History 623:
Recent European Social History: Nation, Race and Gender
Spring 2007 , Mon. 2:30 - 5:00 pm
Synopsis:
This seminar explores how national identities were “invented” in Europe from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, particularly as they related to race and gender. We will look at different scholarly approaches to the history of nationalism, including debates over whether nation building was primarily directed by central governments or whether national identity was most relevant in borderlands. We will read competing ways of understanding how and why nationalism has served to include or exclude groups. In this light, we will look closely at scholarship on race and national identity, and examine how contemporary ideas may have shaped, and been shaped by, other developments, including colonial conquest and resistance to imperialism, medical and scientific theories, fascism, and immigration. Similarly, we will examine recent attempts by historians to use gender to rethink national identity in modern Europe. We will consider what citizenship meant for women and others viewed as less than full “citizens,” the gendered experience of war, and also the relationships between nationalism and sexuality.
Syllabus: Not available
Course Website: Not available
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