GRK 3009:  Post-Eurocentric Europe: Narratives of a World Province in Transformation

• Subject Area: Literary Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 520477345

The planned graduate program aims to interrogate Europe’s cultural location, troubled self-understanding, and global role in a world no longer dominated by a hegemonic, Eurocentric gaze. While the continent lost its claim to global dominance during the twentieth century, many of the leading ideas in the European tradition persist in our global present - only partially "provincialized" by critiques of Eurocentrism. Historiographically, too, it is time to more profoundly rethink Eurocentric visions of the world. These are the premises motivating the planned graduate program to critically analyze the discourse of Europe in the past and present. At the same time, ist research will respond to urgent current geopolitical events such as the war in Ukraine by asking whether, and in what ways, Europe’s cultural resources, values, social models, and institutions might be productively claimed apart from Eurocentric conceptions. In terms of methodology, the disciplines participating in our program share a common interest in narrative models of Europe, with regard to both ist global entanglements and ist internal dynamics. This orientation towards literary studies will be combined with interdisciplinary work in the fields of history, social sciences, and law. Together, we will explore the plurality of inner and outer demarcations that define the fluid entity called "Europe" as well as the - always precarious - efforts to construct ist unity. The research that will be pursued in this framework proceeds from an analysis of political and aesthetic concepts, imaginaries, and collective narratives that have been constitutive for how Europe understands itself and is understood by others. Much emphasis will thus be placed on perspectives from outside of the geographical center of Europe, both in terms of the sources we use and the dialogue that we seek to establish: collaborations are planned with partners in South and North America, South Africa, and India, among others. These aspire to create a broad dialogic space to re-conceptualize Europe in the twenty-first century. The proposed graduate program will benefit not only from the rich experience that the University of Konstanz has gathered from previous programs of the same kind, but also from the long-running structures and networks of international exchange and contact we have developed in the context of our established MA program "Global European Studies". We wish to create a framework that will bring together doctoral students from different fields in cultural studies and the social sciences. These students will benefit from trans-disciplinary and international research exchanges and will acquire in-depth knowledge of new academic developments through a network of contacts and interlocutors.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität Konstanz
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Albrecht Koschorke
• Participating Researchers: Professorin Dr. Judith Beyer; Professor Dr. Manuel Borutta; Professor Dr. Pavel Kolár; Professor Dr. Daniel König; Professorin Dr. Kirsten Mahlke; Professor Dr. Sven Reichardt; Professor Dr. Daniel Thym; Professorin Dr. Juliane Vogel; Professorin Dr. Christina Wald; Professorin Dr. Christina Isabel Zuber