Current course offerings

Please Note: Course profiles marked as not available may still be in development.

Course description

The concept of 'the West' is comparatively recent. It belongs to a particular time and place. At various times, the communities which now are included in the West have been imagined differently. They have been seen, amongst other things, as the last remnants of the Roman Empire, a sphere of papal influence, an enlightened Republic of Letters, a group of powers committed to colonial expansion, a geo-political unit defined against competing ideologies, and a confederation of nation states committed to liberal democracy. The edges of these various competing understandings never overlap and their boundaries have always been contested. In this course, we consider texts from a diverse set of authors that explore these various understandings and we question why the desire for projecting a conception of Europe or the West has been so important to them and the communities they address. The course also explores texts which examine the future of 'the West' and the possibility of alternative formulations.

Archived offerings