State of the Nation

Catalog description

This colloquium examines the increasingly urgent global challenge posed by radical forms of nationalism. Beginning with the nation-state's origin and logic and extending to contemporary notions of citizenship across the globe, students will draw on disciplines such as history, politics, economics, anthropology, and cultural studies to ask: What makes an individual a citizen? Are nations and states synonymous? Do nations require cultural unity? Focusing on how colonialism and neo-colonialism have shaped the emergence of modern nations, the seminar trains special attention on the Arab world. How did early Arab writers represent other nations before the nation-state? How do Western views of nation-state interact with local understandings of tribe, umma (Muslim people), or community? Historical and theoretical frames range from the Prophet Muhammad's vision for the Islamic umma to Plato's polis, from Benedict Anderson's account of imagined community to Arab socialist adaptations of Marx and Lenin, from oil's impact on notions of citizenship and Arabness in Gulf states to the global refugee crisis that threatens international stability and human rights today.