Event Highlights: The Colonial Origins of the EU
This roundtable discussion on “The Colonial Origins of the EU,” chaired by Kaija Schilde, was held during the European Union Studies Association 18th annual meeting in Pittsburgh, PA (May 4-6, 2023). Prof. Schilde convened the plenary session partly as a way of continuing a longer-term conversation at EUSA on decentering the EU and EU Studies but also to highlight several new books in global history and legal history on the EU’s relative power and purpose, including its origin stories.
The speakers (in order of appearance) are Emily Marker, author of Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era (Cornell University Press, 2022); Megan Brown, author of The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022); Hans Kundnani, author of the forthcoming Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire, and the European Project (Hurst, 2023); Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018); and Iyiola Solanke, author of EU Law (Cambridge University Press, 2022).