Nationality, Race, and Ethnicity in Modern Europe
Spring 2010
This seminar for advanced undergraduates and graduate students explores how Europeans have conceived, reified, managed, and experienced categories of human identity from the French Revolution to the present. Insofar as we will be viewing these categories as originally “imagined” or “constructed” we will examine the various materials that have been used to define them and to bring them to life, including not only politics but also the sciences and culture. In turn, we will also be concerned with the substantial power wielded by these categories in modern Europe -- in the internal affairs of particular European societies, in relations and rivalries among them, and in the management of multi-ethnic empires that extended beyond Europe.
Much of the focus will be on Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, but we will also include readings on other countries of Europe when appropriate. We will attempt to establish patterns of difference and commonality across Europe in conceptualization of the nation and in the position and treatment of indigenous ethnic and confessional minorities and of groups of non-European origin (as colonial subjects, immigrants, or domestic minorities). We will address recent historical scholarship and conclude the seminar with material on Europe in the 1990s and beyond, with the collapse of the communist regimes and the impact of the European Union. The syllabus is likely to include several of the following: George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism; Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany; George Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology; Edward Said, Orientalism; Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa; Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis; Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era; Branimir Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide; and David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad.
Each student will be required to submit several one- to two-page papers summarizing class readings, and to produce an historiographical essay of 15 pages based on some additional reading. Students in history, the humanities, and the social sciences are encouraged to enroll. A basic knowledge of European history is desirable but not required.
Much of the focus will be on Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, but we will also include readings on other countries of Europe when appropriate. We will attempt to establish patterns of difference and commonality across Europe in conceptualization of the nation and in the position and treatment of indigenous ethnic and confessional minorities and of groups of non-European origin (as colonial subjects, immigrants, or domestic minorities). We will address recent historical scholarship and conclude the seminar with material on Europe in the 1990s and beyond, with the collapse of the communist regimes and the impact of the European Union. The syllabus is likely to include several of the following: George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism; Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany; George Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology; Edward Said, Orientalism; Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa; Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis; Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era; Branimir Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide; and David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad.
Each student will be required to submit several one- to two-page papers summarizing class readings, and to produce an historiographical essay of 15 pages based on some additional reading. Students in history, the humanities, and the social sciences are encouraged to enroll. A basic knowledge of European history is desirable but not required.
