The course is designed for students of political science with a special interest in European integration and its theoretical and conceptual underpinnings. It is an advanced course meant for master level students who wish to widen their understanding of the European Union and the European integration process. We are going to examine a number of classical and critical approaches. In the first part of the course, the focus will be placed on classical and modern perspectives in the research field such as neo-/realism, neo-/functionalism, neo-/federalism, liberal intergovernmentalism or supranationalism. The second part of the course will turn its focus more onto emancipatory, critical and alternative takes in the field. Here, we are going to take a closer look on social constructivism, the Marxist School, the English, Frankfurt and the Copenhagen School and on the feminist approach. The guiding questions will ask what the respective approaches teach us about the European Union and what and in how far they inform the research in describing, explaining and interpreting the process of European integration. With these questions in mind and the theoretical approaches looked at, the overall objective of the course is to shed broader light on the European Union and with that to widen student’s perspective of what is at stake in the process of European integration.