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Dennis Bark offers an in-depth examination of the deteriorating relationship between America and Europe: our differences and similarities, the reasons behind our conflicts, and the future of our alliance. He shows that, by learning what our essential difference teaches us about ourselves and drawing on our shared affinities, we might repair our fading relationship.

Classical Heritage and European Identities examines how the heritages of classical antiquity have been used to construct European identities, and especially the concept of citizenship, in Denmark from the eighteenth century to the present day. It implements a critical historiographical perspective in line with recent work on the "reception" of classical antiquity that has stressed the dialectic relationship between past, present and future. Arguing that the continuous employment and appropriation of lassical heritages in the Danish context constitutes an interesting case of an imagined geography that is simultaneously based on both national and European identities, the book shows how Denmark's imagined geography is naturalized through very distinctive uses of classical heritages within the educational and heritage sectors. It does so by exploring three significant and interrelated arenas where the heritages of classical antiquity are used to shape Danes as European citizens. Together, these three cases emphasize different but interconnected ways in which classical heritages are being put to use in order to construct Denmark's own distinctive national identity within Europe. Finally, the book also sheds light on some of the challenges that face unified and homogenous conceptions of European heritage and identity, as well as the notion of the "classical" itself. Classical Heritage and European Identities is the first English-language monograph to situate the Danish case within the wider European context. As such, the book should be essential reading for researchers and students engaged in the study of heritage and museums, classics, education and modern European history.

"Bringing together a wide collection of primary documents, this is an essential reader on the idea of 'Europe' from antiquity to the twentieth century. Including classic texts from antiquity alongside rare and newly translated material, this critical collection is an invaluable resource for students of European history and identity"--

Part 1. Overture -- Chapter 1. Meals, Food Narratives and Sentiments of Belonging in Past and Present / Peter Scholliers -- Chapter 2. Commensality and Social Morphology: An Essay of Typology / Claude Grignon -- Part 2. Class and Group Identities -- --Chapter 3. Upholding Status: The Diet of a Noble Family in Early Nineteenth-Century La Mancha / Carmen Sarasúa -- Chapter 4. Promise of More. The Rhetoric of (Food) Consumption in a Society Searching for Itself: West Germany in the 1950s / Michael Wildt --Chapter 5. Identification Process at Work: Virtues of the Italian Working-Class Diet in the First Half of the Twentieth Century / Paolo Sorcinelli -- Chapter 6. A Bourgeois Good? Sugar, Norms of Consumption and the Labouring Classes in Nineteenth-Century France / Martin Bruegel -- Chapter 7. Old People, Alcohol and Identity in Europe, 1300-1700 / A. Lynn Martin -- Part 3. National Identities -- Chapter 8. The National Nutrition Exhibition: A New Nutritional Narrative in Norway in the 1930s / Inger Johanne Lynge1 -- Chapter 9. Wine, Champagne and the Making of French Identity in the Belle Epoque / Kolleen M. Guy -- Chapter 10. Reading Food Riots: Scarcity, Abundance and National Identity / Amy Bentley -- Chapter 11. French Bread and Algerian Wine: Conflicting Identities in French Algeria / Willy Jansen -- Index.

Exploring attempts by various actors - institutions, groups, individuals - to create transnational European identities, European Identity and Culture scrutinizes the cultural formations that have either reignited or emerged in often contradictory relations to the EU project, including local, regional and transnational allegiances.

What--if anything--do the twenty-eight member states of the European Union have in common? Amidst all the variety, can one even speak of a European identity? In this timely book, Stephen Green explores these questions and argues for the necessity of the European voice in the international community. Green points out that Europeans can readily define the differences that separate them from others around the globe, but they have yet to clearly define their own similarities across member states. He argues that Europe has something distinctive and vitally important to offer: the experience of a unique journey through centuries of exploration and conflict, errors and lessons, soul-searching and rebuilding--an evolution of universal significance. Coming at a time when the divisions in European culture have been laid bare by recent financial crises and calls for independence, The European Identity identifies one of the biggest challenges for all of the member states of the European Union.