Course description
This course undertakes a multi-faceted examination of cultural manifestations of nationalism in Europe, considering also comparisons with other areas, over the long-nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. We will look at literature, folklore, music and songs, art, food, dance, sport, gender, film, history-writing and commemoration in multiple historical contexts in order to critically understand the construction, performance and representation of national identities and how they have been reconstructed and remembered over time.

Assessment

• Bibliographical assignment - 25%
• Class Presentations -15%
• Final Assignment - 40%
• Attendance and Participation - showing knowledge of bibliography - 20%

Syllabus

What is a Nation?

• Ernest Renan, 'What Is a Nation?' translated and annotated by Martin Thorn, from Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (London, 1990), pp. 8-22.

What is nationalism?

• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York, 2006; rev. edn.; orig. edn 1983), pp. 1-8 ('Introduction')
• Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Malden, MA, 2006; 2nd edn; orig. edn 1983), pp. 1-7 (Ch. 1: 'Definitions') and 52-61 (Ch. 5: 'What is a Nation?').
• E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge and New York, 1992; 2nd ed.; orig. edn 1990), pp. 1-13 ('Introduction')
• Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates About Ethnicity and Nationalism (Hanover, NH, 2000), pp. 52-78 (Ch. 3: 'Social Construction and Ethnic Genealogy').
• Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (New York, 1985; 2nd ed.; orig. ed. 1985), pp 1-30.

What is cultural nationalism?

• Joep Leerssen, 'Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture' in Nations and Nationalism, 12, no. 4 (2006), pp 559-78.
• John Hutchinson, 'Cultural Nationalism' in John Breuilly (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism (Oxford, 2013), pp. 75-94.
• Lloyd S. Kramer, Nationalism in Europe & America: Politics, Cultures, and Identities since 1775 (Chapel Hill, 2011), pp. 7-28 (Ch. 1: 'The Cultural Meaning of Nationalism')

Historical contexts: from the Age of Revolutions to the Great War

• Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam, 2006), pp 105-172.

Cultural background: Romanticism and Nationalism

• Anthony D. Smith, 'Romanticism and Nationalism' in Anthony D. Smith (ed.), The Antiquity of Nations (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA, 2004), pp 236-58.
• Thomas Nipperdey, 'In Search of Identity: Romantic Nationalism, its Intellectual, Political and Social Background', in J.C. Eade (ed.), Romantic Nationalism in Europe (Canberra, 1983), pp 1-15.

The Spring of Nations

• Christopher Clark, 'The 1848 Revolutions', LRB 2019 Winter Lecture; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=782P0YcOOOQ
• [Text: Christopher Clark, 'Why should we think about the Revolutions of 1848 now?', London Review of Books, vol. 41, no. 5, 7 March 2019; https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n05/christopher-clark/why-should-we-think-about-the-revolutions-of-1848-now]

Verbal Nationalism: Telling, Writing and Singing

• Brian Vick, 'Language and Nation: National Identity and the Civic-Ethnic Typology' in Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson (eds.), What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914 (Oxford, 2006), pp 155-70.
• David Aberbach, 'The Poetry of Nationalism' in Nations and Nationalism, 9, no. 2 (2003), pp 255-75.
• Joep Leerssen, 'Oral Epic: The Nation Finds a Voice' in Timothy Baycroft and David M. Hopkin (eds.), Folklore and Nationalism in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century (Leiden and Boston, 2012), pp 11-26.
• Roger D. Abrahams, 'Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics' in Journal of American Folklore, 106, no. 419 (1993), pp 3-37.

Non-verbal Nationalism: Art and Music

• Athena S. Leoussi, 'The Ethno-Cultural Roots of National-Art' in Montserrat Guibernau and John Hutchinson (eds.), History and Destiny: Ethnosymbolism and its Critics (Oxford, 2004), pp 143-159
• Ben Curtis, 'Nationalism and Music' in Guntram Henrik Herb and David H. Kaplan (eds.), Nations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Overview (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2008), vol. 1, pp. 72-84.
• Joep Leerssen, 'Romanticism, Music, Nationalism' in Nations and Nationalism, 20, no. 4 (2014), pp. 606-27.

Embodied Nationalism: Clothing, Dance, Food and Sports

• Alexander Maxwell, Patriots against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe's Age of Revolutions (Houndmills and New York, 2014), pp. 153-179 (Ch. 8: 'Folk Costumes as National Uniforms')
• Thomas M. Wilson, 'Consumption and the Construction of Local, National and Cosmopolitan Culture' in Thomas M. Wilson (ed.), Food, Drink and Identity in Europe (Amsterdam and New York, 2006), pp. 11-29.
• Atsuko Ichijo and Ronald Ranta, Food, National Identity and Nationalism: From Everyday to Global Politics (Basingstoke and New York, 2016), pp. 1-18 ('Introduction').
• Lincoln Allison, 'Sport and Nationalism' in Jay Coakley, J. and Eric Dunning (eds.), Handbook of Sports Studies (London, 2000), pp. 344–55.
• Udo Merkel, 'The Politics of Physical Culture and German Nationalism' in German Politics & Society, 21, no. 2 (2003), pp 69-96.

Gendered Nationalism

• Jennifer Heuer, 'Gender and Nationalism' in Guntram Henrik Herb and David H. Kaplan (eds.), Nations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Overview (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2008), vol. 1, pp. 43-58.
• Tamar Mayer, 'Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage' in Tamar Mayer (ed.), Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation (London and New York, 2000), pp. 1-22.
• Joane Nagel, 'Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations' in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21, no. 2 (1998), pp 242-69.
• Silke Wenk, 'Gendered Representations of the Nation's Past and Future' in Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann and Catherine Hall (eds.), Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 2000), pp 63-77.

Nationalism on Film

• Anthony D. Smith, 'Images of the Nation: Cinema, Art and National Identity' in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds.), Cinema and Nation (London and New York, 2000), pp. 41-53.
• Alan Williams, 'Introduction' in Alan Williams (ed.), Film and Nationalism (New Brunswick, 2002), pp. 1-22.

Nationalism in Everyday Life

• Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995), pp 37-59 (ch. 3: 'Remembering Banal Nationalism').
• Catherine Palmer, 'From Theory to Practice: Experiencing the Nation in Everyday Life' in Journal of Material Culture, 3, no. 2 (1998), pp 175-99.
• Jonathan Hearn, 'National identity: banal, personal and embedded' in Nations and Nationalism, 13, no. 4 (2007), pp 657-74

National Culture between Multiculturalism and Transnationalism

• Stuart Hall, 'Culture, Community, Nation' in David Boswell and Jessica Evans (eds.), Representing the Nation: Histories, Heritage and Museums (London and New York), 33-44 [orig. publ. Cultural Studies, 1, no. 1 (1993), pp 349-363].
• Partha Chatterjee, 'Whose Imagined Community?' in Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), pp 3-13.
• Eric Storm, 'The Transnational Construction of National Identities: A Classification of National Pavilions at World Fairs' in Joseph Th Leerssen and Eric Storm (eds.), World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities: International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851-1958 (Leiden and Boston, 2022), pp. 53-83.
• Daniele Conversi, 'The Future of Nationalism in a Transnational World' in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (2020), pp. 43-59.

Remembering and Forgetting the Nation

• Eric Hobsbawm, 'Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914' in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge and New York, 1983), pp. 263-307.
• Alon Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance: Promises and Limits of Writing History (Chapel Hill, 2006), pp. 29-56 (Ch. 1: 'The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory, and the German Empire, 1871-1918').
• Kenneth R. Olwig, 'Landscape, Monuments, and National Identity' in Guntram Henrik Herb and David H. Kaplan (eds.), Nations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Overview (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2008), vol. 1, pp. 59-71.
• Stefan Berger, 'On the Role of Myths and History in the Construction of National Identity in Modern Europe' in European History Quarterly, 39, no. 3 (2009), pp 490-502.

Last updated: March 30, 2026