Thinking and Narrating Peace: Cultural Concepts in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe - Einzelansicht

How do European cultures imagine peace in times of conflict, crisis, and transformation? This seminar explores literary, artistic, and intellectual traditions that have sought to represent, justify, or challenge ideas of peace from the Enlightenment to the post-1989 and post-2022 European context. Drawing on examples from Western, Central, and especially Eastern European cultural histories, we will examine how peace has been conceptualized as a moral ideal, political vision, and aesthetic form. Through readings in literature, philosophy, and cultural theory, the course traces how writers, thinkers, and artists have narrated peace — as reconciliation, utopia, absence, or fragile achievement — and how these narratives interact with experiences of war, revolution, and social rupture. Special attention will be given to the cultural imagination of peace in Slavic and Eastern European traditions and its dialogue with Western European thought. Combining methods from cultural history, literary analysis, and political imagination, this seminar invites MA students from Cultural Studies, East European Studies (OKS), History (War Studies), and Political Science to investigate Europe as a space of competing peace projects — where the quest for peace is always also a struggle over memory, identity, and justice.

Galtung, Johan: Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization. Oslo: International Peace Research Institute (PRIO) / London: SAGE Publications, 1996.

Bremer, Thomas: Das Jahrhundert der Kriege. Die Russische Orthodoxie, der Krieg und der Friede. In: Osteuropa, Februar-April 2014, Vol. 64, No. 2/4, 279-290.

Senghaas, Dieter: Zivilisierung wider Willen. Der Konflikt der Kulturen mit sich selbst. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998.

Bachelor's modules: 3 credits
Presentation: 15 minutes

Master's modules: 3, 4, or 5 credits depending on the module
Presentation: 15 minutes

StudiumPlus module Ba-SK-P-1
Option I: 3 LP 15-minute presentation
Option II: 6 LP 15-page term paper