This episode features a lecture by Sandra Ponzanesi. Sandra is a member of the EUTERPE consortium and the Principal Investigator for Utrecht University. She is Chair and full Professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, where she is also the Founding Director of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI). She has published widely in the field of media, postcolonial studies, digital migration and cinema, with a particular focus on Postcolonial Europe from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. She is also currently the project leader for ‘Virtual Reality as Empathy Machine: Media, Migration and the Humanitarian Predicament’ funded by NWO (Dutch Research Council).

The episode also includes an introduction given by Jasmina Lukić. Jasmina is the Principal Leader for the EUTERPE project, Professor with the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Vienna, and the CEU Coordinator for the GEMMA Program in Women's Studies and Gender Studies.

In this lecture, Sandra Ponzanesi discusses how Europe is not just a continent, a mere geographical space that continually redefines its boundaries and peripheries, but an ideal. It is the cradle of Enlightenment and scientific revolutions, and therefore of Western modernity and democracy. However, Europe could not be thought of without its inheritance of violence and the disruptive forces of colonialism. As Stuart Hall has written “I am in but not of Europe” (2003), signalling the ongoing practices of inclusion and exclusion that challenge the EU’s much-promoted motto of ‘Unity in Diversity.’ Postcolonial intellectuals, writers, artists and activists have engaged in rethinking and reimagining the spaces and ideals of Europe, widening its scope and bringing in the margins. These intellectuals are neither universal nor specific, bound to nations or languages, but transnational subjects, always crossing boundaries and orders, constituting solidarities, networks and connections within and beyond Europe.

The lecture was originally delivered on 06/09/2024 at the third biannual EUTERPE Doctoral School, held at Central European University in Vienna, Austria.

The episode transcript can be accessed here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:868b4907-1202-4c7c-a8d2-c5a013018a28.

If you would like to view the slides that were presented alongside the lecture they can be accessed here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:2bac55c1-762e-48c8-aa87-3b1ecb57bd19.

This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective

The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library.

Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project.

For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/, or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project.

This episode was edited by: Evangeline Scarpulla

Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over.

Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.