Lessons Learned: Teaching European Studies in Full Eurovision

Abstract

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) has by now become well established as a subfield of academic enquiry in a rapidly expanding array of disciplines, ranging from international relations, history, media and communication studies, cultural studies, gender studies and ethnomusicology, among others. Rather surprisingly, however, this appreciation of the multifaceted nature of Eurovision has so far had little or no impact on curriculum development in formal teaching contexts in Europe (Cremona, The Eurovision Song Contest Within Formal Learning Contexts: A Critical Multimodal Interpretation of Possible Inter-Disciplinary Connections. Symposia Melitensia 14: 152, 2018). One might reasonably expect that in Australia there would be a similarly low uptake of Eurovision in teaching, especially given the fact that Australia has only participated in ESC as a contestant nation since 2015. It is an entirely fortuitous coincidence that the first offering of a subject devoted primarily to Eurovision at the University of Melbourne should begin in the same year. There were a number of drivers for an experiment to harness the potential of the Eurovision Song Contest for teaching purposes. The two authors, both employed in the University’s School of Languages and Linguistics, decided to make the song contest a key component of the curriculum in European studies. They designed a foundational first-year subject titled “Eurovisions” entirely around the song contest, making the annual media event not merely the vehicle for teaching disciplinary skills, but the pedagogical tool and content of a semester-long university-wide subject. In this chapter, we outline the design of the subject, its approach, aims and particular focus, while also reflecting more briefly on the backgrounds and motivations of the team of academic staff participating in the subject as well as the students’ experience of it.