In the field of EU studies there has been, in recent years, a growing focus on cultural-historical aspects. This increase in studies corresponds to the need to take stock, thirty years after its establishment, of the considerable and complex activity carried out by the Eu in this field. Since its establishment, the Eu has devoted a great deal of energy and resources to the development of cultural policies aimed at enhancing its past and the impressive number of cultural sedimentations, material and immaterial, that Europe has inherited from its history. This is an exceptionally valuable resource, more so since in many ways this heritage of cultures and values over the past centuries has spread widely to the rest of the world; but at the same time, it has also proved to be a very difficult resource to manage. As much as it is quite clear that the European cultural heritage constitutes an even preponderant part of the world's cultural heritage, the difficulty lies in the fact that within this cultural heritage there is a continuous and even today enduring dialectic between one set of shared or integrative elements and another set of distinctive or particularistic elements, used in a projection of local and national identities that are sometimes clearly antagonistic. Indeed, the importance and complexity of the problem has become progressively more acute over time. Problems have arisen either from endogenous factors (the enlargement of the EU, the emergence of centrifugal drives, which became evident in the case of Brexit, or otherwise sovereigntist tendencies), or from external factors (the pressure of migrants, or the strong tensions in global geopolitical balances), In all these cases internal cohesion has appeared to be an intangible, but fundamental factor; the challenge is particularly important for Europe, which finds itself competing on a world chessboard where it is a major player composed internally of multiple and diverse ethno-linguistic realities, and bases its identity and internal cohesion on very advanced principles and values, such as the complete recognition and indeed enhancement of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity. Hence the interest and development of studies on the way European cultural heritage was constituted: not only on the current state, but also in historical perspective. In this respect, a unified conceptual framework from a historical point of view aimed at providing an explanation analysing how a common cultural heritage was conceived after the IIWW has not yet been developed. This JM module therefore intends to try to fill this gap by developing the missing unitary conceptual and analytical framework in order to offer a more complete critical explanation of the political will to build a common cultural heritage, albeit in its myriad national diversities, in order to create a sense of belonging and identity mechanisms in which European citizens can recognise themselves, which are crucial issues among the European Commission's political objectives and some priorities of the Erasmus Plus Programme 2021-2027.
The objectives of the module, based on a sound needs analysis
(a) to deepen students' critical awareness of the degree and rootedness of their belonging to a European cultural context.
(b) to gain knowledge about the historical roots, depth and transformations, past and ongoing, of this common cultural context.
(c) to recognize and analyse the historical sedimentations, both tangible and intangible, that form the European cultural heritage.
(d) problematize the issue of the antithetical relationship between operations of cultural memory and public use of the past that tend to use this cultural heritage from a shared and collaborative European perspective, and those that tend to use it from an antagonistic or sovereigntist perspective.
(e) analyse EU policies and strategies related to cultural heritage; in dialectical relationship both with the local or national contexts of member states, and in relation to the major geopolitical aggregations around which the new balances of power in the globalized world are being redefined.
f) analyse how European policies have developed, in recent years, through the enhancement, within this context, of the values of tolerance, respect for human rights, protection of diversity and the environment, etc. etc. (multilingual unity challenge and respect for diversity).
The module aims to contribute to the development of awareness of the historical framework of cultural heritage formation and the policies implemented by the EU in this field in order to provide participants with the opportunity to develop their critical capacities to understand the way in which the EU has been constructed as a common cultural space, among different target groups:
a) undergraduate students.
b) PhD students.
c) civil servants.
d) policy makers.
e) other scholars.
f) more in general European citizens.