European Studies

European Studies

Cultural knowledge and the awareness of being part of a global reality involve the need to understand individual cultural identities. Europe’s history, its myths, and ongoing realities have always been, and still are, part of a complex process requiring the study and the implications of disciplines that span from the arts and humanities to the social sciences. These courses encourage students from different ethnic backgrounds and cultures to think critically, to develop their individual creativity and research interests, and to improve their writing skills. The courses serve to enrich the students’ knowledge of the liberal arts tradition across the spectrum of European cultures. They may be combined with courses required for students’ majors or minors. Students with an interest in European and non- European languages who are studying other fields— anthropology, art, business and liberal arts, comparative literature, economics, education, film and media studies, history, Jewish studies, linguistics, political science, sociology, women’s studies, or world studies—can broaden their perspectives and prepare themselves for graduate study as well as future careers by taking EURO courses.

 

Courses

EURO 120. Writing about European Literature and Culture. 3 hrs. lec.; 3 cr.
Prereq.: English 110. EURO 120 fulfills the College Writing 2 requirement and builds on the work of English 110 (College Writing 1), in order to teach the conventions of writing in the discipline of European Literature and Culture. Students will read, discuss, and write about authentic French, German, Italian, Modern Greek, and/or Russian literary and cultural materials. Students will develop analytical and writing skills by performing close readings of primary texts, contextualizing their interpretations through discussions of secondary texts, and developing their own original theses on European literary and cultural productions. This course satisfies the College Writing 2 (EC2) Pathways requirement.

 

Faculty

Yves Cloarec
Office: Queens Hall 205L
Phone: 718-997-5984
Email: yves.cloarec@qc.cuny.edu

Professor Cloarec was born in Martinique, French West Indies; he holds a French Baccalauréat degree, a Bachelor’s in Political Science and English from Columbia University, and an MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation from Queens College.

Cloarec is the recipient of the 2014 Queens College-Hanging Loose Translation Prize for Inside My Own Skin, his translation of the prize-winning non-fiction narrative Dans ma peau (2010) by Guillaume de Fonclare, the Director of the World War I Museum in Picardy, eastern France. His other current translation projects include:

  • I, Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, a fake—but historically accurate—diary of the Third Century Arab Queen who defied Rome for two decades;
  • The Banker and the Parrot, an also fake and also historically accurate diary of French-born sea-captain Stephen Girard who became America’s first multi-millionaire;
  • Dostoyevsky Should Burn in Hell by Attiq Rahimi, an Afghan exile living in Paris and writing in French, is a war-torn Kabul reenactment of Crime and Punishment: what is one more crime amid so much barbarity?