https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/POLS5982?type=COREShort descriptionThis lecture course lays the foundations of this interdisciplinary and interdepartmental program via a lecture series offered on key topics involved in the study of Central Europe as a region and as an intellectual construct. Covering its physical and human geographies, historical development and present understanding, it will engage with notions such as backwardness, belatedness, integration, or fragmentation that are customarily used to characterize Central Europe but seldom taken under critical review. The course - just like the entire program - does not essentialize Central Europe on the grounds of supposedly endogenous, distinctive features that make it unique and incomparable. Instead, Central Europe and its experience, seemingly marginal in common perception, will be investigated as a lens and a prism through which problems of wider relevance and implications can be fruitfully studied.