Instructor: Prof. Ginette VerstraeteEUS4932-1A66 / EUS6932-013A
Instructor of Record: Dr. Esther Romeyn (UF, Center for European Studies)
The Jean Monnet Center of Excellence and the Center for European Studies will once again be hosting a visiting scholar to teach an intensive seminar in the Spring semester.
This year the visiting scholar will be Dr. Ginette Verstraete, Professor of Comparative Arts and Media at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Dr. Verstraete is currently the Head of the Division of Arts & Culture.
The Jean Monnet special seminar is unique in that it is taught intensively over the course of two weeks (ten class days plus the workshop). Students meet for 3-hour evening sessions (6:15pm – 9:15pm) M-F week one and M–F week two with the workshop on the second Saturday. In addition, the course can be taken for 1 to 3 credit hours (with differing assignments and expectations, although all students are expected to participate in the workshop by at least attending it). The course is available to upper division undergrads as well as graduate students.
The syllabus will be distributed to students by the UF host, Dr. Esther Romeyn, in an initial meeting during the first week of the spring semester. Students are expected to complete the readings in advance and be prepared to discuss them with Dr. Verstraete once she arrives in Gainesville in March or April. Students can take the course for 1, 2 or 3 credits at the undergraduate or graduate level:
for 1 credit students do all the reading and take a test.
for 2 credits students do all the reading, take a test, and do a short (5-7 page) lit review type paper.
for 3 credits students do all the readings, take a test and write a research paper (20-25 pages).
To enroll in the course contact Jim Robbins, jwrobbins@ufl.edu, tel. 352-294-7145.
Transformations in Media, Citizenship, and Participation in the EU
This course explores the ways in which the new media revolution (the arrival of web 2.0, the explosion of digital technologies and social media) is transforming not only the ‘old’ practices, but also the meanings of social, cultural, political and civic participation in the EU and globally.
The course addresses the following questions:
Media are means of communication and interaction. But media do not merely represent the “world,” they actively constitute it. Indeed, media are conduits for power and interests, and provide key platforms for identity construction, community building, and processes of inclusion and exclusion.
How did the ‘older’ media make sense of the world? How do we come to terms with the ‘newer’ ones in the contemporary mediatized world of inter-connectedness, globalized network cultures and interfaces? What structures of in/exclusion were embedded in the older media scapes, and how are these structures changing? What new possibilities for citizenship, activism and/or artistic intervention do contemporary media provide?