Doctoral Researcher Marlene Ritter will present her on-going research on Western European image politics after World War II.
In this hybrid Alcide de Gasperi Research Centre seminar "Building Europe by Branding Europe? The Branding of 'Europe' in the Experimental Phase of Western European Integration, 1948–1957," Marlene Ritter will present her on-going research on Western European image politics after World War II. Focussing on organisations like the Council of Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community, or the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, she follows their strategies to brand and imagine a united and future-oriented Europe in the early phase of its institutionalisation in the 1950s and 60s.
Marlene Ritter is part of the research consortium Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS). Her PhD project traces the narrative foundations of (Western) European integration as an explicitly liberal project. She works with both textual and visual sources, including films, photos, posters, and trademarks. Contesting the myth of integration as a teleological process of ever closer union, these sources tell a fascinating, more entangled story. This seminar will introduce its protagonists, their intentions, tools –– and of course, some of the images they used.
Historian Anne Bruch, from the Georg-Eckert-Institut for International Textbook Research & University of Hamburg, and Archives Fellow at the EUI, will discuss.
Image: Image : © Council of Europe Source: Conseil de l'Europe, Strasbourg, F- 67 075 Strasbourg Cedex- France. This document is available at www.cvce.eu
Participation is possible either on premise or online via zoom.