Nations and Nationalism. Theories and Debates - Detailseite

This seminar offers students a survey of the main theories and debates of one of the central themes of modern and contemporary history. The course will address the rich body of literature that has emerged in the last decades on nations and nationalism and will attempt to shed some light into the complex and inconclusive debates emerging from the disagreement among academics on the very fundamental questions that should provide a starting point for academic discussion. The first fundamental disagreement relates to the temporal dimension of the nation. Whether nations are present in every stage of history or are just a product of modernity represents the main cleavage between primordial and perennial interpretations on one side and modernist understandings on the other. The matter is further complicated by a second crucial controversy about the subjective or objective nature of the idea of the nation itself. Finally, whether nationalism is an end in itself or a proxy for other interests completes a landscape of confrontation and scarce consensus. Each week, we will read original texts from historians, sociologists and political scientists and we will discuss the implications of these theoretical works for the very assumptions historians make when writing about the past.

Students will be encouraged to engage critically with the literature and will also be exposed to recent works that may suggest alternative approaches to the study of nations and nationalism.