S1116 National and regional identities in an age of globalization
The purpose of this course is to explore and understand the ways in which nations and regions in the present but also in the past have dealt with developing, fostering, and legitimating their national and regional identities vis à vis economic, political, and cultural globalization. After the course students should have a profound insight in the core developments and the explanations of how cultural and political identities across the world have been and are constantly being constituted in reaction to external and internal economic, political, and cultural challenges. Globalization here refers to \"the fact that flows of people, goods, capital, finance, commodities, images, symbols, technology, and information increasingly span the globe\" (Appadurai, 1996; Hannerz, 1992 and 1996). The main discipline dealt with in this course is cultural history (medieval, modern, and contemporary).\r\n
Content
The central issue in this course is how nations and regions in the past and today have been and are coping with the urge to maintain and develop their national and regional identities vis à vis economic, political, and cultural globalization.
This course will explore and analyse the following topics:
1. What is the history of the formation of national and regional identities? We will deal with examples from all around the world, with a special focus on Europe. What are the origins and sources of these identities? What is the history of nationalist and regionalist movements? What are principles of distinction? What role do discourses on religion, history, language, cultural heritage, et cetera play in the formation of nationalist and regionalist movements?
2. What are the foundations of nations\' and regions\' identities? How are their histories and their tangible and intangible cultural heritage (archaeology, monuments, landscape, folklore, et cetera) used to shape, underpin, legitimate, and inspire discourses of national and regional identities?
\r\n3. What are the historical backgrounds and contemporary developments of various nationalist and regionalist movements? By means of several case studies students will trace these backgrounds in history and look into the ways in which these movements adapt to the demands of globalization (or not). Examples might be: Catalonia, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Flanders and Wallonia, Yugoslavia, various regions in the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, Israel...
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This course will consist of 24 meetings in 12 weeks: first 6 lectures of 1h 30, then 10 meetings combining a lecture (45 minutes) and a seminar (45 minutes), ending with 8 seminars (two hours). For each class, students have to read some literature and, if appropriate, a small selection of primary sources in advance, which will be used and analysed during class. For every lecture students have to make an assignment using the assigned literature: they have to read the literature in advance and prepare at least two questions asking informative and/or critical questions concerning these texts. They also have to provide tentative answers.
In the seminars, students have to present the results of their case studies and to write an essay or paper dealing with one particular case. Issues that might be researched in this paper are:
- The historical construction of a collective memory in a particular nation or region;
- The creation of places of memory, both in a material form – such as museums or monuments – or in a more intangible form, as in projects in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, et cetera);
- The creation of links between national or regional history and migrants\' history, given the observation that the arrival of migrants after World War II in many countries has \'disturbed\' the discourse of national or regional history;
- \'Glocalization\' as an answer to globalization: tying in a regional focus and awareness with a global outlook.
The discussion of the case studies should provide an analytical framework for historical cross-national comparison.
Students will be asked to prepare a presentation and write a paper, both of which will be graded.\r\n