Starship  EUropa

Title: Starship Europa
Class info: Colt 204 Fiction, CRN 22176
Class time: MWF 11-11:50 Winter 2000, 301 Condon
Office hours: MW 1-2 pm or call 346 0522 (email: dredmond@gladstone.uoregon.edu) to meet
Your host: Dennis Redmond

Description: There it is, flames thundering off the launching pad, its Airbus-designed hull emblazoned with twelve stars on a field of midnight blue, rocketing into the distant, silvery folds of cyberspace: the mighty Starship Europa, a.k.a. the European Union, the world's newest superpower, is on the move. But the EU is far more than the euro (the new common currency of Europe), Daimler's sales charts, or the largest single economy on the planet. It's that historically unprecedented thing, a multinational superstate with 350 million people, dozens of different languages, and innumerable dialects and subcultures. The EU is also fast becoming an immigrant country just like the USA, as folks from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia arrive in search of jobs, political asylum or simply a brighter future for their children. Such cultural diversity has driven the creation of some of the most remarkable works of art of the late 20th century. We'll be looking at plays by Heiner Mueller, animation and films by Jan Svankmajer and Caro and Jeunet, theory by Theodor Adorno and Pierre Bourdieu, and track the blazing trajectory of the EU into the sky, as the stormy end of the American Century turns into the roseate dawn of the Euromillenium.

Required Texts:
Theatremachine by Heiner Mueller, Italo Calvino's hilarious and witty Cosmicomics, plus Pierre Bourdieu's Acts of Resistance.

Useful Links:
EU Convention Body charged with writing the Constitution of the world's first (but hardly last) multinational superstate.
European Central Bank Executive committee of the Eurobourgeoisie
IG Metall Mighty Euro-union.
European Industrial Relations Observatory Superb, up-to-date info on the EU welfare state.
European Investment Bank The financial CPU of Euro-integration
EUREKA The Brain of the Eurostate.
Airbus Boeing's worst nightmare gets stronger by the day
EECA The sinews of Silicon Europe
Czech Republic They're joining the EU sooner than you think
Nokia Finland produces more than just reindeer
Daimler The most profitable automaker around is investing heavily in fuel cells
SAP Never heard of them? You will
Pierre Bourdieu Online bibliography of one of the EU's greatest thinkers.
Polish Constitution Guarantees full political freedoms, proportional representation, and extensive social and economic rights. Light-years ahead of the hopelessly intractable, obsolete and embarrassingly anachronistic US Constitution .

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