Teaching Contentious Topics in and on Central and Eastern Europe

Despite the ongoing asymmetric convergence of the politics of Central and Eastern Europe with its Western counterpart (Emanuele et al., 2020), the context of the region as a global semi-periphery remains distinctive from the Global North and the Global South (Müller, 2020). This position poses a number of challenges for teaching and learning about the region, especially when handling complex and contentious topics. For example, in the field of International Relations an emerging discussion on decolonialisation in light of the Russian invasion on Ukraine requires a more nuanced toolkit for addressing the matter than the one presently existing (Mälksoo, 2021). This paper will focus on teaching the topic of populism in Central and Eastern Europe. While media accounts tend to present populism as a challenge to democracy, populism can also be considered a corrective of some distortions of contemporary democracies (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Such a nuanced understanding is suitable for understanding the populist zeitgeist in Central and Eastern Europe where a rich number of radical right populist cases meets a growing wave of valence populists that present a strong anti-corruption and competence-based anti-establishment narrative. Making sense of these complexities and delivering these to students in a clear and accessible way remains its own challenge. This paper discusses the challenges and specifics of teaching populism in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly to students in West European universities through the experiences of this author from his own co-convened course. The aim of this paper is to offer suggestions and best practices on teaching this topic and contentious politics broadly with particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe. The paper conclusions can be helpful and applicable more broadly for teaching area studies to unfamiliar audiences.