Comparative Regionalism: Comparing Europe and East Asia - Einzelansicht

Short description

How can we understand European integration and its regional development from a global perspective? Despite the ardent wish for finding something like European regionalism, the European experience and its related academic work do not tell much to understand other regional dynamics and development. Against this backdrop, this course introduces ‘comparative regionalism’ which helps to study European experience and those of other regions together. By doing so, it intends to ultimately understand what we mean by ‘region’ and what regional identity is. The course will apply the view of comparative regionalism while exploring two regional cases: Europe and East Asia (in this course, mainly Korean peninsula, Japan, China and Southeast Asia). 

- Börzel, T., Risse, T. (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism. Oxford University Press.

- Brennan, L., Murray, P. (ed). (2015). Drivers of Integration and Regionalism in Europe and Asia: Comparative perspectives. Routledge.

Tentative course themes (*A finalized syllabus, reading materials and a Zoom link for online sessions will be shared on Moodle.)

- Part 1: What is 'region'? -

19. Oct: 1) Orientation 

26. Oct: 2) Regional organizations in the world 

  2. Nov: 3) 'Region' and 'regionalism' (online)

- Part 2: Comparative regionalism - 

  9. Nov: 4) European Integration and EU studies (online)

16. Nov: 5) European studies and non-European regions

23. Nov: 6) Comparative regionalism

30. Nov: 7) asynchronous session 

- Part 3: European- and East Asian regionalism and identity - 

  7. Dec: 8) Historical narratives: Regionalism in Europe vs. East Asia

14. Dec: 9) European regionalism

21. Dec: 10) East Asian regionalism

11. Jan: 11) Regional identity formation and nationalism

18. Jan: 12) Memory politics 

25. Jan: NO CLASS (NRW Debattiert EUROPA)

- Conclusion - 

  1. Feb: 13) Course wrap-up

Self-reading and active participation during the course required;

Group presentation (Referat;15-20 minutes) + term paper (Hausarbeit; 12-15 pages);

Presentation performance and paper submission are possible both in English and German.