The Program in European Cultural Studies was established in 1975 on the joint initiative of a number of faculty members in History, Comparative Literature, Romance Languages and Literatures, Politics, and Architecture and Urban Planning, under the leadership of Professor Carl Schorske. Its first certificate class was in 1979.

The program has two purposes: to deepen students’ understanding of European civilization, and to strengthen their command of cultural interpretation. ECS brings together faculty and undergraduates from a number of departments in the Humanities and the Social Sciences in a common inquiry. Their focus is, broadly stated, the ways in which European societies, past and present, order reality, make sense of life, and communicate meaning. In order to reduce these intellectual problems to manageable proportions, these issues are studied in seminars on specific themes in European history, literature, art, and philosophy.