First, you'll have to go through the EMV specification : http://www.emvco.com/specifications.aspx?id=223
If you just want to play a little bit around, on Windows you can use the PC/SC Windows API. If you're ready to switch to C#, this article is a really nice tutorial, with examples.
But if you intend to eventually perform full EMV transactions, it'll be way cheaper and faster to buy an existing EMV level 2 kernel (ex : from http://www.level2kernel.com/emv_kernel.html).