General introduction to the course. Explanation of the course and syllabus (grading structure and teaching methods). In this first class, reading and seminar presentation groups will be decided on, and seminar presentations assigned to students. Reading: Kohn, Hans. “Western and Eastern Nationalisms.” In Hutchinson, John & Smith, Anthony D., eds. Nationalism. Oxford Readers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 161-65; Özkirimli, Umut. Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000, 35-37; Smith, Anthony D. Smith. Nationalism and Modernism. London & New York: Routledge, 1998, 16-17. Assignments/deadlines: Come to class prepared to discuss and answer questions on the very short reading extracts, above.

Description: Although Ernest Renan had challenged the idea of the primordiality of nations in the late 19th century, most nationalists before the mid-20th century believed that nations had ancient roots, stretching back into the tribal past of European peoples. Following the pioneering scholarship of Carleton S. Hayes and Hans Kohn, this view was almost universally rejected in favour of the theory of the modernity of nations and nationalism – i.e., that no “nations” or “nationalism” had existed before the 18th or 17th centuries at the very earliest. But in the 1980s and 1990s, this modernist paradigm was challenged by “primordialist” scholars like Steven Grosby. Seminar 1 – a lecturer presentation –will examine the work of Grosby and other primordialist scholars who argue for the existence of nations in early antiquity. We will also explore Anthony D. Smith’s “halfway house” between primordialism and modernism – “ethnosymbolism.” Reading: Grosby, Stephen. Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 27-97; Özkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, 49-71; Smith, Anthony D. “Were there Nations in Antiquity?” In Smith, Anthony D. The Antiquity of Nations. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004, 127-153. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Groups A, B, C, D, E and F – read and take notes on the Essential Readings for Seminar 1. Come to class prepared to discuss your readings and debate the “questions for discussion.” Should you choose this option, your follow up 1-2 paragraph response to my NEO Forum prompt on Primordialism, in which you will briefly outline what you have learned both from your assigned reading and from the lecture and classroom discussion.

Most scholars of nationalism concur that nationalism and the nation itself are European phenomena which were subsequently spread to other parts of the world. But how old is the European nation? Did some peoples – such as the English – achieve a “national consciousness” long before other peoples did, perhaps as early as the Middle Ages? This week’s lecture explores the complexities of the question of possible national sentiment in the European Middle Ages. Discussion Seminar 2 will examine the “perennialist” thesis of the late Adrian Hastings; mediaevalist, theologian and heterodox theorist of nationalism. Like Seminar 1, its focus is on one of the schools of thought which challenges the predominant paradigm of the modernity of nations and national sentiment. Reading: Hastings, Adrian. The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 1-65; Reynolds, Susan. “Regnal Sentiments and Medieval Communities.” In Hutchinson, John & Smith, Anthony D., eds. Nationalism. Oxford Readers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 137-40. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Groups A, B, C, D and E – read and take notes on the Essential Readings for Seminar 1. Come to class prepared to discuss your readings and debate the “questions for discussion.” Should you choose this option, your follow up 1-2 paragraph response to my NEO Forum prompt on Perennialism, in which you will briefly outline what you have learned both from your assigned reading and from the lecture and classroom discussion.

In his ground-breaking 1940s work The Idea of the Nation, pioneering scholar of nationalism Hans Kohn argued the case for 17th century revolutionary England as pioneer of the national idea and nationalism itself. In later years, other influential scholars like Liah Greenfeld have followed Kohn’s lead, seeing an English national identity emerging even as early as the 16th century Reformation. Other scholars have applied an early modern “biblical” or “Covenantal” model to other early modern states such as the Dutch Republic – and even the Hussite Czechs of the 15th and 16th centuries. The lecture looks at early (16th and 17th century) nationalist sentiment in relation to Calvinist Protestantism, with special emphasis on England and the Dutch Republic. This seminar will explore the work of “early modern nationalism” scholars like Kohn, Liah Greenfeld and Philip Gorski, with particular emphasis on concepts such as a national “covenant” and “Chosen People.” We will also explore the possible connections between Reformation literacy, bible reading and a growing national consciousness amongst some early modern peoples. Reading: Gorski, Philip. “The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of Modernist Theories of Nationalism.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 105, No. 5 (Mar, 2000): 1428-1468; Greenfeld, Liah. Nationalism: A Short History. Washington, D.C.; Brookings Institution Press, 2019, 1-33. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Groups A, B, C, D and E – reading for the discussion Seminar 3 - Bible and Covenant: England, the Dutch Republic and Early Modern Nationalism

The eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is usually considered the founding father of nationalism – or, at least, the integral nationalism characteristic of nations “East of the Rhine.” The lecture explores Herder and Fichte’s ideas in their historical context as part of the broader Romantic movement, with its intense interest in language, culture and folklore and it its repudiation of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. The discussion seminar also looks at Herder and those nationalists who followed him - like Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Jahn - in relation to the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Reading: Hayes, Carleton J. H. “Contributions of Herder to the Doctrine of Nationalism.” The American Historical Review, Vol 32, No. 4 (July, 1927): 719-736; McClelland, J. S. A History of Western Political Thought. London & New York: Routledge, 1996, 594-615. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Groups A, B, C, D and E – reading for Seminar 4 – Nationalism and Romanticism: J. G. Herder and His Legacy.

This session’s historical lecture – the first part of two – looks at the origins and early stages of the French Revolution of 1789. Few modernist accounts of the rise of nations and nationalism have been as intellectually cogent or as influential as that of Ernest Gellner – the legendary Czech Jewish sociologist and emigre to Great Britain. For Gellner, the rise of both nationalism and of nations themselves can only be understood as part of a wider and more profound transformation: the Industrial Revolution, the most important event in human history since the Neolithic agricultural revolution. Anthony D. Smith, Gellner’s student at the LSE in the 1960s, disputed Gellner’s modernism and came to believe that nations had developed from earlier ethnic attachments: configurations of myths, shared histories, geographies and cultural traditions that Smith termed ethnies. Smith doubted that nations could be created ex nihilo – as God had created Adam. Today’s seminar thus poses Gellner’s question: do nations have navels? Reading: Gellner, Ernest. Nationalism. London: Phoenix, 1995, 1-37; Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: 27-46; Smith, Anthony D. “Memory and Modernity.” In Smith, The Antiquity of Nations, 62-81. (The last is Smith’s account of his famous debate with Gellner at the LSE, just weeks before Gellner’s death.) Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Group A – reading for and preparing a slide show presentation on Seminar 5 - Do Nations Have Navels? Ernest Gellner vs. Anthony D. Smith. Groups B, C, D, E and F – Essential Readings for Seminar 5.

The historical lecture for this session continues to explore the impact of the French Revolution on modern nationalism, looking particularly at the way the French Revolutionaries and Napoleon promoted nationalism as a revolutionary doctrine against their enemies. But in both the Vendée and throughout Napoleon’s empire, the Revolution provoked a reaction and led to the formation of new types of nationalism. Few works on nationalism have been as influential as Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. Yet Anderson himself complained that his book was more talked about than it was actually read and understood. The book aimed to explain the overlooked fact that the first great wave of nationalist revolutions took place not in Europe but in the New World. This seminar will examine Anderson’s ideas in the historical context of these revolutions, looking critically at the extent to which the New Left Marxist Anderson’s theory is in any plausible sense “Marxist.” Reading: Anderson, Benedict. “Imagined Communities” & “Creole Pioneers of Nationalism.” In Hutchinson, John & Smith, Anthony D., eds. Nationalism. Oxford Readers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, 137-40; Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 117-42; Özkirimli, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, 143-56. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Group B – reading for and preparing a slide show presentation on Seminar 6 - Nations Imagined: Benedict Anderson and the Revolutions in the New World. Groups A, C, D, E and F – Essential Readings for Seminar 6

Film Class: Nationalism and Fascism in Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Description: We will explore many of the themes examined in the previous seminar on George Mosse through a selective viewing of sections of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), a notorious (but brilliant) propaganda film of the Nazi’s 1935 Nuremberg rally. Reading: As per Session 12 on George L. Mosse.

Today’s historical lecture examines the period from c. 1815-1832, when Romantic nationalism was a radical and revolutionary force, standing against the reactionary spirit of the “Age of Metternich.” The Greek War of Independence forms the central focus of this lecture. The seminar will examine the work of one the 20th century’s earliest and most cogent critics of nationalism, both in its European and post-colonial manifestations. Elie Kedourie was an Iraqi Jew and Orientalist who was forced to flee his country because of what he saw as the alien “virus” of nationalism. Kedourie believed that nationalism was a European disease of the mind, similar to the violent Messianic cults that had plagued late mediaeval Europe. Kedourie’s work questions whether Hans Kohn’s famous distinction between “good” Western civic and “bad” Eastern integral nationalism is an intellectually sustainable one. Reading: Kedourie, Elie. Nationalism: 4th Ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993, 44-55; 87-112; Kedourie, “Dark Gods and Their Rites.” In Hutchinson and Smith, Nationalism, 205-9; Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 97-116. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Group C – reading for and preparing a slide show presentation on Seminar 7 - Nationalism and Messianism: Elie Kedourie and the “Dark Gods” Theory of Nationalism. Groups A, B, D, E and F – Essential Readings for Seminar 7.

The topic of today’s historical lecture looks is the revolutions of 1848 and their consequences, the so-called “Springtime of Peoples.” Hailing from the same Charles University that nurtured Hans Kohn, few books on the history of nationalism have been as influential as Miroslav Hroch’s Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. His tripartite historical evolutionary scheme of the development of “small nation” national movements has proved to be one of the most recognisable and enduring of all modernist nationalist theories. This seminar will examine Hroch’s ideas, with special reference to the Czech national movement. Reading: Hroch, Miroslav. “From National Movement to Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe.” In Balakrishan, Gopal, ed. Mapping the Nation. With an Introduction by Benedict Anderson. London & New York: Verso, 1996, 78-97; Özkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, 113-20. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Group D – reading for and preparing a slide show presentation on Seminar 8 - From Folklorists to Nationalists: Miroslav Hroch. Groups A, B, C, E and F – Essential Readings for Seminar 8.

The historical lecture concentrates on one particular feature of the “Age of Nationalism” (1851-1914) – the dangerous meshing together of racism and “integral” nationalism. We explore this question through particular focus on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s. The late Eric Hobsbawm, perhaps the most famous Marxist historian of the 20th century, made profound contributions to the study of nationalism. A convinced modernist, Hobsbawm believed that nationalism and nationalists created nations, not the other way around. Nationalism was a way in which the world’s ruling classes negotiated the crisis of industrial modernity and staved off the threat of socialist internationalism. No study of nationalism can avoid engaging with Hobsbawm and Ranger’s famous thesis of “invented traditions.” This seminar will examine Hobsbawm’s work in the context of his modernism and Marxism. It will also examine his theory of nationalism in relationship to his dispute with another British Marxist theorist of nationalism, Tom Nairn’s “anticolonial” theory of national identity which– with its strong Leninist roots – viewed nationalism as a far more positive and progressive phenomenon. Reading: Hobsbawm, Eric. “The Nation as an Invented Tradition” & “The Rise of Ethno-Linguistic Nationalism.” In Hutchinson & Smith, Nationalism, 76-83, 177-84; Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 117-31; Özkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, 116-27. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Group E – reading for and preparing a slide show presentation on Seminar 9 - Nations Invented: Eric Hobsbawm and the Invention of Tradition. Groups A, B, C, D and F – Essential Readings for Seminar 9.

Our final lecture for the semester explores World War I and the rise of Fascism in Central Europe. George L. Mosse was one of the most original historical thinkers of the 20th century, a scholar who revolutionised the study of Nazism and Fascism. At the core of Mosse’s approach to fascism was the belief that many of its principal characteristics could be traced to the French Revolution and its new “cult of the fallen soldier.” Mosse’s studies traced the rise of nationalist monuments, festivals and funerary cults through the 19th and early 20th centuries, showing how deeply the ritualistic and mass participatory aspects of fascism were grounded in this legacy. Mosse’s ideas on nationalism and fascism are the subject of today’s seminar. Reading: Mosse, George L. “Fascism and the French Revolution,” 69-95. In Mosse, George L. The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism. New York: Howard Fertig, 1999; Griffin, Roger. “Withstanding the Rush of Time: The Prescience of Mosse’s Anthropological View of Fascism.” In Payne, Stanley, Sorkin, David J. & Tortorice, John, eds. What History Tells: George L. Mosse and the Culture of Modern Europe. Madison, Wisc.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, 110-33. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Group F - reading for and preparing a slide show presentation on Seminar 10 – Nationalism and Fascism: George L. Mosse and the Nationalisation of the Masses. Groups A, B, C, D and E – Essential Readings for Seminar 10.

In this lecture, students will watch, analyse and discuss the first part of the BBC’s feted 1995 history of the Yugoslav Wars – The Death of Yugoslavia - Episode 1: Enter Nationalism. In the early 21st century, the young Turkish scholar Umut Özkirimli has established himself as one of the most prominent and wide-ranging of a new generation of “postmodernist” scholars challenging earlier approaches to the study of nationalism. A wide-ranging designation, postmodernist approaches to the study of nationalism include postcolonial, poststructural and feminist readings of nationalist discourses. In Özkirimli’s work, competing “Greek” and “Turkish” national identities are deconstructed from something primordial and essential to things that are shown to have been shifting, historically contingent and performative. We will examine Özkirimli’s postmodernism through his deconstruction of “Turkish” and “Greek” national identities, highlighting these competing nationalisms’ misappropriation and distortion of history and archaeology. Reading: Özkirimli, Theories of Nationalism, 169-219; Smith, Nationalism and Modernism, 199-220. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Groups A, B, C, D, E and F – read and take notes on the Essential Readings for Seminar 1. Come to class prepared to discuss your readings and debate the “questions for discussion.”

Students will complete a final online, take home and open book exam. They will write two papers of c. 800-1000 words. One essay will be on topics covered in the second half of this course – i.e., Benedict Anderson; Elie Kedourie; Miroslav Hroch; Eric Hobsbawm and Tom Nairn; George L. Mosse on Nationalism and Fascism and Nationalism and Postmodernism. A second, compulsory, paper will be more “global,” requiring comparison and contrast on thinkers and topics covered throughout the course. The exam will be “open book.” Students may consult their notes and the internet. However, any plagiarism will be punished by an absolute failure for the entire course. Reading: None for this class. Assignments/deadlines: Students will complete an online exam, which will be opened for 24 hours from the beginning of our scheduled final class. Students will upload their completed essays to the NEO Turnitin assignment "Final Exam."