Image: YouTube

Australians Can Actually Study Eurovision At Uni

You read that correctly — Australia’s love affair with the Eurovision song contest saw us take fifth place at Eurovision 2015, and now Aussie university students will soon have the chance to study the Euro-centric competition in a class called “Eurovisions”.

As News Corp Australia reports, the University of Melbourne will begin offering the course to first-year arts students from next semester, giving them the chance to turn their interest in the pop contest into essays and presentations.

Professor Alison Lewis, “Eurovisions” subject coordinator, says the university is taking the subject “very seriously”, and are hoping for students to show “in-depth knowledge of the history and development of Europe through the prism of the Eurovision song contest”.

The “Eurovisions” subject will look at the song contest through the lenses of European language, history, culture, voting alliances and diversity, including “non-heteronormative sexuality and gender”.

As the University of Melbourne website states:

The subject looks at Europe through the powerful prism of the Eurovision Song Contest. We explore fundamental issues important to understanding Europe, such as the rise of the European Union, European integration and expansion, nation branding, as well as the rise of English, and the expression of cultural and social diversity in all its forms. Oh yeah and then there is also the music…

As News Corp points out, Monash University already offers an undergraduate subject entitled, “Eurovisions: Europe since World War II”, but The University of Melbourne’s new “Eurovisions” subject promises a centralised focus on the actual song contest.

As goes all things Eurovision, the news has already received a mixed response with at least one

education expert already bestowing upon the course, the dreaded “nul points”.

Dr Kevin Donnelly, senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, says, “Eurovision is superficial and vacuous. There’s not a lot of intellectual meat around it.”

Teachers, man.

Watch: Daz Sampson – Teenage Life (United Kingdom) 2006 Final

Gallery: 13 Acts Australia Should Have Sent To Eurovision (But Probably Wouldn’t Have)

Must Read