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490226-HS2024-0-The invention of traditions in an unequal world. Nationalism, community building and global regimes of temporality in the age of empire, 1860s-1960s





Root number 490226
Semester HS2024
Type of course Seminar
Allocation to subject History
Type of exam not defined
Title The invention of traditions in an unequal world. Nationalism, community building and global regimes of temporality in the age of empire, 1860s-1960s
Description “Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market”, Eric Hobsbawm stated about historical scholarship’s role in the formation of national myths. As nationalist rhetoric is currently on the rise worldwide, historians must face up to a moment of critical self-reflection. In this context, the seminar deals with the question of how the "invention of traditions" (Hobsbawm) contributes to the emergence of national identities from a global historical perspective. What were the similarities and differences between German nation-building in the 1860s, the emergence of Black identity concepts of the Négritude, and the formation of national consciousness in India in the interwar period, to only name a few? Were these processes of collective self-fashioning in different parts of the world ultimately identical, differing only in their temporality? Or does the global historical perspective reveal profound differences? The conference will explore the diverging pathways, power struggles, and (re-)negotiations of nation-building and similar forms of community-fashioning in different world regions. It ties not only in with the seminal work of Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities, 1983), but also with recent research on postcolonial regimes of temporality such as Johannes Fabian’s “Time and the Other” (1983). Therefore, the seminar explores the possibilities of how to write the history of ‘imagined communities’ or ‘invention of traditions’ after the global turn.
ILIAS-Link (Learning resource for course) Registrations are transmitted from CTS to ILIAS (no admission in ILIAS possible). ILIAS
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Lecturers Prof. Dr. Christof Dejung, Institute of History, Modern and Contemporary History ✉
Philipp Wigand Michael Horn, Institute of History, Modern and Contemporary History ✉
ECTS 7
Recognition as optional course possible No
Grading 1 to 6
 
Dates Tuesday 14:15-16:00 Weekly
 
Rooms Seminarraum F 011, Hörraumgebäude Unitobler
 
Students please consult the detailed view for complete information on dates, rooms and planned podcasts.