The course investigates the construction of national identities and demonstrates their discursive nature. It builds a systematic typology of such discursive templates for identity formation by focusing on master tropes as the structuring principles of self- and other-imaging. This approach to nationalism pays tribute to the methodology of cultural studies and to its belief in the centrality of discourse in the construction of subjectivities and in social interaction.
We look comparatively at identity discourses in various media from English and other cultures with a view to understanding that behind any image of a national self lies a special ideological attitude towards the historical evolution of that community. By the end of the class, students should be able to understand that national self-imaging is completely unrelated to xenophobia, racism, chauvinism, and even to patriotism and ethnic solidarity. The class will have also inculcated a pluralist attitude towards the subject by making it clear that at any time in the history of a politically and historically conscious community, there may be several national(ist) projects at play, competing for prevalence and equally legitimate in their quest for hegemony.
https://stefanescu-nationalism.blogspot.com/
Course instructor: Prof Bogdan Ștefănescu
SCHEDULE
Week 1. Cultural Studies – The Historical Context of Emergence. The Critical Agenda and Vocabulary.
Reading: Stuart Hall – “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies”, in S. During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader
Week 2. Cultural Identity
Reading: Rogers Brubaker & Frederick Cooper, “Beyond Identity”, Theory and Society 29 (2000)
Week 3. Defining Nationalism – The theories and the vocabulary. Nationalism as a fuzzy concept or a cluster of properties.
Readings: Hutchinson, J. and A.D.Smith, Nationalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, pp. 34-46,55-62, 89-102 or B. Ștefănescu, Patrii din cuvinte, EUB, 2017 (Chapters 2, 3 – pp. 37-89. [Foreign students will read from B. Ştefănescu, “On the Discrimination of Nationalisms”, in Krytyka no. 11/Nov. 1999, Kiew, Ukraine]
Week 4. Nationalism as Discourse: Rhetorical Representations of National Identity; the Performativity of Nationalist Discourse; the tropological types in historical discourse (H. White)
Readings: White, H., Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1973; B. Ștefănescu, Patrii din cuvinte, EUB, 2017 (Chapter 4). [Foreign students will read from B. Ștefănescu, Postcommunism/Postcolonialism: Siblings of Subalternity]
Week 5. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Radicalism I (Its rhetoric and politics, the political archetype and its vision)
Readings: from Miller, D., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought or A. Heywood, Political ideologies. An Introduction, Macmillian Education LTD, 1992
Week 6. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Radicalism II (Radical versions of national identity in England and abroad)
Readings: R. Ingrams, England. An Anthology, Fontana, London, 1990 or L. Snyder, The Dynamics of Nationalism, Nostrand, Princeton, 1964
Week 7. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Liberalism I (Its rhetoric and politics, the political archetype and its vision)
Readings: from Miller, D., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought or Ball, T. and R. Dagger, Ideologii politice şi idealul democratic, Polirom, Iaşi, 2000
Week 8. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Liberalism II (Liberal versions of national identity in England and abroad)
Readings: Ingrams, R., England. An Anthology, Fontana, London, 1990 or Snyder, L., The Dynamics of Nationalism, Nostrand, Princeton, 1964
Week 9. In-class discussion of final project proposals
Week 10. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Anarchism I (Its rhetoric and politics, the political archetype and its vision. The place of Anarchism in the 20th century)
Readings: from Miller, D., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought or from A. Heywood, Political ideologies. An Introduction, Macmillian Education LTD, 1992
Week 11. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Anarchism II (Anarchist versions of national identity in England and abroad)
Readings: Ingrams, R., England. An Anthology, Fontana, London, 1990 or Snyder, L., The Dynamics of Nationalism, Nostrand, Princeton, 1964
Week 12. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Conservatism I (Its rhetoric and politics, the political archetype and its vision. The place of Conservatism in the 20th century)
Readings:from Miller, D., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought or Ball, T. and R. Dagger, Ideologii politice şi idealul democratic, Polirom, Iaşi, 2000
Week 13. Nationalism as a (Dis)course of Action: Political Representations of National Identity – Conservatism II (Conservative versions of national identity in England and abroad)
Readings: Ingrams, R., England. An Anthology, Fontana, London, 1990 or Snyder, L., The Dynamics of Nationalism, Nostrand, Princeton, 1964
Week 14. Preparation and tutoring for final essay
REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION
- A minimum of 50% attendance
- Participation in class discussions and a presentation/3-page critical essay, counting for 50% of the final mark
- An end-of-term written essay, counting for 50% of the final mark
British Cultural Studies 