3 Maj 2018 ) . Read more here.

We are planning to invite Istvan Rev, Jan Zielonka (both political scientists), and Serbian film director Mila Turajlic in autumn 2018.

Workshop/public seminar: Migration discourse in Scandinavia and East-Central Europe: oppositions or continua?

15 November 2017

Speakers

Anita Pluwak, Krzysztof Stala: Introduction

Kristina Riegert: The role of culture in press coverage of migration  2009-2016

Hans-Jörg Trenz: Universalism versus deservingness: Reconsidering solidarity in the Danish welfare state

Jaroslaw Kuisz: The new Iron Curtain? The Visegrad group and the refugee crisis as seen from the Polish perspective

For questions regarding activities or membership of the research group, contact the group's coordinators.

Miklos Sukosd, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen (kjm518@hum.ku.dk)

Mikhail Suslov, Assistant Professor, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen (mikhail.suslov@hum.ku.dk)