European Studies

Core Teaching Faculty

The Department of European Languages and Studies at UCI was founded in 2012. Because it brings together scholars working in French, German, Italian, and Russian, with affiliate faculty in Comparative Literature, Spanish, the arts, and social sciences, it is uniquely poised to cover the curricular needs of this M.A. program. Since its inception, the department has been a site for dynamic and innovative exploration of culture and society in an international context. Like the European Union itself, the department strives to foster an understanding of particular national traditions even as it pursues a decidedly transnational perspective that also involves the study of  the colonial and postcolonial effects of Europe in the world. A particular strength of the department’s faculty lies in the areas broadly defined as both literary studies and intellectual and cultural history, as demonstrated by the topics of some recent book-length publications: the role of violence in theorists and literary figures of modernism; transnational and global writers of German; diasporic avant-gardes; the history of the idea of the death of God; Albert Camus’s opposition to the death penalty; modern notions of sacrifice in literature and political theory; a monograph on the theorist and philosopher Walter Benjamin.

For a list of the Core European Studies Faculty, click here.

Interdisciplinary Joint Teaching Faculty

In addition to the faculty of ELS, there is a rich community of scholars in both the School of Humanities, the MA Program in ETC draws on colleagues from the campus at large who focus on Europe in the world in the areas of literary studies, political theory, and intellectual and cultural history broadly conceived. As members the Interdisciplinary Teaching Faculty, they will guarantee breadth and depth in the instruction the program offers. Faculty in the Department of History, for example, work on topics that include forms of intellectual authority in the late Middle Ages, the history of science in its intersection with Humanist textual practices, concepts of patrimony and the impact of cultural imaginings of rural life in modern France, and methodologies associated with Intellectual History, esp. in relations between European thought and South Asia. The program also draws upon faculty in other literary traditions (including British), art historians researching the European traditions from the Renaissance to modernity, colleagues in Film and Media Studies who work in European critical and theoretical modes, as well as political theorists from the School of Social Sciences with expertise in the European traditions.

For a list of the Interdisciplinary European Studies Joint Teaching Faculty, click here