What is Europe? Definitions, Boundaries, Identities

This Research Cluster's initial focus will be the variety of ways in which "Europe" has been defined and delimited over the past two millennia. Topics for consideration include the various modes of European definition and identity formation--geographic, ethic, cultural, religious, and political; from Church and Empire to NATO and the European Union; the great pan-European cultural movements, from Renaissance and the Reformation, to Enlightenment and Romanticism, and Modernism and Postmodernism; and European relations with the rest of the globe, from the Crusades and early modern Empires to Decolonization and "globalization".