Browsing by Subject "Nationalism"

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Arguing in utopia : Edward Bellamy, nineteenth century utopian fiction, and American rhetorical culture
(2009-05) Wolfe, Ivan Angus; Walker, Jeffrey, 1949-
As Aristotle wrote, rhetoric is an art or faculty of finding the available means of persuasion in a given circumstance, and the late nineteenth century was a time in American history when many authors used utopian fiction as the best available means of persuasion. For a few years, the utopian novel became a widespread, versatile and common rhetorical trope. Edward Bellamy was the most popular of these writers. Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward was not only the third best-selling book of nineteenth century America, it inspired over a hundred other utopian novels and helped create a mass movement of “Bellamy clubs” along with a political party (Nationalism). During the latter part of the nineteenth century, American public discourse underwent a general shift from a focus on communal values to a focus on individuals as the source of truth. Utopian fiction of the era helps illuminate why and how this shift occurred. In nineteenth century America, literature was generally not considered to be rhetorical. At most, critics treated fiction as a form of epideictic rhetoric, aiming only to delight, educate, or create discussion. When fiction was used to promote legislative agendas and thus entered into the realm of deliberative rhetoric, critics argued that its transgression of rhetorical boundaries supposedly ruined its appeal. Utopian literature came the closest to breaking down the barriers between literature and rhetoric, as hundreds of utopian novels were published, most of them in response to Edward Bellamy. A close rhetorical reading of Looking Backward details its rhetorical nature and helps account for its rhetorical success. I treat each of the novels as participants in the larger cultural conversation, and detail the ways in which they address Bellamy, each other, and issues such as the temperance movement and the decline of classical languages in higher education. In modern times, though Bellamy has faded from the public memory, he has proven useful in a variety of contexts, from a political punching bag to a way to lend an air of erudition to various types of popular fiction.
The Baba-e-Urdu : Abdul Haq and the role of language in Indian nationalism
(2010-05) Bowers, Elizabeth Anne; Hansen, Kathryn; Minault, Gail
Abdul Haq was the secretary of the Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu from 1912 to 1961. He was also a founder of Osmania University, one of the first universities in India to provide instruction in an Indian vernacular. He had a lifelong devotion towards improving the status of Urdu and of the Indian Muslim community at large. He was the figure most involved with the standardization of Urdu and establishment of this language as a symbol of Muslim identity. Through an analysis of Abdul Haq’s involvement in language reform movements and the politics of the early 20th century, especially considering the fallout after the 1936 meeting of the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad, I seek to show the nature of language as a nationalist tool. I argue that language is not inherently associated with the nation-building process, but that it must first be standardized into a form which can be used as a political tool and a point of identification for the community rallied behind it.
Between gift and taboo : death and the negotiation of national identity and sovereignty in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey
(2010-05) Ozsoy, Hisyar; Hale, Charles R., 1957-; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-; Visweswaran, Kamala; Strong, Pauline T.; Rudrappa, Sharmila
This dissertation explores politico-symbolic deployments of death in figurations of national identity and sovereignty in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. Many Kurds have died in their successive rebellions over the last century. However, biological death has not necessarily excluded them from Kurdish culture and politics. Rather, through a symbolic economy of “gift” the Kurds resurrect their dead as martyrs – affective forces that powerfully shape public, political and daily life and promote Kurdish national identity as a sacred communion of the dead and the living. For its own part, the Turkish state has been endeavoring to eradicate this persistent power of the Kurdish dead by obstructing their appropriation and assimilation into the regenerative realms of Kurdish national-symbolic. While these struggles are still in effect, with the shift in Kurdish politics away from the original goal of national independence in 1999, the Kurdish dead emerged as a site of contention also among the Kurds. At least until 2005 the place of the dead in Kurdish politics also shifted with a new politics of memory that the leadership of Kurdish movement initiated to buttress the “peace process”. Based on two-year fieldwork in Diyarbakır, the informal capital of Kurds in Turkey, this study explores the Kurdish political imaginaries and subjectivities that are generated in and through these multiple struggles and contentions over the Kurdish dead, situating death as a central symbolic and semantic field constitutive to national identity and sovereignty. This study contributes to the ethnography of the Kurds, Turkey and the Middle East as well as theories of death, the body, nationalism, sovereignty and political subjectivity.
Between worlds: the narration of multicultural/transnational identities of women working in a post-national space
(2003) Pierce, Alice Elizabeth; Brooks, Ann
This dissertation explores the question: What does it mean to live in-between as an accelerated flow of people moves between worlds? The high-speed of Internet connections, cellular communications and air travel are redefining the traditional notion of a shared history, memory, national identity and language. By using Bakhtin’s literary tools of analysis, the author captures the complexity that characterizes the narration of identities in multicultural/transnational women living in a post-national space during the beginning of the twenty-first century. Few studies in the field of multicultural/bilingual education have applied Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia and chronotope to make meaning out of the complexities in multicultural/transnational identities. Using life history methods as a means of gathering the stories of thirteen multicultural/transnational women who lived in El Cachimbazo, Guatemala, for six months during 2002, the author not only provides a qualitative, alternative perspective on bilingual education but also a new tool to understanding the multiple dimensions of identity construction in multicultural/transnational individuals.
Cafeteria Formosa
(2022-05-09) Chen, Hsiao-Wei, M.F.A.; Barreto, Raquel; Dawson, Kathryn M.; Buchanan, Jason B.
Taiwan, Formosa, has struggled with its identity in the past hundreds of years with multiple foreign sovereignties’ rule. This thesis project develops a conceptual framework that explores the writer’s identity as a Taiwanese and expands the research into an immersive performance with creative collaborators and audience members. It is a site-specific performance using reflective practitioner methods that document how both audience members and performers explore the nuances, complexities, and delights in an engaging, all-you-can eat food cart stop called Cafeteria Formosa.
Coping with long-distance nationalism: inter-ethnic conflict in a diaspora context
(2004) Brown, Gregory Scott; Freeman, Gary P.
How does the politics of one country play out in other countries through the presence and agency of migrants and their descendents? And how do countries of high immigration cope with conflicts between ethnic or migrant communities when those conflicts originate, or are strongly fueled by, homeland conflicts? This dissertation explores these questions through close study of the Croat and Serb diasporas in Australia and the United States in the 1990s. The answers to these questions hinge on the politics of migrant homelands and the types of opportunities that host countries provide to diaspora communities. The chief empirical finding is that conditions ripe for producing Croat-Serb conflict in host countries failed to do so. Why did diaspora groups rein themselves in? The short answer is that host state institutions matter, but that those host state policies usually championed by Australian and American politicians and academics, and formed to manage inter-ethnic conflict—such as multiculturalism and direct policymaker intervention—had a negligible effect in the Croat and Serb communities. Instead, ethnic elites credit liberal political cultures, self-policing, and self-imposed segregation as the prime controls of inter-ethnic tension.
Empire and nation in the city : Christians, Muslims and Jews in Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Ruse, 1864-1885
(2015-12-04) Celik, Mehmet, Ph. D.; Neuburger, Mary, 1966-; Marcus, Abraham; Wynn, Charters; Matysik, Tracie; Gawrych, George
My dissertation explores how people of various ethnic and religious backgrounds experienced the transition from Ottoman rule to Bulgarian nation state in the city of Ruse, in present-day northern Bulgaria. It examines the transformative effects of the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms (1864-1876), the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-8, the Russian provisional government and the early years of a Bulgarian national government. It argues Bulgarian nationalism was not a uniform and deterministic ideology but was rather a complex and contested phenomenon that left room for multiple loyalties and self-definitions. Through various reform programs, the Ottoman Empire also put together its own alternative to Bulgarian nationalism—secular Ottomanism—, which was progressive and open to different perspectives and integrated Bulgarian Christians into the Ottoman political system. After Ottoman withdrawal, the transfer of power to Bulgarian Christians and the marginalization and disenfranchisement of Muslims was not drastic or immediate, but rather a gradual process. Residents of Ruse’s diverse urban environment responded to these political changes through a complex interplay of urban dynamics, political and religious loyalties, and self-interest, rather than inflexible nationalist or imperial ideology.
"For what noble cause?" : a media analysis of gender and citizenship within United States nationalist and anti-war rhetoric
(2007-05) Green, Stephanie Volkoff, 1979-; Cloud, Dana L.
Public understanding of United States citizenship is tied to the rights put forth in the First Amendment, which ostensibly protects the ability to contradict government leaders. However, the Bill of Rights is only one part of a larger symbolic and rhetorical framework of citizenship. It is this larger framework that this project seeks to interrogate. This thesis explores how dissenting voices within the United States, attached to gendered bodies, are silenced by the limited roles available to citizens during a time of heightened nationalism. More specifically, it identifies how normative roles based on gender and citizenship within nationalist rhetoric attempt to limit contemporary anti-war protest, for those citizens who have fulfilled the prescribed roles of mothers and soldiers within the nationalist framework, namely Cindy Sheehan, Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against War. The study examines the framing of this dissenting speech within the mainstream press and presidential rhetoric for the year following Cindy Sheehan's encampment in Crawford, Texas in August of 2005.
Forging a nation while losing a country : Igbo nationalism, ethnicity and propaganda in the Nigerian Civil War 1968-1970
(2011-08) Doron, Roy Samuel; Falola, Toyin; Okpen, Okpeh; Walker, Juliet; Boone, Catherine; Brannds, HW
This project looks at the ways the Biafran Government maintained their war machine in spite of the hopeless situation that emerged in the summer of 1968. Ojukwu’s government looked certain to topple at the beginning of the summer of 1968, yet Biafra held on and did not capitulate until nearly two years later, on 15 January 1970. The Ojukwu regime found itself in a serious predicament; how to maintain support for a war that was increasingly costly to the Igbo people, both in military terms and in the menacing face of the starvation of the civilian population. Further, the Biafran government had to not only mobilize a global public opinion campaign against the “genocidal” campaign waged against them, but also convince the world that the only option for Igbo survival was an independent Biafra. Thus it is not enough to look at the international aspects of the war, or to consider the war on a strictly domestic level. By looking at both the internal and external factors that shaped the Biafran propaganda machine and the Biafran war effort and how these efforts influenced international support and galvanized internal resolve to continue fighting, we can see how the Biafran war effort was able to last for twenty months after the fall of Port Harcourt. Recent scholarly and political work, uncovered documents, and the new plethora of memoirs on the Civil War provide us with a veritable treasure trove of data and analysis with which to study the issue of Igbo nationalism and a unique opportunity to create a new vision of secessionist conflict in Africa. This work will thus provide a step in moving away from the long accepted “Tribalism” paradigm that has so long pervaded not only the study of post-colonial Civil Wars in Africa, but more importantly, the discourse in looking at ethnicity, violence and national identity across the continent. Further, by analyzing the ways that the Biafran propaganda machine operated on a nationalist level, we can see the effects of Biafran secession on the broader Igbo national consciousness and the Igbo national movement, as well as on subsequent political movements in Nigeria.
The fox trot in a nation of cosmopolitans : music and race in early twentieth-century Guatemala
(2013-08) Amado Pineda, Andres Roberto; Moore, Robin D., 1964-; O'Meara, Caroline; Candelaria, Lorenzo; Burnett, Virginia G; Keeler, Ward
In this dissertation I explore musical importations in early twentieth-century Guatemala, particularly the fox trot, and their relationship to notions of cosmopolitanism, race, and national identity. Although Guatemalans may boast that the son is their national music—a genre often associated with local indigenous traditions—examination of the national marimba repertoire reveals that its most predominant styles derive from foreign music and dances that circulated transnationally in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Such a realization raises questions about the role of indigeneity in national discourse. I argue that Ladinos (non-indigenous or mixed Guatemalans) imported the fox trot and other musical forms to construct a national identity predicated on racialized notions of modernity and cosmopolitanism. The fox trot, a dance derived from African-American ragtime traditions, enjoyed worldwide popularity for nearly two decades due in part to its ability to mediate constructs of whiteness and blackness that fit presentist ideas of modernity: blackness represented a primitive alterity while whiteness evoked a modern and civilized society. Analyses of racial discourse among Ladinos and its implications for the national instrument (chapter 2), the stylistic features of Guatemalan national repertoire (chapter 3), and the subjects that locally-composed fox trots reference through titles, cover art, and musical styles (chapters 4 and 5) demonstrate that many elements of the fox trot, along with their connotations of modernity and race, resonated with the cosmopolitan sensibilities of Ladinos. Their preference for international as opposed to local forms suggest a fundamental ambivalence towards indigeneity and its centrality to national culture.
From fellows to foreigners : the Qajar experience in the Ottoman Empire
(2012-08) Baghoolizadeh, Beeta; Aghaie, Kamran Scot; Shirazi, Faegheh
This paper explores the impact of Qajar-Ottoman diplomacy on issues of identity and sovereignty during the late nineteenth century as addressed in the Treaties of Erzurum of 1828 and 1848. Through these treaties, the Qajars and the Ottomans introduced notions of imperial identities, extraterritoriality, and extended their imperial spheres of influence. The Treaties of Erzurum defined subjecthood and sovereignty over subjects based on place of origin, not current location. This radical change in international politics created a new, bureaucratic method of identification. Focusing on the Qajar perspective, this paper proposes that although Qajar subjects had always travelled to the Ottoman Empire for religious or economic reasons, the Treaties of Erzurum in 1828 and 1848 changed Middle Eastern geopolitics by legally allowing the Qajar government to exercise sovereign rights over its subjects. To better understand the consequences of these new imperial identities and labels, this paper looks at different communities in the Ottoman Empire that shared special relationships with the Qajars. Each of these chapters focuses on their affiliation with the Qajars and how the Treaties of Erzurum affected them: first, the Qajar travelers, second, the Qajar expatriates, and third, the Ottoman Shi’is. The examination of Qajar government documents, Persian travelogues and newspapers reveals complicated relationships between the Qajars and these communities. Analysis of each provides insight on the Qajar Empire’s efforts in fostering a relationship with these communities, as made possible by the Treaties of Erzurum. This study contributes to a number of narratives involving the Qajar Empire. First, it challenges the weak imagery surrounding the Qajar government and shows the Qajar extension of power outside its borders. Furthermore, this paper engages in the issue of identity, a crucial concept for understanding nascent, pre-nationalist sentiments. Discussion of the Treaties of Erzurum in conjunction with nationalism or imperial power remains overwhelmingly neglected. Although previous scholars have alluded to extraterritoriality in their research, the discourse on subjecthood and identity beyond imperial borders has been ignored in the Middle Eastern context. This study serves as a starting point for future research on the subject.
“God damn you, grandma!” : women and nationalism in Irish film
(2012-05) Haas, Allison Jean M.; Cullingford, Elizabeth
While women have been central symbols in the struggle for Irish independence at least since the 18th century, mainstream Irish nationalist movements have mostly dismissed the concerns of actual Irish women. With a few notable exceptions, women’s experience of the Irish War of Independence (1919) and Civil War (1922) has been likewise ignored. This paper examines the treatment of women in two contemporary films about this period: Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996) and Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). To contextualize these films, I first consider three classics of Irish drama and film that use women to promote or critique nationalism: Yeats and Lady Gregory’s Cathleen ni Houlihan, Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, and Jordan’s The Crying Game. Cathleen epitomizes the symbolic value of the woman-as-nation, while Juno, a critique of this nationalist idea, relies on the spectacle of the titular matriarch’s suffering to make its political point. Despite the opposing politics of the two plays, both reduce their female characters to tropes: symbolic goddess or helpless victim. Michael Collins, I argue, departs from this tradition only by converting such tropes into Hollywood stereotypes. Jordan uses the character of Kitty Kiernan to transform Collins from a dangerous revolutionary to a pacifist hero in order to make a humanist argument for the end to nationalist violence in Northern Ireland. Although Loach’s story is similar to Jordan’s (two male leads driven apart by the Civil War), he centralizes women in a way that Jordan does not. Loach’s socialist aesthetic and broad cultural critique allow his female characters to escape victimhood (though not suffering) by pointedly developing their political agency. Loach’s film, therefore, represents a significant intervention in the literature surrounding the Irish conflict, not because it “sides” with the IRA, but because it privileges women’s lived experience.
The influence of nationalism on Sino-Japanese relations
(2010-12) Wilson, Lindsey Amber; Maclachlan, Patricia L.; Hurst, William J.
This thesis examines the influence of domestic nationalist movements on bilateral relations between China and Japan. I will use Two-level game theory as the primary analytical framework. Two-level theory provides a useful lens for examining policy formation at discrete stages, domestic, international, and domestic again in order to ratify international agreements. I will examine three primary cases through this framework to study the effects of domestic nationalism on bilateral diplomacy between Japan and China. The East China Sea Dispute is the only actual territorial dispute between Japan and China. The Yasukuni Shrine controversy and the textbook controversy are both discrete elements of a larger dispute over war memory and guilt, as well as construction of historical narratives for political purpose. I will seek to show that domestic nationalism has a strong limiting effect on the ways in which China and Japan are able to interact with each other on the global stage, as leaders must retain their legitimacy against a backdrop of unresolved historical issues and domestic contention.
Juan Coronado Interview
(2021-08-18) Institute for Diversity & Civic Life; Department of Religious Studies
This interview is with Dr. Juan Coronado, a professor from the Río Grande Valley. Juan reflects on growing up surrounded by Latino culture and on his exposure to migration and the presence of the border. He talks as a historian about his impressions of changes at the border and in the US at large that followed 9/11. Juan also discusses the effects of wars in the Middle East on Middle Eastern populations, American troops, and American culture.
Myths of home and nation : conventions of Victorian domestic melodrama in O'Casey, Osborne, and Pinter
(2013-05) Kim, Dasan; Loehlin, James N.
This dissertation demonstrates that twentieth-century dramas by Sean O'Casey, John Osborne, and Harold Pinter continue the convention of nineteenth-century domestic drama. From the expressionist movement, theatre of the absurd, and theatre of anger, to the theatre of extremes, diverse theatrical experiments in the twentieth century urged critics to focus on the contemporary theatrical effort to break away from convention. Consequently, critics have often emphasized the disconnectedness of the twentieth-century avant-garde theatre from nineteenth-century conventions, especially from the tradition of the well-made drawing room drama. My thesis focuses on the trajectory of the nineteenth-century domestic melodrama. Despite the seeming disconnection, nineteenth-century domestic melodrama still lurks within political theatre in the twentieth century as a cultural inheritance. This study argues that the aforementioned twentieth-century playwrights participate in political critique through the discourse of domesticity. Despite the geographical and temporal differences, the characters in the plays all struggle in the absence of communal integrity or national consensus. They suffer from war trauma, from disillusioned nationhood, from abuses of power, and from fascist violence. In addressing the fractured nationhood, these playwrights reference the Victorian perceptions of the home, the mother, and the nation. While the Victorian discourse of domesticity celebrated the idea of the home as a non-material, sacred haven and admired female virtue in support of patriarchal/national stability, Victorian domestic dramas displayed the anxieties surrounding domesticity. This dissertation examines how the twentieth-century plays considered here enhance the vision of late nineteenth-century domestic drama and exploit the myths of the home, the woman and the nation.
Narrow nationalisms and third generation Nigerian fiction
(2016-05) Coffey, Meredith Armstrong; Harlow, Barbara, 1948-; Hoad, Neville Wallace, 1966-; Bady, Aaron; Falola, Toyin; Shingavi, Snehal
The last decade or so, many literary critics hold, has witnessed a substantial shift in African fiction: nationalist commitments, integral to older African writers' work, have faded from younger Africans' literary visions, which often engage wide transnational networks instead. In contrast to this dominant critical narrative, however, the dissertation contends that younger writers have not rejected nationalism, but have revised it in myriad ways to meet contemporary needs. Moreover, I argue not against the existence of a transnational turn, but rather that there is an additional, local dimension, which has received little attention. In the texts I examine, withdrawals into smaller networks function hand in hand with reconfigurations of nationalism, ultimately resulting in what I term “narrow nationalisms.” To make this case, the dissertation focuses on a selection of novels by third generation Nigerian authors-those born after the country's 1960 independence-about three interrelated areas of crisis: oil conflict in southern Nigeria, the rise of cybercrime, and the so-called “brain drain.” I analyze how narrow nationalisms operate in Kaine Agary's Yellow-Yellow (2006), Helon Habila's Oil on Water (2010), Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2009), Sefi Atta's A Bit of Difference (2012), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah (2013). Whether they are more about sovereignty, ideology, or belonging, the narrow nationalisms of the primary texts all contest longstanding wisdom that nationalism is about imposing ideology from above, especially as characters retreat into smaller communities from which they attempt to catalyze bottom-up, grassroots change. What, then, are the implications of Nigerian fiction's continued engagement with nationalism for the study of contemporary African literature? Further, in a country that is already fractured in terms of political control and allegiances, and in an era in which the role of the nation-state remains uncertain, what might narrow nationalisms suggest about Nigerian sovereignty? Examining narrow nationalist spaces in third generation Nigerian writing not only complicates literary critical conversations but also reveals new insight into challenges for the present-day Nigerian state-and for Africa and the global south more widely.
Nation state meets popular culture : the construction of Chinese nationalism in anti-Japanese war dramas
(2014-05) Chen, Jingzhi; Mallapragada, Madhavi
This thesis explores how Anti-Japanese War Drama in Chinese TV becomes a field of negotiation in which the forces of dominant state ideology, liberal market and alternative discourses meet. Focusing how the notion of Chinese nationalism has been constructed in the negotiation, this work examines TV dramas as a homogenizing national project in which market forces and state intervention are no longer at odd with each other. By critically reading representations and narratives of bandits and women in two dramas To Advance towards the Fire and Auntie Duohe, the study points out how dominant nationalist discourses attempt to incorporate the marginalized or disadvantaged group as a consistent part of the nation. However, the anti-Japanese war dramas still allow a space for the alternative discourse to emerge which disturbs the perceived coherence of the nation.
Nationalism, conflict and education in the Balkans
(2014-12) Yildirim, Yetkin; Burnett, Virginia G; Neuburger, Mary, 1966-
The following chapters present a history of the Balkans through the lenses of nationalism, capitalism, racism, violence, war, and the intersectional relationship they all had on the conflict in the Balkans. As this essay dissects each point and relates to the grander scheme of how a relatively peaceful and incredibly diverse people became the subject of intolerance and conflict, this essay will also present possible solutions. The solutions consist of leaning the region back toward the peaceful coexistence it experienced in the past. Education is a primary tool for achieving this ideal. The subject matter and course materials should always be open, without censorship or caveats which present the history of the region inaccurately. An example of this kind of educational movement is the Gulen Movement. Although it is small in scale, the philosophy and ideals behind the movement can serve as a possible stepping stone toward not only peace in the Balkans, but peace in other conflict affected areas in the world which experience similar hardships.
Nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and female intellectuality : the paradoxes of Dora D’Istria and the gendering of Risorgimento Italy
(2020-04-23) Hoti, Altina; Bini, Daniela, 1945-; Romani, Gabriella; Biow, Douglas; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; Raffa, Guy
An investigation of gender, nationalism and cosmopolitanism discourses in nineteenth-century Italy through the works and reception of Romanian-born proto-feminist intellectual Dora D’Istria. This dissertation explores the cultural and political relationship between the figure of Dora D’Istria as a female cosmopolitan and the Italian Risorgimento. Particular attention is devoted to the tensions between nineteenth-century cosmopolitanism and nationalism, as well as the complex interrelations between nationalism and the questione femminile. Through the lens of Dora D’Istria’s publications and her reception among various intellectuals in post-unification Italy, this study explores the politicization of the women’s rights movement within the nationalist discourse. Women’s education and the production of traditional gender norms as a result of the national regeneration agenda are topics central to this work. The author analyses letters between D’Istria and Italian Risorgimento prominent figures such as Giuseppe Garibaldi as well as scholars such as Angelo De Gubernatis, Francesco Protonotari. Additionally, an essential role in this study is occupied by various monographs and essays by D’Istria herself such as La Suisse allemande et l'ascension du Moench (1856), Des femmes par une femme (1865), “The Educational Movement” in Theodore Stanton’s The Woman Questions in Europe (1884), as well as the reception of these works published in the form of essays and articles such as Gazzetta Ufficiale Del Regno D'Italia (Firenze, 1865) and Oscar Greco’s Bibliografia femminile italiana del XIX secolo (Venezia, 1875). Drawing from texts such as George L. Mosse’s Nationalism and Sexuality (1985), R. Radhakrishnan’s essay on colonial India, “Nationalism, Gender, and the Narrative of Identity” (1992), Stewart-Steinberg’s The Pinocchio Effect. On Making Italians (1860-1920) (2007), and Esther Wohlgemut’s Romantic Cosmopolitanism (2009), the author discusses the power dynamics between the movement of women’s right and that of nationalism in nineteenth-century Italy.
On the traumatic origins of political community in modern Syria
(2011-05) Casey, James Francis Byrne; Di-Capua, Yoav, 1970-
This project offers an alternative perspective on the appearance of new forms of political community, types of social solidarities, and intellectual spaces in the French Mandate in Syria. Most previous scholarship on this period pivots on the presumption of once-and-future nationalisms as the driving historical force. The argument here articulates this history by reinscribing it into a wartime and postwar landscape of physical destruction and mass social, intellectual, and economic trauma. Through a close examination of wide variety of French and Arabic primary sources, this project emphasizes the traumatic origins of political communities and solidarities in the space of historic Greater Syria especially the area of the French Mandate of Syria. Arising initially out of the mass physical and institutional destruction of the First World War, this situation was reified by the persistence of manifold forms of French physical, economic, and intellectual violence. While recognizing the eventual nationalist historical outcomes, this project challenges the accepted primacy of its role in defining the historical period it emerged out of. The driving historical force in this period was not an amorphous nationalism but a shattered society’s intense political, social, economic, and intellectual anxieties about their current and future place in a vastly changed world. This defined the political shape Syria would assume and better explains how Syria and the region as a whole arrived at a nationalist historical outcome.