EU476      Half Unit
Emotions and Memory in European Politics

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

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Political and social actors frequently mobilize the memory of glorifying or traumatic events to make claims about the present. All socio-political groups have memories. Some of these memories make them proud while others they remember as humiliating or shameful. What are the different registers in which memory is considered to operate (e.g., personal, collective, social, cultural, top-down, bottom-up)? What is the relationship between memories and collective emotions? How do these collective emotions impact world politics? This course seeks answers to these questions and discusses the linkages between collective identities, emotions and memories by examining the memorialisation of traumatic events, such as wars, ethnic conflict, authoritarianism, and terrorist attacks in Europe and beyond.
The cases the course will consider include (but not limited to) the following:

1. The memorialisation of the World Wars, in particular, the First World War in the UK and Turkey, as well as the Holocaust and the Second World War in Germany and wider Europe,
2. Memories and emotions surrounding ethnic tensions in Europe’s regional conflicts, in particular the violent breakup of Yugoslavia and hostilities in the Eastern Mediterranean, involving Greece, Turkey and Cyprus,
3. Emotional responses to and memorialisation of the September 11 attacks in the USA and its European allies, and in comparison to reactions in the aftermath of terrorism in Europe

Through an overview of these cases, the course will demonstrate the theoretical significance of memories and emotions in constituting collective identities and how they impact international relations and European foreign policy. The cases will also shed light on methodological questions and alternative approaches to the study of emotions and memory in politics. Students will be given the opportunity to investigate these or other cases from Europe in more depth through their formative and summative coursework.

15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Presentation weekly

This component of assessment includes an element of group work.

Essay (1500 words) in Winter Term Week 8

1. Essay, 1500 words
2. Presentation weekly This component of assessment includes an element of group work.
3. Students will receive guidance and feedback on their formative coursework in preparation for their summative submission. 

In addition to weekly readings, the following sources are likely to enhance the benefits derived from the course:

• Sara Ahmed, Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2004;
• Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, 2003;
• Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia, 2006;
• Emma Hutchison, Affective Communities in World Politics: Collective Emotions after Trauma, 2016;
• Andrew A. G. Ross, Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict, 2014;
• Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, 2009.

Essay (100%, 4000 words)

Students will conduct independent research and write an essay on a topic they choose in consultation with the instructor.