“Insieme – Unite, unite Europe!”: Introduction to the Eurovision Song Contest Studies

Vesna Mikić

Typology: Lecture, Seminar

This course addresses to MA and PhD students, with preferably previous knowledge in popular music studies.

Aims of the course and seminar:

In learning, revealing and discussing the history of Eurovision Song Contest, the course should interconnect studies in music/musicology, media, gender/queer, as well as general and cultural history of Europe, hence it could be seen as a part of European Studies. Students would achieve the skills in interpreting and analyzing this particular cultural phenomenon in wider scope of European studies. Starting from the assumption that the history of the united Europe, not only could be read from its annual song contest, but as well seen as constitutive for EU, and from predominantly musicological perspective, the different issues shall be discussed in scope of following topics:

– EBU – history, importance, present

– ESC – early days – production, reception

– Yugoslavia and Europe through the lenses of ESC

– New Europe – theoretical framework

– Spectacle and ESC

– Reinventing Europe

– Genre of ESC song

– West Balkans and EU through the lenses of ESC

– West Balkan ESC ballad

Bibliography:

  • Balibar, Etienne. We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Trans. James Swenson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
  • Bauman, Zygmunt. Europe: An Unfinished Adventure. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.
  • Beck, Ulrich and Edgar Grande. Cosmopolitan Europe. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity, 2007.
  • Berezin, M. and M. Schain, eds. Europe Without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship, and Identity in a Transnational Age. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
  • Bjelic, Dusan I. and Obrad Savic, eds. Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation. Cambridge, Mass.; London: The MIT Press, 2002.
  • Björnberg, Alf. “Return to ethnicity: The cultural significance of musical change at the Eurovision Song Contest. A Song for Europe. Raykoff and Tobin, eds.
  • Boatca, Manuela. “The Eastern Margins of Empire.” Cultural Studies2 (2007): 368-384.
  • Bolin, Goran. “Visions of Europe: Cultural Technologies and Nation-States.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (2), 2006.
  • Bohlman, P. V. “The politics of power, pleasure and prayer in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Muzikologija 7 (2007)
  • European Integration Theory (eds. T. Diez, A. Wiener) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004;
  • Delanty, Gerard. “The Making of A Post-Western Europe: A Civilizational Analysis.” Thesis Eleven 72 (2003): 8-25.
  • Delanty, Gerard and Chris Rumford. Rethinking Europe: Social Theory and the Implications of Europeanization. London; New York: Routledge, 2005.
  • Georgiou, Myria and Cornel Sandvoss, eds. “Euro Visions: Culture, Identity and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. Popular Communication (6:3, 2008), special issue.
  • Griffin, Gabriele and Rosi Braidotti, eds. Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women’s Studies. London; New York: Zed Books, 2002.
  • Habermas, Jürgen. The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Oxford: Polity Press, 2001.
  • Rosamond, Ben, Theories of Integration, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000.
  • Pollack, M., The Engines of European Integration (2003)
  • Raykoff, Ivan and Robert Deam Tobin. A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2007).
  • Smith, Alan. The Return to Europe: The Reintegration of Eastern Europe into the European Economy. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
  • Stråth, Bo. Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other. Brussels; New York: PIE-Peter Lang, 2000.
  • Yair, Gad. “‘Unite Unite Europe’ The political and cultural structures of Europe as reflected in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Social Networks 17 (2), 1995.
  • Yair, Gad and Daniel Maiman. “The Persistent Structure of Hegemony in the Eurovision Song Contest”. Acta Sociologica 39 (3), 1996.
  • H. Wallace, W. Wallace, M. Pollack, Policy-Making in the EU (2005).

Impact

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • understand the key dimension of the emerging power of cultural and artistic European integration;
  • identify and describe the major issues on popular music in the cultural context;
  • discuss and outline the main issues such as “Europeanization” and transformative power of music.
  1st acad. year: 2nd acad. year: 3rd acad. year: Total over 3 years:
N° of hours 15 15 15 45
N° of students 40 40 40 120
Discipline of

audience

 Musicology, Music Performance
Year/type of study 2nd cycle (Masters) Doctoral studies
Nature Compulsory Existing
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