Master in European Studies

The Master’s degree in European Studies is offered by the Department of French and European Studies of the University of Cyprus in Greek and international languages. Its courses are usually taught in English. According to the linguistic profile of students, some courses can occasionally be taught in Greek or French. The aims of the Master’s programme can be summarized as follows:

From an academic viewpoint, the programme aims to cover an obvious gap in the programmes offered internationally in the field of postgraduate European Studies. More specifically, it aims to move away from the usual frame of such programmes which are usually based on a dominant politico-economic approach.

Thus, the postgraduate programme aims to investigate specific issues related to cultural Europe and to see how these issues relate to the philosophical, literary, visual and other cultural narratives. The programme puts forward ways of studying European cultural phenomena in a synthetic way, combining a specific European conjuncture with its diachronic depth.

From a research point of view, the aim of the programme is for its graduates to be able to carry out doctoral studies in specific fields of European cultural studies, combining them with European literature studies, comparative literature, visual and art studies, European history, sociology, anthropology and political sciences.

Read here testimonies of former Master students in European Studies (in French).

Download here the Postgraduate Studies Prospectus: in Greek – in English

I. CONDITIONS OF ADMISSION

To be eligible, candidates must fulfil the following criteria:

1. A first degree in one of the wider fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences with an average of 7/10, or equivalent grade, and/or certified skills in research, and/or previous experience in European-related institutions.
2. Satisfactory knowledge of at least one international language (indicative Common European Framework of Reference for Languages level: B2).
3. Basic knowledge of a second international language, sufficient for elementary comprehension of relevant literature.

The Department reserves the right, if it deems necessary, to ask the selected students to attend courses outside of the programme (e.g. Research Methodology) in case weaknesses are noted in their training. The courses must be followed during the first year of the Postgraduate programme. The credit for these courses will not affect the total number of ECTS of the postgraduate programme since the grade will be in the form Pass/Fail and therefore will not contribute to the assessment level of the students.

II. APPLICATION

The number of admissions per year is determined by the Graduate School. The application is to be submitted electronically and should include:

1. A letter of intent with a brief report stating the research and/or career targets and interests of the candidate (500 words in an international language)
2. Curriculum Vitae in an international language
3. A copy of the undergraduate degree accompanied by a Diploma Supplement (DS) or an analytical assessment report
4. A sample of written work such as brief article, excerpt from university work, etc. (optional)
5. Two reference letters that must be submitted directly from the referee Professors either on the online application system, either to the Secretary of the Department.

In order to request (by writing) a recommendation letter from a teacher, students must a) give enough time to the teacher, considering the other numerous obligations he/she may have (conferences, research mobilities, etc.), b) provide a recent transcript of records, c) their CV, d) the full name and address of the degree/programme/Department/University to which the recommendation letter is destined, e) announce the language in which they require the recommendation letter to be written.

Applications will be examined by the departmental Postgraduate Committee. If the Committee deems it necessary, the selected candidates will be invited to a personal interview or interviewed via videoconference. The Committee’s proposal will be submitted for final approval to the Board of the Department of French and European Studies of the University of Cyprus.

III. DURATION OF THE PROGRAMME

The programme extends over three semesters during which the physical presence of the students at the University is required. However, students can spend the maximum permitted time by the regulation of the University of Cyprus in institutions abroad through the LLP/ERASMUS+. As part of the exchange and cooperation programmes between the University of Cyprus and departments, laboratories or research institutes abroad, the possibility of a joint master dissertation supervision is viewed positively.

IV. STRUCTURE OF THE PROGRAMME

The programme extends over three semesters and requires a minimum of 90 ECTS. It concludes in the awarding of the title of Magister Artium. The programme of study per semester is distributed as follows:

For an indicative list of the current semester courses, please consult the Semester Programmes.

The compulsory courses that the students of the programme need to take are announced before the start of each semester.

Students may substitute one course from the Master’s curriculum with another course offered in another postgraduate programme at the University of Cyprus, provided that it is related to the subject of their thesis and carries an equivalent number of credits.

Conferences, workshops and lectures organized by the University on topics related to the curriculum are an important complement to the programme. Their content may be the subject of evaluated written exercises.

The Graduation project is undertaken under the supervision of a member of the Academic staff of the Department FES, or under the supervision of a member of the Academic staff of the Department FES with a second evaluator from a collaborating departement, after consulting with the academic advisor. Students should select their subject and supervisor(s) by the end of the second semester of their studies.The graduation project (8,000-15,000 words) is assessed by a Committee assembled at the end of the programme’s third semester and consists of the supervisor and another member of the Academic staff. According to relevant regulations, the project should be submitted before the viva voce examination, which occurs during the examination period of the third semester.

In addition, for all semesters, including the summer semester, students can be register to FES 700 Research Experience (6 ECTS) and FES 701 Individual Independent Study (3 ECTS), with the approval of the Supervising professor.

V. WORKING LANGUAGES

The programme’s seminars are delivered in Greek and/or an international language, to be specified each time depending on the language skills of the participating students. The bibliography of the seminars is in Greek and/or international languages. Seminar work is written in a language to be agreed each time between the instructors and the students. The postgraduate dissertation is carried out in an international language.

VI. SCHOLARSHIPS

Upon acceptance into the programme, students are eligible to apply for a limited number of scholarships, provided that scholarships are available that year. The deadline for submission of applications and the selection criteria will be announced on the Department website.

VII. COURSES (INDICATIVE LIST)

FES 700 Research Experience

After the approval from the Supervising Professor, the student may conduct a research on a theoretical or applied matter, gaining thus a consistent research experience. The student may conduct his/her research on a topic related to Didactics of French as a Foreign Language, to European Studies, or in general to any topic concerning the Department of French and European Studies. The course aims to familiarize the student with research, production and promotion of new knowledge.

FES 761 The Elusive Definition(s) of Europe

In antiquity, the term ‘Europe’ referred to Zeus’ beautiful lover, as far as mythology was concerned but it also denoted an entire continent, geographically speaking. The interpretation of the term as one which refers to a geographically closed space hosting a common culture, shared by many peoples, was accepted rather late in Europe. After the Fall of Constantinople (1453), the term appears in the confrontation of the West with the Ottomans, noted in the speeches of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, for example. From the 15th century onwards, the meaning of the term develops rapidly. Humanists and people of the sEnlightenment such as Erasmus, Bodin, Comenius, Grotius, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Novalis develop the idea of Europe in their political and cultural theories while at the same time, perceiving Islam as a challenge so far as the re-examination of the relationship between Judaism, Islam and Christianity is concerned. It is thanks to their works that the secular meaning of the term prevailed: the various models of tolerance arise, the fear of the stranger as well as the image of the ‘other’ begin to be discussed. In the same framework, human rights, minority rights and gender rights become ideas worth struggling for. In the 19th century the term ‘Europe’ is used in order to combat various nationalisms. Finally, after the two World Wars of last century, political theory perceived Europe as a great leap towards establishing an Ecumenical Community (Habermas). These changes in Europe’s character demand a constant revision of it.

FES 762 The Discourse of Culture in Europe, from Plato to Popper

Plato’s Politeia (Republic) is a challenging text concerning the rearing and education (gr. paideia) of people, which had a great effect on European thought throughout the ages. In his quest for justice, Plato proposed the tripartite distinction of the human soul (the logikon-logical, the thymoeides-the high spirited and the epithymitikon-the appetitive) as well as the theory of the four virtues (wisdom, courage, reason and justice). Furthermore, he combined the theory of paideia with the philosophy of the state, the theory of science and the sharp viewing of fine arts. Europe’s later pedagogues developed their own theories based on these Platonic preconditions. For example, the pedagogical texts of Castiglione, More, Rousseau, Schiller, Karl Popper and others, all discuss Plato’s positions, either directly or indirectly. This theoretical lesson allows a wider accessibility to pedagogy, which contains elements taken from anthropology, psychology, theory of the state and the philosophy of history.

FES 763 Tragedy in Europe and Europe in Tragedy

Although tragedy is a Greek invention, it however came to be a common cultural asset of European culture as a whole, since it was developed in England (Marlowe, Shakespeare), Spain (Calderón, Lope de Vega), France (Racine, Voltaire), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Kleist) and Scandinavia (Ibsen, Strindberg). Tragedy allows for social problems and tensions to be enacted and discussed. From directing to theatre, tragedy’s close association with publicity is developed. Its initial ritual dimension (the interchange between dialogue and chorus and reference to myth) is presented in increasingly more modern forms. From the wide range of tragedy material, cultural conflict and wartime experiences are investigated (e.g. Aeschylus, The Persians), the problems of political power (e.g. Shakespeare, King Lear), social conflicts (e.g. Büchner, Woyzeck), the battle between the two genders (e.g. Ibsen, Hedda Gabler) and more recently, criticism of the bourgeois society (e.g. Brecht, The Threepenny Opera). Towards the end of the module, themes such as the special meaning and the possible interpretations of tragedy in Europe’s modern societies are investigated, based on the Short Organum (Brecht) and Théâtre de la cruauté (Artaud).

FES 764 L’Europe des divisions au cinéma

FES 765 L’Europe hors du musée

FES 766 From Europe’s Abduction to Huntington’s Clash: Models of Cultural Interpenetration

This course examines various models of cultural co-existence. A) Models of Isolation: religious or nationalist discourses of distinction or superiority, marking-off of bounded spaces both in and beyond Europe, natural boundaries like those mapping the Utopias, homogeneous and tautological concepts of (supra)national identity such as the Aristotelian hellenocentricity, medieval allegories of superiority, modern nation-states. B) ‘Polemos’: Titanomachy, Abductions and their Variations. C) Models of Peaceful Interaction: mythological narratives of marriage and various discourses of cosmopolitan idealism (Zeus, Xenos, Diogenes, 18th to 21st-century philosophers: Kant, Derrida, Levinas, Appiah, Sen, Thich Nhat Han), contemporary narratives of peaceful interaction (European Neighbourhood Policy).

FES 767 Cultural Hegemonies in European Space 

Although art is generally subversive, it has also been used to serve absolute conformism. In its supposedly civilising manifestations, art served to disseminate the image of a specific culture/nation. However, European history offers many examples of the association of cultural hegemony, in the Gramscian sense, with the promotion of a dominant power or ideology. Cultural hegemony has thus been deployed in order to glorify certain leaders, to push propaganda or even to impose a particular belief system. Thus, European art has often been on the side of the powerful. This course examines several examples of the mobilisation of art in the service of hegemony.

FES 768 The Critique of Justice in European Culture

Europe could be described as a Space of Law. However, from very early on, the founding texts were accompanied by the intellectual scepticism of writers questioning both the theory and practice of the Law as well as its aspirations towards an ideal Justice. This critique appears in many forms in the European culture and speaks in many different idioms, from Aeschylus to Brecht, from ‘ύβρις’ to Utopia, from philosophy to satire, from sculpture to cinema. Its numerous indictments in European culture both of the legal profession and of the Law itself is an important part of Europe’s permanent re-evaluation of the very idea of Justice.

FES 769 Paris – Second empire, Berlin – Weimarer republik, Europe – État de siège 

Benjamin’s works on Baudelaire and Paris of the Second Empire are inspired by the historical experience of the Weimarer Republik and the rise of the Nazis. Why would a critical thinker read today Benjamin who is reading Baudelaire? In the context of the European crisis, Benjamin’s conception of the « jump of the tiger », the « dialectic jump out of the continuum » to past revolutionary momenta, is a moral stimulant for rewriting the story of the oppressed in the actual present (Jetztzeit). Linear progress towards moral and social perfection of the humankind sounds like a fairytale that has nothing to do with the nightmare in which Walter Benjamin was trying to awake. Auguste Blanqui depicted human flow of events as the return of the eternally same: oppression. How can the materialist thinker adapt the point of view of the oppressed and not follow the « phantasmagorical » drug of the oppressors? For Benjamin the history of the oppressed is made of vacua and intensively condensed moments: revolutionary interruptions of the oppression. From Spartacus to Spartakusbund, there is a secret passage forming a unique constellation out of the two distant events and permits to « restore » (apokatastasis) the dead in their rightful place in today’s struggle. But victory won’t be the fore coming of a state of eternal delight: it will merely end the course towards destruction. Drawing the alarm and stopping the train before it reaches the cliff is the real meaning of a revolutionary act. This course will wander through the pages of Benjamin, Balzac, Baudelaire, Edgar Poe, Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, Joseph Roth, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Auguste Blanqui, Gracchus Babœuf, Charles Péguy, Karl Kraus, Massimo Cacciari, David Frisby, looking for patterns of crisis-situations in European « constellations ».

FES 770 Which Political Form for which Europe?

The questions underlined in the political thought are three: that of the political subject, the one of the political regime, and, last and most important, that of the political form. The latter has received less attention than the other three, but in spite of this fact it has gained an acute interest these last years regarded as a key question to the European unification. What is Europe today? What could a unified Europe of tomorrow be? This course will examine three political forms that suit the importance and the size of the European experiment: the Empire, the Church, and the Confederation. The first two permit the coexistence under one Rule not only of individuals of different nations and cultures, but also of different ethnic groups and nations, as Lord Acton defines the Empire. The third permits the entry of different States in one common legal and political framework. The transition from the national European States to a supranational European State proves itself to be a much more difficult step than certain visionaries had imagined it. Like Victor Hugo, they thought or still think that there is only one European nation, and Europe should be a National State. Others have proclaimed Europe a democratic Empire or a Christian club. Is there any reality under these alleged European forms? Can European States become a confederation as others dream?

FES 771 European Spirit in the Globalized Era 

European spirit gave birth to what we call the West. Its roots are to be found in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem, in Constantinople, Bagdad and Cordova. Europe has expanded in order to dominate the world, or to put it in the very words of Hegel, incorporated the world in the World History. Contemporary democratic systems are as indebted to Pericles and Cato as they are to Franklin and Jefferson. Europe’s actual civilization is enriched by the cultures if its former colonies and then became global. What is today a « European » culture? What is the difference with globalized culture of modern bourgeois democracy and contemporary big cities around the world? What is its difference with East and West? When the degree of cultural interaction transforms difference in identity and vice versa, the birthplace of Western civilization seems to lose its specific difference.

FES 772 Gender Roles within the European Space

Equal treatment for women and men is one of the European Union’s fundamental values, and one that can be traced back to 1957 when the Treaty of Rome laid down the principle of equal pay. Ever since then, the European Union (EU) has worked to eliminate discrimination and achieve gender equality, in part through legislation. However equal treatment has also been the motivation behind a number of important grass-roots movements, such as the suffragettes’ movement in the UK or the more recent FEMEN activism- originally from Ukraine and now based in Paris. After offering a historical survey of these grass-root movements (Duby & Perrot, Offen, Scott), and the EU stance on the issue (Reding’s proposals for instance), we investigate how key concepts such as ‘gender roles’ (Goffman), ‘stereotype’ (Lippman, Amossy) and ‘prejudice’ (Allport, Dovidio) structure these gender equality movements. We also consider how the same concepts are constructed, reproduced or challenged in popular cultural artefacts such as advertisements, comic strips, songs, etc. Students will become well informed about official EU legislation and the grass-root movements advocating gender equality through a historical and multi-modal approach. The course encourages students’ independent thought and constructive criticism.

FES 773 The Europe of Nations

Even the most romantic and ardent Europeans, devotees of a federal Europe, recognize today that the Nation-State is a very stable political form that enjoys the confidence of the citizens of the States of Europe. The « resistance of the nations » proved to be much stronger than expected, to the extent that the folding of protectionist societies and economies seems today to be a one-way street. Another model of Europe is being proposed, that of the « Europe of Nations » storyline from the heart of the 19th century and the reflection of Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), who saw in the newly established National-State entity (République) hope for the emancipation of nations. New Italy, united, democratic and national, would roam in the New Europe, a « Holy Alliance » of the nations, unlike that of its tyrants. The course will follow the emergence of the National-State model of Europe by Vico (1668-1744), and the « common nature of the nations », to Kant (1724-1804) and Mazzini. Can and under what conditions should this model work in today’s European and global reality?

FES 774 Hate Speech in the European Space 

Research (Assimakopoulos et al. 2017, Vera 2017) shows that in Europe, hate speech is often not seen as a serious offence. Moreover definitions of what constitutes hate speech differ from country to country. Yet these type of incidents, especially online, are increasing in most countries, and the use of hate speech against certain groups of people is no longer limited to extremist groups. First, the course investigates the importance and differences within definitions of this all too common phenomenon amongst European countries, distinguishing overt and covert hate speech. Secondly, it introduces theoretical interpretations of hate speech through the focus on discursive strategies of Othering (Van dijk 1995 inter alia, Kopytowska 2017, Musolff 2017). Thirdly, it presents methodological tools to investigate hate speech and offers students a possibility to try their research skills in distinguishing hate speech in relation to gender (sexism), sexuality (LGBTQ), origins (racial and ethnical origins) as well as new targets of hate speech/hate crime such as migrants, Roma people (Romania), Goth people (U.K.), etc.

FES 775 European Spritualities 

« And spirituality, my dear Claude? What is politics without spirituality? » Through the work of the late Foucault, to whom is attributed the question cited by Claude Mauriac, it appears that the European identity problem, which is essentially the problem of European politics, is the problem of the loss of European spirituality. The system that prevails in the European continent, the liberal individualism, seems to bear no spirituality. But is it so? Michel Foucault disagrees. His lessons, lectures, interventions from 1975 until his death in 1984, are essentially a survey on the European liberal spirituality. The modern liberal gouvernementality is in the writings of the French thinker the living heir of the Greco-Roman spiritual exercises (Hadot) and of the Christian pastoral. Through a dynamic discontinuous transformation process, the Greco-Roman-Christian European heritage infuses critical tradition and the Enlightenment. Through Foucault’s research, Western individualism, always targeted by the anti-liberal advocates of a terrestrial or heavenly « authentic existence », becomes conscious of his own spirituality as an essential orchestration of human autonomy by the liberal project.

For all information regarding the programme of the current semester, please see the Semester programmes.