Syllabus
Session 1: October 11 and 12 - Popular Music andTelevision as Historical Sources
Readings:
· Dean Vuletic, Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest (London. Bloomsbury, 2018), introduction.
· Andreas Fickers, “The Birth of Eurovision: Transnational Television as a Challenge for Europe and Contemporary Media Historiography,” in Transnational Television History: A Comparative Approach, eds. Andreas Fickers and Catherine Johnson (Abingdon, OX, and New York: Routledge, 2012): 13-32
· Catherine Armstrong, Using Non-Textual Sources: A Historian's Guide (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), chapters 2 and 3.
Session 2: November 8 and 9 - The Cold War
Readings:
· Michael Baumgartner, "Chanson, canzone, Schlager, and Song: Switzerland's Identity Struggle in the Eurovision Song Contest," in A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, eds. Ivan Raykoff and Robert Deam Tobin (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 37-48
· Simon Frith, "Euro Pop," Cultural Studies 3:2 (1989), 166-172
· Dean Vuletic, " The Intervision Song Contest: A Commercial and Pan-European Alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest”. In Beyond the Borders: Eastern European Pop-Rock as an International Phenomenon. Eds. Ewa Mazierska und Zsolt Győri (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019): 173-190
Session 3: December 13 and 14 - Post-1989
Readings:
· Vuletic, Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest, chapter 4
· Miyase Christensen and Christian Christensen, "The After-Life of Eurovision 2003: Turkish and European Social Imaginaries and Ephemeral Communicative
Space," Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 6:3 (2008), 155-172
· Milija Gluhovic, “Sing for Democracy: Human Rights and Sexuality Discourse in the Eurovision Song Contest,” in Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, eds. Karen Fricker and Milija Gluhovic (Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 194-217
Assignment:
· Oral presentations
Annotation
This seminar will explore how we can use popular culture to research and study contemporary European history through multidisciplinary and multimedia approaches, and the cultural, economic, political, social and technological issues that this involves. The seminar will take the Eurovision Song Contest as its guiding example. In its sixty-five-year history, the Eurovision Song Contest has been one of the world’s biggest popular music events and one of the most-watched television shows in Europe. The seminar will show how we can analyse the cultural, political and social significance of Eurovision entries through their lyrics, music, costumes and dances, as well as the media commentary that has accompanied the annual event. We will look at how countries have used the contest as cultural diplomacy to define themselves within a European context, be it to assert their national distinctiveness, affirm their “Europeanness” or promote political issues, such as the rights of ethnic and sexual minorities. In critically assessing the problems involved in using popular culture as a source for researching history, we will also consider the commercial motivation of the agents who produce it, as well as issues of social diversity.
The questions that are addressed throughout the seminar include:
• how has European integration been promoted through popular culture, and how has popular music become one of the prime cultural phenomena connecting Europeans?
• how are Europe and "Europeanness" defined in cultural, geographic, political and social terms?
• how has the Eurovision Song Contest been used to promote political and social issues, and what effect has it had on these in Europe?
Office hours: By appointment
The course is held in English and assignments must be submitted in English.
E-mail address: dean.vuletic@univie.ac.at