INST 300:What is the West?

King’s College Short Term Faculty Led Study Abroad Program 

Sofia-Istanbul, Summer 2010

Costello / Scarboro

I.  Course Description

            Outside the conveniences of maps and ideas of tectonic plates Europe has never been a fixed space, but rather always resides within the flexible and permeable boundaries of convention.  Who belongs to Europe, who is excluded, and the consequences of this demarcation have changed dramatically over time.  This course is designed to investigate the creation, transformation and enforcement of these boundaries of Europe.  Bulgaria and Turkey provide an important space to come to terms with the question of these boundaries—one country recently added to the European Union, the other, increasingly restively, waiting in line.  We will investigate the history and culture of the Balkans as a space where notions of Europe and Asia and Islam and Christianity meet and interact in surprising fashion.   

II.  Purpose

In traveling from Bulgaria to Turkey students will be asked to investigate several important questions: How are borders naturalized?  What ideological work do these borders do?  What are the costs and benefits to “joining Europe”? or alternately, being “left out?”  How are these issues relevant to our own culture and society?  Being in the Balkans will give the students the unique experience of being able to historicize these questions—to see their expression and transformation through culture.  

            This trip will help students understand the importance (and possibilities) of interacting successfully with another culture across widely perceived differences (both between themselves and the people of the countries that we will visit and amongst those very people).  The linkages between high politics and the daily lives of the people of both countries will be made clear in our investigation of the vast importance socially, politically, and culturally of membership in or exclusion from the European Union (and the vigorous debates within Turkish society today about the benefits and costs of such membership).  Students should return to King’s with an understanding of these connections and the methodological and experiential tools to apply these understandings and questions to their own culture and society.

A.  Goals

1)     Develop a global comparative perspective

2)     Develop understanding and appreciation for the variety of human societies

3)     Encourage both the capacity and the desire to travel outside of familiar geographic and intellectual landscapes.

4)     Develop an appreciation for the interconnectivity of classes in the international studies minor and a facility with interdisciplinary thinking.

B.  Objectives

1)     Identify the major social, political, economic, historical, and cultural issues that influence our notion of “the West.”

2)     Apply the transferable skills of a liberal arts education – Critical Thinking, Effective Writing, Effective Oral Communication, Information Literacy, Technology Competency, Quantitative Reasoning, Moral Reasoning – to a critical understanding of Western Civilization.

3)     Apply the skills and knowledge developed within the major program of study to issues of global importance, and how they interact with commonplace understandings about the role of the West. 

4)     Apply global lessons to the local community and vice versa, through an interrogation of the students’ personal identity as “Western” (or, perhaps, as “non-Western”).

5)     Engage with the international community through both linguistic competency in a foreign language and foreign travel experience.

III.  Course Requirements

A.  Readings.

            At various times during the trip, we will distribute short readings (typically 5-15 pages) that focus attention on selected course themes, that you will be responsible for reading in your free time within a specific period, usually within one to two days. The total amount of reading for this course will be far less than for an on-campus course, but may total approximately 200-300 pages – that is, equivalent to a single full-length book. 

B.  Assignments

50%                 Journal entries. On eight occasions during the trip, students will be asked to answer a series of short directed questions in a journal that they will keep for the duration of the trip. Each journal entry should be approximately 300-600 words (or, equivalent to 1-2 double spaced typed pages). Upon your return, you will revise and type up your entries, and submit both the original and final documents no later than Friday 30 July.

20%                 Photo essay. Throughout the trip, you will take photographs that represent some aspect of the relationship between “The West” and “The East” – meaning that they represent what you think of when you think of the West and/or the East, how “The West” views “The East” or vice versa, some element of their relationship, and similar. Upon your return, you will choose one of these photographs as the basis for a short essay that describes some aspect of the relationship between East and West. This essay is due no later than Friday 30 July.

30%                 Participation. At every stop during the program there will be informal and formal discussions of the questions outlined below and the readings assigned.  To earn this grade, it is necessary but not sufficient to simply “go along for the ride” – you must also demonstrate active engagement with the activities and discussions that form the academic core of this class.

C.  Schedule

1.     What is the narrative created by the exhibition at the National History museum in Sofia?  What elements are national?  How does this relate to questions of belonging to Europe?  What elements of the Thracians are Bulgaria?  Which are European? How does one make such a distinction?  What are the stakes involved in each claim?

2.     What does the memorial cathedral Aleksandur Nevski contribute to understandings of Bulgarianess?  How is it distinct from Sveta Nedeliia?  What role do the national branches of Orthodox churches play in questions of national identity?  How are these understandings complicated in the case of Bulgaria and Aleksandur Nevski?

3.     How is Archeology different than history?  How are the goals of the Archeology museum distinct from that of the history museum?  How does this complicate understandings of nation in the Bulgarian case (when does the Bulgarian nation begin)?

4.     How do we write the story of the Banya Bashi Mosque and the second largest synagogue in Europe into the story of Bulgaria?

5.     Rila is understood by most Bulgarians as a repository of national identity (and a placewhere the “European” nature of Bulgaria survived the “500 year yoke” of the Ottoman Empire).  What story does Rilski Monastery tell?  How does this frame the understanding of “Bulgarianess”?  What are the limits and possibilities of such understandings?

6.     Where does socialism live in the Bulgarian landscape? How does the legacy of socialism complicate our reading of Bulgarian space?(How) does the Bulgarian landscape deal with the problem of socialism in terms of public space? Examples? What does this say about the representations of Bulgarian-ness offered by the sites we’ve seen?

7.     Compare the account of Krakow’s heritage dissonance to what you’ve observed to date. Do these landscapes show evidence of similar types of dissonance? Evidence? What problems does heritage dissonance pose for these post- socialist landscapes?

8.     To what extent has the legacy of socialism become commercialized? In what ways? Does commercialization “solve” the problem of heritage dissonance? What are the implications for Bulgarian identity?

1.     What is the relationship between the 2^nd Bulgarian kingdom and the modern state?  Why reconstruct Tsarevets? What ideological work does it do?  How are Svetlin Rusev’s frescos in the cathedral relate to Bulgaria’s understood religious tradition (both in the 1980s and today) and the socialist state that commissioned them?

2.     How do we understand the Bulgarian Renaissance (represented emblematically by Stari Grad in Plovdiv)?  How is it a rebirth?  What elements of Bulgarianess had to be eliminated in order for this Renaissance to take place? 

3.     How are Roman ruins utilized by the current Bulgarian state?  How do they contribute to national identity?  European identity?

4.     What are the consequences of a national brand? To what extent can we read the Bulgarian landscape as a self-consciously branded landscape? What are the key elements of the Bulgarian brand, both real and ideal?

5.     What’s the relationship between national identity and national brand?

6.     How does communist heritage tourism problematize post-communist national identity? Are these tensions evident in the Bulgarian landscape?

1.     How does the presence of Europe’s oldest mosque (and one built in the 16^th century that has been lavishly renovated with Saudi money) complicate, threaten and / or enrich our understanding of Bulgaria as a European space?  What are the perils and possibilities of such an understanding? 

2.     How does the regional art gallery contribute to a Bulgarian aesthetic sensibility?  How does this understanding change from the early 19^th century to the present?  How Bulgarian are the paintings (and how can you tell)?  How does one place them in a European continuum?  What role does socialist realism play?

3.     Can we understand the socialist landscape (to the extent that we can still see it) and the socialst realist aesthetic an attempt to solve the problems posed by the industrialist landscape? How do socialist conventions in art and architecture confront various aspects of the modern condition described by Harvey?

4.     How is the socialist landscape an inherently modern one (as opposed to pre- or post-modern)? Does the post-socialist landscape represent continuity with or rupture from the socialist landscape in this respect?

1.     What was the impact of crossing from Bulgaria to Turkey?  How would you describe the frontier? How do you know that you are in Turkey and not Bulgaria?  Are you in Europe or Asia?  Where were you in Bulgaria?

2.     The Selmiyie Mosque is often considered the greatest of Sinan’s mosques.  Why would the empire place it in Edirne?  How is a symbol of imperial power and control?  How is it similar to the churches, mosques and synagogues that we visited in Bulgaria? 

1.     What story should we tell about Hagia Sophia?

2.     How does the Blue Mosque transform Sultanhammet?  How does it write the area into European narratives?  Ottoman narratives? 

3.     How is the story of the Archeological museum in Istanbul different than that in Sofia?  How does this complicate and expand our understandings of “Europeaness”?

4.     How is the art museum in Istanbul different from that in Haskovo?  What stories were each of the galleries hoping to tell?

5.     The Bosporus is the geographical boundary between Europe and Asia?  How does one experience this border?  What is the difference between the Asian and European side?   How would you draw the border of Europe?

6.     What’s the relationship between Istanbul as a city of the past (Hagia Sofia) and Istanbul as a city of the future? How easy is it to reconcile the historical narrative of Istanbul with current demographic realities? Where are the points of tension? Examples?

7.     Istanbul has existed as what we currently refer to as a “global city” for centuries. Is the more recent phase of globalization a continuation of this global-ness or does it represent a turning point between past and future? What’s the relationship between economic role and culture, past and present? How do we see these relationships inscribed upon the landscape?

D. Reading list.

1.     The post-socialist Bulgarian landscape (Sofia)

a.      Vukov and Toncheva, “Town squares and socialist heritage”

b.     Murzyn, “New interpretations and commercialisation of heritage in Krakow after 1989”

2.     Branding Bulgaria, establishing European-ness (Veliko Turnovo / Plovdiv)

a.      Hall, “Destination branding, niche marketing, and national image projection in Central and Eastern Europe”

b.     Von Ham, “The rise of the brand state: the postmodern politics of image and reputation

c.      Light, “Gazing on communism”

3.     The modern condition (Haskovo)

a.      Stout. “Visions of a New Reality”

b.     Riis, “The Bend”

c.      Harvey, “Modernity and Modernism”

4.     The global hinge city: Istanbul as palimpsest

a.      Mills, “Boundaries of the nation in the space of the urban: landscape and social memory in Istanbul”

b.     Sennet, “Istanbul within a Europe of cities”

c.      “Urban Age cities compared”

5.     Optional (but encouraged)

a.      “East and West” and “Into the memory hole.” From Kapka Kassabova, Street Without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria.

b.     “Don’t walk down the street with your mouth open,” “Under Western eyes,” and “The picturesque and the outlying neighborhoods.” From Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City.