This course explores the history, politics, and recent literature on the formation of nations and the development of nationalism. Theories of the nation have moved from ideas of their essential, primordial quality through a moment of social construction featuring the processes of modernization to a more cultural, discursive approach emphasizing the role of imagination and invention. These theoretical advances have been developed primarily by historians and literary analysts, but in recent years social science thinking on nationalism has borrowed freely, often critically, from the emerging literature. We will both develop a narrative of the emergence of nations and explore some of the ways in which social science has employed and developed the body of theory on nationalism, looking at paradigms taken from international relations, identity theory, anthropology, and various psychological theories.

Required Readings:

• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London-New York: Verso, 1991).
  
• Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, Becoming National: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
  
• Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
  
• Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).

  Course Requirements:

• Undergraduate students are required to attend all the lectures and discussions, complete the assigned reading, and participate in discussions.
  
• A midterm take home examination (6-8 pages, typed, double-spaced).
  
• A final take home examination or paper, a short synthetic research paper or “think-piece” (8-10 pages, typed, double-spaced), that uses the readings, lectures, and discussions, as well as any outside reading the student might wish to include. The paper should demonstrate that you have read, understood, and can critically employ the material in the course.
  
• Graduate students will write a slightly longer paper (15-20 pages) and will use additional readings.

  Class Format:

  The course meets for two lectures and one discussion group per week.<