Rethinking Eastern Europe in European Studies: Creating Symmetry through Interdisciplinarity

This chapter aims to show how interdisciplinarity can help us include Eastern Europe in European Studies in a more symmetrical way and how this enables us to better frame Europe’s contemporary challenges. Starting from the premise that the notion of ‘Eastern Europe’ was invented as a space in-between the ‘civilized’ and the ‘barbaric, ' I will employ evidence from history, geography, linguistics, religion studies, economics, and politics to re-conceptualize East-West dynamics within Europe. I will discuss how and with what consequences Eastern Europe was made to fit into an emerging system of nation states. I will also trace how the aspiration to be accepted as ‘fully European’ has interacted with the rise of exclusive nationalisms in recent decades. My interdisciplinary approach, in which insights from a wide range of disciplines feed into a history of political ideas, ultimately intends to help rethink hierarchies of power and knowledge in European Studies.