Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings and Politics at the Eurovision Song Contest

Professor Karen Fricker of Brock University’s Dramatic Arts Department has spent the last decade attending “Europe’s favourite TV show”, the Eurovision Song Contest.

Professor Fricker, who lectures in the praxis concentration, spent a week last May in Malmö, Sweden where she launched her new co-edited book Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings and Politics at the Eurovision Song Contest at the centre of the annual pop song festival watched by over 170 million people all over the world.

Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings and Politics at the Eurovision Song Contest argues that this popular music competition is a symbolic contact zone between European cultures: an arena for European identification in which both national solidarity and participation in a European identity are confirmed, and a site where cultural struggles over the meanings, frontiers and limits of Europe are enacted.

With her new book, Karen has received much attention as a Eurovision media expert. She covered the contest as a journalist for the Irish Times and wrote a blog post this year for the Guardian about the U.K. and Eurovision.

The Department of Dramatic Arts is celebrating the launch of Professor Fricker’s book on September 26th in TH 235 from 5:00pm – 6:00pm. Refreshments and musical entertainment will be provided, as well as a brief and entertaining introduction to all things Eurovision.