Three-minute Europe

 

WINTER/HIVER 2023 – WELCOME TO/BIENVENUE À “THREE-MINUTE EUROPE”

Welcome to our Winter 2023 edition! 

This year, 19 intrepid Seattle University students will be exploring the nooks and crannies of the Eurovision Song Contest to see what gems they can find. They’re studying for degrees in subjects all across the university – nursing, engineering, business, social sciences, interdisciplinary fields – and are mostly in their first year of study.

For the first time since 2020, we’re starting Winter Quarter back in person, and the enthusiasm is palpable. At the same time, we’re also very conscious that we’re exploring the world of Eurovision when one of its star participants of the last 20 years – Ukraine – has been invaded by Russia and continues to defend its territory, people, and culture.

The students are all taking this first-year humanities inquiry seminar as part of Seattle U’s Core Curriculum – a general education program that provides all undergraduates a taste of different fields of inquiry.

For the ten weeks of the course, each student will explore a different country participating in the Eurovision Song Contest over the last ten or so years. This year those countries are in central, eastern, and southeastern participants in the contest.

Students will be posting their assignments as individual country blogs, each of which will be linked from this central site.

A public blog format is the chance for students to have a real audience. We would love it if any of you who are either Eurovision fans or are just Eurovision-curious would check out the students’ work and offer kind and constructive feedback. Students have the opportunity to revise two written blog posts, so your feedback could really help them expand their knowledge and understanding, as well as honing their skills as communicators.

This year, students have chosen following countries to study, organized into five peer groups that will provide each other feedback and support. (We'll be adding URLs to their sites as soon as they're available.)

EAST

ARM Armenia | AZE Azerbaijan | GEO Georgia | UKR Ukraine

EAST-CENTRAL

BGR Bulgaria | CZE Czechia | ROU Romania

NORTH

EST Estonia | POL Poland  | LTU Lithuania | LVA Latvia

SOUTH

ALB Albania | CYP Cyprus | ISR Israel | MLT Malta

SOUTH-CENTRAL

MNE Montenegro | MKD North Macedonia | SRB Serbia | SLV Slovenia

We look forward to your ideas, suggestions, links, and above all, encouragement. And if you have any thoughts or questions about this project and course as a whole, please drop us a line below in the comments.