Cultural and Intellectual History Between East and West

Sharing a common cultural heritage, Eastern and Western Europe have developed different paths of scholarship and learning. “Cultural and Intellectual History Between East and West” is a double degree master’s program that aims to combins the best traditions of scholarship in East and West. Its subject is the history of cultural contacts—in philology as well as in cultural and intellectual history—between Eastern and Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. Inspired by humanist ideals of scholarship and learning it imparts philological and historical skills that enable students and future scholars to work with primary sources and to trace cultural and intellectual and linguistic processes at their sources. The program implements, for the first time, an identical curriculum at three universities in Western, Central and Eastern Europe.

The program builds upon a tradition of interdisciplinary humanist scholarship and learning (in philology, cultural studies and history) that has been shaped by the Faculty “Artes Liberales” and its predecessor institutions over several decades. This tradition is marked by a clear focus on primary sources and the understanding of historical, linguistic and cultural contexts. It is characterized by a methodological rigour which aims at making the scholarly approach universal and independent of theories that might be favoured at a certain place or at a certain moment of time. We are looking for ways of learning that reveal timeless values, and we are reflecting on how we can live these values in our time. This approach aims at conveying and at actively developing scholarly skills that prepare students to take up a PhD on a related topic in different scholarly environments in Eastern and Western Europe.