The course is designed to bring students to a general understanding of European mentality as a unity established on the basis of Christianity, urban culture, and market economy, a unity that is permanently (from time to time?) unbalanced, occasionally almost destroyed by civil, religious, and national conflicts. The extreme plurality and constant, often brutal discussions among individual kingdoms, states, political fractions, guilds, heretic sects, aristocracy, and clergy – the never-ending flow of ideas, influences and technologies - may have created the seemingly uniform but in detail very complex European phenomenon. Can it last in contact with globalization, Americanization, Islam, and its own internal conflicts and transformations? What is at the heart of the European Phenomenon? With what kind of potential can it endow the common European future?

The course will lead students through the main European periods of architecture such as Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles which will be interpreted in terms of mentality changes, intellectual history and cultural anthropology. Approximately half of the lectures will be held in the classroom while the excursions to some well known as well as totally unknown historical monuments and sites will take place during the other lectures.

The course meets for three hours per week in two sessions.

Course requirements: reading of 50 pages per week; two midterm essays (Which place or building you have found most interesting in Prague and why?, 1400 words, Describe the route taken by any tram from one terminal to the other, how does the city change, 1400 words) final essay (comparison one of the aspects of European and American life, is there something valuable Europe can give to America and vice versa, about 3000 words)

Václav Cílek

Dr. Cílek coordinates numerous EU and UNESCO environmental and geological projects. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Papers of the Czech Speleological Union (25 volumes) and member of editorial boards of major Czech scientific magazines. He has participated in field research expeditions to Asia and Africa (Tanzania, Vietnam, and Nepal) and is one of the top experts in Pragensia studies. The history of Prague, its mythology and archeology is one of the core foci of his research and publishing activities.