Contributor(s): Professor Maurice Fraser | This course examines the cultural and intellectual origins of Europe in Ancient Greece and Christendom; the emergence of a shared European cultural space in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; contested definitions of Europe's final frontier and eligibility for EU membership; rationales of empire and the distinction between 'civilisation' and 'barbarism'; the fissile interplay of rationalism and romanticism; the uses and abuses of instrumental reason; secularisation and the role of Christianity in the public space; the 'universal mission' of Europeans and the idea of rights; and definitions of the European 'project'.