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As Joyce Appleby explained in our readings for last week, the development of professional history was closely tied to the development of American nationalism. In many ways, historians continue to take national boundaries for granted, such as the traditional division of history courses (and faculty positions) into national "fields," like "U.S. history" or "Chinese history." In the past couple of decades, however, scholars in a number of disciplines have begun to explore the history of nationalism as a concept in ways that encourage us to look behind assumptions we may all have taken for granted. This week's readings will introduce you to several of these scholars and give you some practice at learning how to make sense of and evaluate scholarly conversations on this (or any other) topic. As you read, make note of the argument each scholar is trying to make, and pay special attention to the points on which they agree, and disagree, with each other. Reading Assignment: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983. Katherine Verdery, "Whither 'Nation' and 'Nationalism.'" In Mapping the Nation, pp. 226-234. (In Course Reader). Prasenjit
Duara, "Historicizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What and
When." In Becoming National, pp. 150-177.
(In Course Reader). Suggestions for Further Reading: Anne McClintock, "'No Longer in a Future Heaven': Nationalism, Gender, and Race." In Geoff Eley and Ronald Gregor Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader, pp. 260-285. *Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton University Press, 1993. *E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press, 1992. *Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 1997. *James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, 1998. Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited. Verso, 1997. Sarah Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood, eds., Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America. Routledge, 1996. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds., Nationalism. Oxford University Press, 1994. John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity. Princeton University Press, 1994. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, eds., Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. Verso, 1991. Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan and Kevin Passmore, eds., Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800. Routledge, 1999. Lloyd Kramer, "Historical Narratives and the Meaning of Nationalism." Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (1997): 525-545. Shakuntala Rao, "Woman-as-Symbol: The Intersections of Identity Politics, Gender, and Indian Nationalism." Women's Studies International Forum 22 (1999): 317-328. Peng Chea and Jonathan Culler, eds. "Grounds of Comparison: Around the Worl of Benedict Anderson." A Special Issue of Diacritics 29 (1999). http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/diacritics/toc/dia29.4.html Ronald Grigor Suny, . “History and the Making of Nations.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 22 (1998): 569-588. |