Political and Public Spheres and Spaces in European History and Culture

The course highlights and problematizes, from the point of view of different disciplines, the political significance of the emergence of the public, private, and secret spheres and spaces in European history and present. The contingent division between these three spheres can be considered as one of the fundamental factors in the development of core notions and distinctions between right and obligation, society and state, traditional kingship and modern division of powers. The course traces different contexts for both conceptual and spatial distinction of the public, political, and private spheres from the Greek agora, through republican and imperial Rome, medieval and modern Europe well into the present, when the political division between the public, secret, and private is re-drawn anew. The focus on European public spaces and innovative political practices allows students to critically reflect on the historic and present conditions of access to the political sphere during its transition into the digital age.