Nations and Nationalism: Past and Present

Nationalism—and the organization of the globe into a patchwork of territorial nation-states, each with a unique social or cultural identity—is such a taken-for-granted feature of contemporary life that it is easy to forget that nations did not exist for most of human history. And yet, despite many predictions of nationalism’s imminent demise—Albert Einstein quipped famously that it was an “infantile disease” that humanity would eventually outgrow—nationalism remains perhaps as powerful an ideological force as ever, in the United States as elsewhere.

This seminar will examine a range of foundational questions about the emergence of nations and nationalism in world history: What is a nation, and how has national identity been cultivated, defined, and debated in different contexts? Why did nationalism emerge when it did? Who does nationalism benefit, and how do different social groups compete for control over national identity and ideology? The series will begin by offering an overview of the origins and spread of nationalism in the late 1700s and 1800s and conclude with some thoughts about the resurgence of nationalism in Great Britain and the United States in the 21st century. Along the way, we will consider a number of specific examples of nationalism from different regions around the world.