Critiquing the national brand

Hello again!

We’re now onto our final blog posts, where we’re exploring the extent to which the “national brand” our country has conveyed through its performances (from our second blog posts) aligns with the country’s dominant national identity (from our first blog posts) and its social/political/cultural context (from the MP4 narrated briefings we recorded early in the quarter). 

Part of our task is to draw conclusions from this (mis)alignment, whether about the country’s view of Eurovision or its attitudes to nation branding.

As in previous posts, we’re all using the APA system for both in-text citations and a full references list. Please feel free to ignore those details if they get in the way of your reading.

We DO value your feedback! 
Please leave your constructive comments at the end of our posts. Although we won’t have opportunity to revise this post (since it is now the end of Finals Week), your feedback can help us as we think about writing assignments in our remaining studies.

And who might “we” be?
The "we" on this site refers to a group of 20 first-year undergraduate students at Seattle University who, over the space of 10 weeks, have learned more about the Eurovision Song Contest than we could ever have imagined.

We appreciate that you’ve been following us on this Eurovision odyssey. Some of us are hooked on it; some of us can’t get away fast enough. And none of us will ever be quite the same.

Thank you for engaging with our work!

One last time, here are the links our individual country blog sites:

BALKAN:
ALB Albania | BIH Bosnia & Herzegovina | MKD North Macedonia | SRB Serbia

BALTIC:
EST Estonia | FIN Finland | LAT Latvia | LTU Lithuania

CAUCASUS/C.I.S.:
ARM Armenia | AZE Azerbaijan | GEO Georgia | RUS Russia

EASTERN:
BUL Bulgaria | GRE Greece | MDA Moldova | ROM Romania

CENTRAL:
AUT Austria | CZE Czech Republic | HUN Hungary | SLO Slovenia

The nation on stage

Welcome back!

In these second blog posts, we are analyzing our country’s use of literary and visual (and potentially musical) devices in two consecutive Eurovision performances since 2009.

We’ll each conclude by briefly evaluating what these performances suggest about our country’s attitudes to the many facets of diversity.

So, for example, this means we could be considering: language choices; lyrics; metaphors; musical genres; storytelling; symbolism and imagery; visual devices and staging; and the extent to which our country appears homo- or heterogeneous across these three performances in a row.

We've been asked to use the APA system for in-text citations and a full references list; if you find that a distraction, we suggest you skip over those parenthetical references as best you can.

We DO value your feedback! Please leave your constructive comments at the end of our posts. For this second blog post, we again have the option of revising the text based on feedback (by February 28), so your thoughts are especially welcome.

Again, for your convenience, here are the links our individual country blog sites:

BALKAN:

ALB Albania | BIH Bosnia & Herzegovina | MKD FYR Macedonia | SRB Serbia

BALTIC:
EST Estonia | FIN Finland | LAT Latvia | LTU Lithuania

CAUCASUS/C.I.S.:
ARM Armenia | AZE Azerbaijan | GEO Georgia | RUS Russia

EASTERN:
BUL Bulgaria | GRE Greece | MDA Moldova | ROM Romania

CENTRAL:
AUT Austria | CZE Czech Republic | HUN Hungary | SLO Slovenia

About us

We are a band of first-year undergraduates who are learning about Eurovision (in most cases for the first time ever) through a humanities inquiry seminar as part of the Core Curriculum at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington, USA.

We’ll be continuing our studies in all sorts of fields that have nothing to do with cultural or international studies, this course is quite a step outside the ordinary for us.

The national self (and the Other)

In our first blog posts, we're looking at what makes the national identity of our twenty chosen Eurovision countries.

We've been asked to explain "national identity" in our own words, then use evidence from our research to identify key aspects of our country’s national identity.

In addition, we'll discuss what types of Othering, if any, help generate and maintain that national identity.

We've been asked to use in-text citations and a full list of references using the APA system. If you find these references off-putting, we suggest you skip over them while reading.

Your feedback is appreciated, so please leave your constructive comments at the end of our posts. For this first blog post, we have the option of revising the text based on feedback (by February 7), so your thoughts are especially welcome.

Once again, here are our blog sites:

BALKAN:
ALB Albania | BIH Bosnia & Herzegovina | MKD FYR Macedonia | SRB Serbia

BALTIC:
EST Estonia | FIN Finland | LAT Latvia | LTU Lithuania

CAUCASUS/C.I.S.:
ARM Armenia | AZE Azerbaijan | GEO Georgia | RUS Russia

EASTERN:
BUL Bulgaria | GRE Greece | MDA Moldova | ROM Romania

CENTRAL:
AUT Austria | CZE Czech Republic | HUN Hungary | SLO Slovenia

Who are we?

We are a group of 20 first-year undergraduate students at Seattle University who are mostly not majoring in the humanities, but are learning about Eurovision and national identity through a humanities inquiry course as part of the university's Core Curriculum. We'll be going on to major in such fields as nursing, computer science, business administration, and sociology.

For most of us, this course is our very first encounter with the Eurovision Song Contest. We hope you Eurovisionaries won't hold that against us!

WINTER/HIVER 2019 – WELCOME/BIENVENUE

WINTER/HIVER 2019 – WELCOME/BIENVENUE

Welcome to the winter 2019 edition of Three-Minute Europe: Nation, Identity, and the Eurovision Song Contest – an inquiry seminar in the humanities as part of Seattle University's Core Curriculum.

First-year students from across the university will each be exploring one country participating in the Eurovision Song Contest. Their individual country blogs will be linked from this "hub" site once they go live.

This year, students can choose from the following country groupings:

BALKAN:
ALB Albania | BIH Bosnia & Herzegovina | MKD FYR Macedonia | SRB Serbia

BALTIC:
EST Estonia | FIN Finland | LAT Latvia | LTU Lithuania

CAUCASUS/C.I.S.:
ARM Armenia | AZE Azerbaijan | GEO Georgia | RUS Russia

EASTERN:
BUL Bulgaria | GRE Greece | MDA Moldova | ROM Romania

CENTRAL/HABSBURG:
AUT Austria | CZE Czech Republic | HUN Hungary | SLO Slovenia