HIS 350L Nations and Nationalism in Eastern Europe Fall 2010
EUS346/REE335/JS364
Dr Tatjana Lichtenstein
Office: GAR 0.110
Office Hours: Th 2:15 - 4:15 pm
Contact: tatjana.lichtenstein@mail.utexas.edu
Class Meets: W 3:00 – 6:00 pm in GAR 0.132
Course Description
To many, Eastern Europe seems to be a region in perpetual flux – there countries emerge and disappear, borders are defined only to be redrawn, and national identities appear deep rooted yet volatile and unstable. The complex and changing map of Eastern Europe reflects not only the influence of neighbors competing to dominate the region, but also the powerful role of nationalism in shaping East European societies. In this course, we consider the complex problem of nationalism and national identities in Eastern Europe. While nations are often presented as “ancient,” they are in fact quite new. We will examine how people’s identities and the societies in which they lived came to be constructed as national ones beginning in the mid 1800s. We will study both how political movements engineered the nationalization of the multicultural societies in Eastern Europe and how this process was continued with much more devastating effects by the self-proclaimed nation states that emerged out of the linguistically and culturally diverse empires in the region, a process that only ended with the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Course Goals
- Examine the emergence of nationalism and the ways in which it transformed Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
- Explore a variety of scholarly approaches to the study of nationalism
- Write analytical, thesis-driven papers based on close reading of the course materials
Grading Policy
Participation 30%
5 x Discussion Questions 5%
Essay 1 Anderson (Sep 8) 10%
Essay 2 Livezeanu (Oct 13) 20%
Essay 3 Snyder (Nov 10) 25%
Essay 4 Reflection (Dec 8) 10%
Texts
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso Books, rev. edition 1991/2006)
Irinia Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000)
Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus,1569-1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003)
All readings are required.
Note on Attendance and Participation
Attendance and participation is mandatory for this course. This means that you are expected to have done all the readings before you arrive in class each Wednesday. Every class centers on your and your colleagues’ discussion of the readings and the questions they raise. Your grade – and the success of this class as a whole – thus depends on your commitment to attendance and participation.
Schedule of Classes
Week 1 Introduction
August 25 The Road Ahead
Week 2 The Modern State & The Idea of Eastern Europe
September 1 *James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 1-83.
*Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 1-16.
Week 3 Imagined Communities
September 8 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991 or later (revised edition)), all.
*Essay 1 due in class (for details on this and other assignments, see instructions page 8-13)
Week 4 The Austro-Hungarian Empire and More Approaches
September 15 *John C. Swanson, “The Body of the Empire,” in The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, 1867-1918, ed. Kate Parker & Julia Shone (London: New Holland Publisher, 2008), 37-100 (please note: this reading is divided into two separate files on BB).
*Paul Hanebrink, “Sickness of the Empire,” in The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, 1867-1918, 176-207.
*Eric Hosbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-14.
*Joanne Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism – Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 2 (1998): 242-269.
*Primary Sources (short):
a) Johann G. von Herder, “Materials for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind,” (1784)
b) Josef Jungmann, “Second Conversation Concerning the Czech Language,” (1806)
c) Daniel Berzsenyi, “To the Hungarians,” (1813)
d) Max Schneckenburger, “The Watch on the Rhine,” (1870)
e) Ernst Renan, “What is a Nation,” (1882) in Nationalism: A Reader, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 17-18.
See also link on nationalism and music in Modern History Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/NATMUSIC.html
Week 5 Eastern Europe and the Study of Nationalism
September 22 *Jeremy King, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond,” in Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present, ed. Maria Bucur and Nancy Wingfield (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001), 112-142.
*Tara Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 93-119.
*Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontier of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 19-65.
Week 6 National Mobilization in the Habsburg Empire
September 29 *Jeremy King, Budweisers Into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1-79.
*Keely Stauter-Halsted, “Rural Myth and the Modern Nation: Peasant Commemorations of Polish National Holidays, 1879-1910,” in Staging the Past, 153-177.
Primary Source:
*“Letter Sent By František Palacký to Frankfurt,” (April, 1848)
Week 7 The First World War in Eastern Europe
October 6 *Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 171-196.
*George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3-11, 53-106, 126-156.
*Paul Hanebrink, “Transnational Culture War: Christianity, Nation, and the Judeo-Bolshevik Myth in Hungary, 1890-1920,” Journal of Modern History 80 (March 2008): 55-80.
In-Class Film Excerpt: “Racial War on the Eastern Front” (WWI)
Week 8 Nationalizing States: Romania After WWI
October 13 Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), all.
*Essay 2 due for peer (see details on submission in instructions)
Week 9 Race and Nation
October 20 *Eric D. Weitz, “Race and Nation: An Intellectual History,” in A Century of Genocide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 16-52.
*Marius Turda, “The Nation as Object: Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania,” Slavic Review 66, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 413-441.
Claudia Koonz, “More Masculine Men, More Feminine Women: The Iconography of Nazi Racial Hatreds,” in Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework, eds. Amir Weiner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 102-134.
In-Class Film Excerpt: “Nazi Medicine”
*In-class peer review
Week 10 Creating Outsiders: Jews in Eastern Europe
October 27 *Joanna B. Michlic, “The Jews and the Formation of Modern National Identity in Poland,” in Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture, and Ethnicity in the Formations of Nations, ed. Athena S Leoussi and Steven Grosby (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 129-142.
*Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3-36.
*Joshua Shanes, “National Regeneration in the Ghetto: The Jewish Turnbewegung in Galicia,” Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship, ed. Jack Kugelmass (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 75-94.
*Documents from The Jew in the Modern World, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Paul Mendes-Flohr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
In-Class Film Excerpt: “Land of Promise” (Palestine, 1935)
*Final, revised essay 2 due in class
Week 11 Germans looking East: War and Genocide
November 3 *Doris L. Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of 'Volksdeutsche' and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939-45,” Journal of Contemporary History 29, no. 4 (Oct., 1994): 569-582.
*Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (excerpts)
*Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (New York: Public Affairs, 1997), 201-240.
In-Class Film Excerpt: “Germanizing the East”
Week 12 Ethnic Cleansing and Nationbuilding
November 10 Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), all.
*Essay 3 due for peer
Week 13 When War Ends – Unmixing Eastern Europe
November 17 *Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleaning in Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 108-138.
*Testimonies in Alfred Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), 81-127.
*Tara Zahra, “Lost Children: Displacement, Family, and Nation in Postwar Europe,” Journal of Modern History 81 (March 2009), 45-86.
**In-class peer review of essay 3
Week 14 Thanksgiving Holiday
November 24 No class
*Final, revised essay 3 due on or before November 24 (hard copies only!)
Week 15 Nationalism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Yugoslavia
December 1 *Erik D. Weitz, “National Communism: Serbia and the Bosnian War,” in A Century of Genocide, 190-235.
*Peter Maass, Love They Neighbor: A Story of War (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 1-116.
In-Class Film: “We Are All Neighbors,” Bosnia (1995)
December 8 Essay 4 due on or before December 8
Course Policies
University of Texas Honor Code
The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community. Any student found guilty of scholastic dishonesty may receive an “F” in the course and will be remanded to the appropriate University of Texas authorities for disciplinary action. For more information, view Student Judicial Services at http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs.
A Note on the Use of Personal Electronic Devices
Individual students may be directed to turn off personal electronic devices if the devices are not being used for class purposes. If the student does not comply, the student may be asked to leave the classroom.
A Note on Classroom Behavior
You have the right to learn in every class you attend. But you have the responsibility to help assure that every other student shares that right. Specifically:
- Come to class on time. Do not leave early. These things are very disruptive. If you must come late or leave early, let the instructor know in advance and sit near the exit.
- Don't be disruptive during class. Don't chat with your neighbor. Don’t use your computer for anything else than taking notes or looking up course readings.
- Don't allow your electronic devices to be disruptive. Turn off your cell phone, beeper, and watch alarm.
- Participate. Don’t let your electronic device act as an inhibitor to class room participation. If I am not satisfied with your involvement in the class, you might be asked to stop using your laptop or other electronic device.
Documented Disability Statement
The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or 232-2937 (video phone). It is you responsibility to inform me about any accommodations that you might need early on in the semester.
Grading Scale
94-100: A
90-93: A-
87-89: B+
84-86: B
80-83: B-
77-79: C+
74-76: C
70-73: C-
67-69: D+
64-66: D
60-63: D-
0-59: F
Instructions for Assignments
- Assignment Overview
- Instructions for Assignments
- General Guidelines
- Peer Review Guidelines
I. Assignment Overview
Discussion Questions
Length: 3-4 questions
Due: No later than 9 am the morning of our class/ 5 weeks (week 3 not available for discussion q.)
Essay 1 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities
Length: 4 pages
Due: September 8
Essay 2 Irina Livezeanu: Cultural Politics in Greater Romania
Length: 5 pages
Due: October 13 (peer) – October 27 (revised final version)
Essay 3 Timothy Snyder: The Reconstruction of Nations
Length: 5 pages
Due: November 10 (peer) – November 24 (revised final version)
Essay 4 Reflection Essay
Length: 3 pages
Due: December 8
II. Instructions for Assignments
Discussion Questions
In the course of this semester you should submit discussion questions for five (5) of the seminar’s fifteen weeks. You should aim to formulate three to four questions that address themes and questions that you consider particularly important in the readings (see further guidelines below). Plan to submit your questions no later than 9 am the morning of our class to this email address: lichtens@austin.utexas.edu (please note: this is a different address than my usual one and should only to be used for submission of assignments).
When preparing discussion questions:
- Once you have read the sources well, think about what you want to get across in the discussion. How do the sources relate to each other?
- Ask open-ended questions and keep in mind that good discussion questions go beyond asking people to recall details from the text but require knowledge of the text’s contents to be answered well. Your questions should elicit answers that are historical and analytical, not simply opinions. For example, a question that points to a possible contradiction within the text and asks your colleagues to assess whether that contradiction undermines the author’s argument could stimulate an informed exchange of views and generate knowledge about the text and the history it treats. A question that asks how readers feel about some of the issues the author examines would not be likely to accomplish those goals.
Essay 1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
Length: 4 pages
Due: September 8
This assignment is intended to assist you in the reading and analysis of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. Avoid including more than one or two direct quotes as well as excessive paraphrasing. Rather, use your own words to explain Anderson’s arguments and focus only on the most important aspects (use footnotes to direct the reader to the material you are referencing). Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.
Answer the following four questions allocating approximately one double-spaced page per question (you can adjust the length of your answers slightly should you find, for example, that the answer to Q 3 requires a bit more space than Q 4):
Q 1: How does Anderson define “nation” and what are its characteristics?
Q 2: What was, according to Anderson, the role of print capitalism for the development of nations and nationalism?
Q 3: Anderson outlines three forms of nationalism: Creole, vernacular, and official nationalism. Write a paragraph on each form describing its most important characteristics (pay particular attention to who the nation makers are in each instance).
Q 4: How does Anderson explain the power and popularity of nationalism (“why are people ready to die for their nation”)?
Essay 2 Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania.
Length: 5 pages
Due: October 13 (peer) – October 27 (revised final version)
This assignment is a response to the book by Irina Livezeanu’s Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.
In five, double-spaced pages, address the following questions:
I. List five useful historical facts you learned from reading this book. These facts should be straightforward pieces of information that can be stated briefly (point form and with page numbers). An example might be an important statistic about Romania’s population that you had not known before or the date of a central event in the history of interwar Eastern Europe.
II. Choose a short quotation (two or three sentences) from the book that you consider especially significant. In a few paragraphs explain how the passage you selected reflects a major argument or central contribution of Livezeanu’s book. Be sure to provide the quotation and the page on which it appears.
III. Write three to four pages in which you analyze one of the main points of Livezeanu’s book. Be sure to identify the theme or argument you will discuss and explain how it fits into her work as a whole. How does she support her claim? What is noteworthy about the kind of evidence she presents and the ways she interprets it? Why did this particular aspect of the book strike you as significant? Avoid overlap between your answer in part II and III.
Essay 3 Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999.
Length: 5 pages
Due: November 10 (peer) – November 24 (revised final version)
Following the guidelines posted online (Assignments - Book Review) write a five-page review of Timothy Snyder’s book The Reconstruction of Nations. Make sure your review is analytical focusing on the author’s thesis and its presentation—a book review is not a summary. As always, use your words to review the book; do not rely on direct quotations. Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews written by other people.
Essay 4 Reflection Essay
Length: 3 pages
Due: December 8
In this assignment, you will be asked to write about an aspect of the seminar (all readings, class materials, and discussions) that you found to be particularly important for your understanding of nationalism. You should choose a specific reading, concept, image, argument, or other course artifact and explain what you think is significant about it and how it has made you think differently or in new ways about nationalism. You should formulate a clear thesis, and, in three double-spaced pages, make a convincing argument using carefully selected course materials to support your statements.
III. General Guidelines
Format for written assignments
- Typed, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, numbered, stapled, and spell-checked
- You must footnote using the Chicago Style (link to online guide is posted under Assignments – Footnotes). Do not use parenthetical or endnotes!
- Cover page with your name and essay title.
Submission
- Final, revised versions of essays = hard copies only (your assignment is not considered submitted until you hand in a hard copy!)
- Assignments are due in class
- Late penalty is 3% per calendar day
- Essay no. 2 and 3 are peer-reviewed assignments. When you submit these assignments, you must provide an electronic copy for me (lichtens@austin.utexas.edu) and a hard copy for your peer reviewer
IV. Peer Review Guidelines
Purpose of peer reviewing
- Become a better writer by understanding how analytical essays work
- Working on your peer’s writing will enhance you ability to edit your own
- Will help you effectively revise your draft, creating a better final version of your essay
Steps A through E – from review to final version
A) Choose a peer and exchange papers
Please Note: You will have a week to review your peer’s essay. This task is separate from the week’s readings.
B) What to think about when you sit down to review the essay
1. Start by reading the draft through once, beginning to end, to get a general sense of the essay as a whole. Do not write on the draft yet. Use a piece of scratch paper to make notes if needed.
2. After an initial reading, it is sometimes helpful to write a short summary. A well written paper should be easy to summarize, so if writing a summary is difficult, try to determine why and share that with the writer.
3. Focus your review on the larger writing issues. For example, the misplacement of a few commas is less important than the reader's ability to understand the main point of the essay. And yet, if you do notice a recurring problem with grammar or spelling, especially to the extent that it interferes with your ability to follow the essay, make sure to mention it.
4. Be constructive with your criticisms. A comment such as "This paragraph was boring" is not helpful. Remember, this writer is your peer, so treat him or her with the respect and care that they deserve. Explain your responses. "I liked this part" or "This section does not work" isn't enough. Keep in mind that you are trying to help the writer revise, so give him or her enough information to be able to understand your responses. Point to specific places that show what you mean. As much as possible, do not criticize something without also giving the writer some suggestion for a possible solution. Be specific and helpful.
5. Do not focus only on the things that are not working, but also point out the things that are.
[Adapted from Todd Carney, “Peer Review Guidelines.”]
C) Preparing for the in-class session
In your comments to your peer, you should aim to address the following areas [take careful notes so you remember examples and places you want to discuss with your peer]:
a) Did the essay have a thesis or a main idea? Was it logically presented and supported by relevant evidence?
b) Did the organization of the paper facilitate the development of the main idea and did it have the requisite parts (introduction, body, and conclusion)?
c) Was the writing style clear? Were there recurrent problems, such as long, unclear sentences, or incorrect grammar?
d) What strengths, such as original ideas or insightful observations, did you like and how would you summarize your suggestions for improving the essay?
D) In-Class review session
- You will be expected to explain the main idea of the paper you reviewed to your peer (that person’s own thesis)
- You will be expected to address the four questions above using concrete examples from the paper you reviewed (it is OK to mark up the copy of the essay you have received)
- At the end of the session, you and your peer will exchange ideas for how you both plan to improve your essays.
E) The final version of your essay
Once we have completed the peer reviewing, you should have some concrete ideas for how to revise your essay. You hand in the revised essay on the date specified in the syllabus.
This course contains a Writing Flag.
