492B  PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY     (Todorova)

            Topic:  Comparative Nationalism

            Nationalism, an issue which was considered to have passed its peak, now dominates world politics and permeates political discourse. What explains its recurrence, persistence and ubiquity? In its first part, this graduate seminar will focus on the theories of nationalism, and will deal with problems of definition, the ancient or modern origins of nationalism, its main chronological and geographical varieties and the models proposed to describe them, the typology of nationalist movements and, finally, the articulation of the nationalist discourse.  The readings draw on a variety of approaches ­- historical, sociological, anthropological, literary, psychological -- and aim at providing a solid introduction into the scholarly literature.  The second part of the course is supposed to lead to the completion of a paper which can deal with a particular aspect of any one of the worlds's nationalisms, with its characteristics in a given historical period, or its evolution over time, as well as comparisons between the manifestations of different nationalisms. Topics for the research papers will be as close as possible to the main geographic interests of the graduate students; they will be discussed and approved in separate individual meetings with the professor.