The working group on Postcolonial Europe has completed a successful round of discussions during the course of Athena2 which has focused on the deconstruction of notions of Europe and European identity as linked to issues of space, language, race, religion and media. This has resulted in the development of a MA course on Postcolonial Europe. Gender, Ethnicity and Migration through the construction of a website that will be constantly updated and expanded during the new cycle as well. The website works as an archive for bibliography, critical references, websites and links to other networks and projects that address Europe from a postcolonial ad multicultural perspective and in which national inflections and the specificities of gender and ethnicity are addressed.

http://www.postcolonialeurope.net

During Athena3 the aim of this working group is to expand on these preliminary findings. The focus will be on the development of critical perspectives that elaborate on postcolonial theories from a European angle (building on/but differing from U.S. based theories) by accounting for the historical specificity of European imperial legacies (including Nordic, Mediterranean and eastern European postcolonialisms), and for contemporary issues of racism (with specific emphasis on critical whiteness, anti-semitism and islamophobia), religious radicalization and multicultural policies.

The scope is to highlight the European specificity of feminist postcolonial critique accounting for aesthetics and socio-cultural practices at large.

The group has agreed to work towards the realization of a special issue on “Postcolonial Europe” to be published in a European journal in which feminist postcolonial theory is approached from different cultural, disciplinary and national backgrounds and engage with the question of what makes Europe postcolonial.

The work of this group is located in Output Area III: Strengthening cooperation between academic and social and/or civil organizations addressing women or gender differences and Output Area I: Curriculum development: forging links between education and research in a European dimension.