European Humanism in the Making

FUCE Summer School

From 4 till 8 July UCSIA organized the third edition of the international Summer School on ‘European Humanism in the Making’ of the European Federation of Catholic Universities. It was hosted by LUMSA University on their campus in Gubbio, near Perugia in Italy and was attended by 25 bachelor students from different disciplines and various countries. They engaged in classes in the morning (on European identity, literature, science, social thought and citizenship), workshops and field trips in the afternoon and public lectures in the evening. This allowed them to envisage Europe from various perspectives and to confront and deepen their vision of Europe.

FUCE

European Federation of Catholic Universities

A Propos Medea. From Global Europe to Post-Europe and Back

Public lecture on 4 July 2022 by Isabel Capeloa Gil, Full Professor of Culture Studies, Rector of the Catholic University of Portugal, and President of the International Federation of Catholic Universities.

From a rereading of Euripides’ Medea, the presentation shall look at the critical ways in which the idea of the global produced both Europe and its critique, from provincial Europe (Chakrabarty) to post-Europe.

The process of European expansion from the 15th century onwards was celebrated as ‘bringing new worlds to the world.’ Clearly, Europe was conceivably ‘the’ world in this equation and the ‘new’ worlds were positioned on a lesser level of the enlightened progress of history. The nature of the contact was both framed by light and darkness, by the immense widening of knowledge and dialogue, and also by conflict and violence.

Today, the world is coming in droves to Europe’s doorstep. This incoming world is widely diverse. It is both the world of the diaspora of hope, of the cosmopolitan elites, and the world of the diaspora of despair, the world of the global disenfranchised. As migration is redrafting the former imperial narrative to accommodate a transformed understanding of global Europe, a critique of ethnic, religious and cultural homogeneity is inspiring a revision of the European cultural tradition, a rereading of its texts and artistic practices, to include heretofore invisible contributions, such as that of black artists and themes.

Isabel Capeloa Gil is Full Professor of Culture Studies and the current Rector of UCP Catholic University of Portugal. She holds a BA in Modern Languages and Literatures from the University of Lisbon (1987), and an MA in German Studies from the same university (1992), as well as a PhD in German Language and Culture from UCP (2001). She was a guest professor in Germany (Saarbruecken, Munich), the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Brasil and in the USA (universities of Pennsylvania and Stanford). She is furthermore an Honorary Fellow at the School of Advanced Studies of the University of London. From 2005 to 2012 she was the Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences at the UCP. In 2018, she was elected the first woman President of the International Federation of Catholic Universities.

The lecture will be introduced by Sarah Durelle-Marc, Associate Professor at the Law Faculty of the Catholic University of Lille and coordinator of the first course of the summer school programme on the contribution of history to European consciousness.

MYEurope

Panel debate with students participating in the summer school moderated by Peter Hanenberg, Professor for German and Culture Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation and Director of CADOS, Católica Doctoral School. He coordinates the second course on literature, the arts, translation and European Identity of the summer school program.

Once again, Europe and mainly the European Union seem to be in a crisis. In a certain sense, Europe has always been in crisis. Europe’s crisis seems to be Europe´s mode of being. More than ever, it is necessary to debate experiences, fears and hopes concerning Europe, trying to find out which will be the future of a project in which unity and diversity come together.

Bringing in perspectives from very different angles and backgrounds, the panel joins young students from all over the continent who will present and discuss their view on Europe in the making. These young people might not be experts in a technical sense. However, without these young people and without their commitment any future project necessarily has to fail. In the end, we all have to think and consider what would be MyEurope.

Peter Hanenberg, Professor for German and Culture Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation and Director of CADOS, Católica Doctoral School. He was guest lecturer at the Universities of Bambeg (Germany), Galway (Ireland) and Minho (Portugal), from 2006 to 2010 President of the Portuguese Association for German Studies, coordinator of the research group on Cognition and Translatability at the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), Lisbon and between 2012 and 2020 director of the Center. Between 2016 and 2019 he served as a Vice-dean of the Faculty for Human Sciences at UCP. His research focuses on the relation between Cognition and Culture and on the literary representation of the Idea of Europe.

Revisit last year’s public sessions

Waning Europeanness

Historian José Miguel Sardica takes us on a journey through European history. The European founding fathers built a ‘safe haven’ to oppose and avoid more wars and totalitarian regimes (1914-1945). As the memory of the darkest European period is fading, Europe seems to drift apart once again. What are the current threats and how can we cope with them?
Watch the webinar...

MYEurope

Once again, Europe seems to be in a crisis. More than ever, it is necessary to share experiences, fears and hopes concerning Europe, trying to find out what will be the future of a project in which unity and diversity come together. In this debate moderator Peter Hanenberg invites students from all over the continent who to present and discuss their views on Europe in the making. These young people might not be experts in a technical sense. However, without them and without their commitments, any future project necessarily has to fail.
Watch the webinar...

More on the FUCE Summer School

European Humanism in the Making

FUCE summer school
4-8 July 2022

UCSIA

Koningstraat 2
B-2000 Antwerpen
info@ucsia.be
Tel. +32 (0)3 265 49 60

Voorlopige locatie tijdens de renovatiewerken:
Blindestraat 14, 2000 Antwerpen