Leader: Pascaline Winand

Offered

Overseas Summer semester A 2008 (Off-campus Day)

Synopsis

Taught at the Monash Prato Centre, the unit will allow students to benefit from European teaching and research experience in European Union studies. Under the guidance of Monash staff from the Faculties of Arts, Law, or Business and Economics, students will pursue autonomous research on specialized policy, economic, legal, political or cultural aspects of the EU and attend lectures and seminars given by highly qualified postdoctoral fellows and established specialists from the European University Institute in Florence in Economics, Law, Social and Political Science and Contemporary History.

Objectives

Students will gain:

1. in-depth appreciation of the EU's functions and powers and of some of its key-institutions (such as the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice, the European Central Bank, the Committee of the Regions, the European Environment Agency).
2. in-depth knowledge of some key areas of EU policy in their field of specialization (Competition Policy, Common Commercial Policy, Common Agricultural Policy, Economic and Monetary Union, Environmental Policy, Social Policy, Common Foreign and Security Policy/European Security;
3. awareness of the key debates and internal as well as external challenges facing the EU;
4. strong skills in the critical reading of a variety of texts and the academic scholarship based upon those texts;
5. strong skills in oral and written assessment of the academic scholarship, including methods, assumptions and uses of evidence, and in organising and defending a verbal and written argument based upon those assessments;
6. a capacity to devise, plan and successfully complete a research essay;
7. a capacity to reflect upon and make critical use of a range of resources including, where relevant, on-line materials, especially those produced by the European Union itself.

Assessment

A critical review of a work of interpretation or conceptualisation relevant to a seminar theme and the student's research essay, given first as a seminar presentation, and then revised into a written review paper in light of seminar group comments and a written assessment by the coordinator (2250 words): 25%; Research essay devised and developed by the student (4950 words): 55%; Reflective response to a set question, in a take-home examination (1800 words): 20%

Contact hours

3 weeks

Prerequisites

Core units of master

Prohibitions

EUM5960