New Cultures of International Relations: North-Eastern Europe, the Three Seas Initiative, and the Arctic with Greenland 3002-1KON2026K3

The seminar is devoted to the cultural dimensions of contemporary international politics. Its point of departure is the conviction that international relations are not merely the domain of state institutions, treaties, strategic interests, and economic calculation. They are also a space in which meanings, imaginaries, narratives, collective emotions, political myths, historical memory, and symbolic geographies are produced. States, regions, and political communities act not only through diplomacy, military power, and economics, but also through languages, images, stories about themselves and others, projects of identity, and visions of the future.

The course is situated within the field of humanistic political science, understood as cultural political studies. This means that its object of reflection will not be “politics” solely in the narrow institutional sense, but also the cultural conditions of its possibility: ways of representing the world, orders of value, figures of enemy and ally, images of centre and periphery, and narratives of security, sovereignty, development, modernisation, threat, and community. Students will analyse international relations as a field of meaning-making, in which the political map is superimposed upon imagined, historical, civilisational, economic, and environmental maps.

Particular attention will be devoted to three interconnected areas: North-Eastern Europe, the space of the Three Seas, and the Arctic, together with Greenland. The aim is not to offer a straightforward geographical survey, but to treat these regions as laboratories of new ways of thinking about politics, security, infrastructure, resources, environment, and identity. North-Eastern Europe allows us to ask how the significance of the Baltic, Nordic, and Central European regions has changed after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and after the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. The Three Seas will be analysed as a geopolitical, infrastructural, and symbolic project, but also as an attempt to narrate anew the place of Central Europe between East, West, North, and South. The Arctic and Greenland, in turn, open up questions concerning climate politics, raw materials, maritime routes, Indigenous communities, colonial legacies, and new forms of global rivalry.

The seminar also has a critical dimension. We shall ask who has the authority to define a region, who establishes its borders, what interests and hierarchies are concealed behind the language of cooperation, security, development, and resilience, and how new geopolitical arrangements reproduce older divisions between centre and periphery. Equally important will be the question of whether categories such as “North”, “East”, “West”, “Central Europe”, “the Baltic”, “the Arctic”, or “civilisation” describe reality, or rather help to bring it into being.

Course coordinators

Włodzimierz Pessel

Type of course

elective courses

Mode

Classroom

Prerequisites (description)

The course is taught in Polish. This is addressed primarily to students of cultural studies with an interest in politics, imagined geographies, regional studies, security, contemporary transformations of Europe, and the cultural consequences of rivalry, conflict, and war. Its principal aim is to develop the ability to interpret international relations as a cultural phenomenon: complex, symbolic, historically conditioned, and deeply entangled in struggles over meaning. The course may be regarded as a distinctive complement to classes on Scandinavian culture, since it concerns the neighbourhood of Poland and Polish culture along the North-South axis. In substance, however, it offers a far broader perspective, taking into account important and highly topical questions at the intersection of cultural relations and international relations, for instance the entry of Greenland and the Arctic into the agenda of contemporary politics, security, and geopolitical imagination. The course is taught at first-cycle level. Therefore, despite a certain inclination towards the social sciences and their disciplines on the one hand, and towards history on the other, it requires no preliminary competences beyond those expected of students acquiring knowledge in the field of cultural studies.

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the course, the student:
- in terms of knowledge:
1. knows and understands the specificity of a cultural approach to international relations, as well as its connections with cultural studies, humanistic political science, regional studies, and the social sciences;
2. has advanced knowledge of selected aspects of contemporary transformations in North-Eastern Europe, the Three Seas area, and the Arctic, including Greenland, understood as political, cultural, and symbolic spaces;
3. knows the basic terminology used in the analysis of the cultural dimensions of international politics, including the concepts of imagined geography, periphery, centre, hegemony, domination, security, sovereignty, community, infrastructure, and resources;
4. knows selected methods of analysing and interpreting political discourses, cultural texts, media representations, maps, strategic documents, and narratives concerning international relations.
- in terms of skills:
1. is able independently to search for, analyse, evaluate, select, and integrate information from a variety of sources concerning contemporary international politics, with particular reference to North-Eastern Europe, the Three Seas area, and the Arctic, including Greenland;
2. is able to interpret the collected material with due regard to its historical, social, political, cultural, and environmental contexts;
3. is able to analyse international relations as a field in which meanings, narratives, symbolic geographies, and imaginaries of security, community, development, and the future are produced;
4. is able to take part in discussion, employing appropriate argumentative strategies and terminology drawn from cultural studies and related fields and disciplines.
- in terms of social competences
1. is prepared to assess critically their own knowledge and the content they encounter concerning international politics, security, regions, and political communities;
2. is prepared to adopt an attitude of scholarly curiosity towards diverse phenomena of political culture, symbolic geographies, and contemporary regional transformations;
3. recognises the importance of cultural-studies reflection for understanding social life, public debate, and contemporary conflicts and international processes;
4. is prepared to participate in public and academic debate with respect for differing positions, while maintaining a critical awareness of the language of cooperation, security, domination, and community.

Assessment criteria

The basic requirement for passing the course is attendance. Absences must be justified to the course instructor. A student is entitled to two absences per semester, whether justified or unjustified. A student with between three and five absences in a semester is required to make them up in a manner specified by the instructor. Absences from more than five classes, even if justified, result in the student not being admitted to course completion. Only students who have been granted an Individual Organisation of Studies may have an increased absence limit, though not exceeding 50 per cent of classes.

The final grade is based on one presentation prepared during the semester. The topics of the presentations will follow directly from the issues discussed in a given class and will therefore be agreed in advance with the instructor. The final grade may be raised on account of substantial activity throughout the semester, including participation in discussions, formulating questions, and demonstrating a very good knowledge of the assigned readings.

Estimated student workload: a total of 3 ECTS credits, corresponding to 90 hours: class attendance, 30 hours, 1 ECTS credit; preparation for classes, 30 hours, 1 ECTS credit; preparation of the final presentation, 30 hours, 1 ECTS credit.

The use of artificial intelligence tools in diploma theses, written assignments, and final presentations is governed by Sections 3 and 4 of Resolution No. 98 of the University Council for Education of 8 December 2023 on guidelines concerning the use of artificial intelligence tools in the educational process. Given that one of the fundamental skills developed in the degree programmes offered by the Faculty of Polish Studies is the fluent and professional command of written Polish, and in particular of academic style, the use of artificial intelligence systems for writing, editing, and proofreading texts is prohibited.