Political Modernities and Nation-Building in Central and Southeast Europe

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Level: 
Master's
CEU credits: 
4
ECTS credits: 
8
Academic year: 
2009/2010
Academic year: 
2011/2012
Semester: 
Fall
Start and end dates: 
9 Jul 2009
Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]: 
Department of History
Stream/Track/Specialization/Core Area: 
Ethnicity, Nations, Nationalism and Empires in History
CEU Instructor(s): 
Balázs Trencsényi
Additional information: 
It uses the excerpts, previously unavailable in English, provided by the collective project Regional Identity Discourses in Central and Southeast Europe (1775-1945). The collection of these texts makes it possible to analyze and compare ‘in depth’ various ideological traditions that were formative of the national discourses of Central and Southeast Europe. Exploring the input of the interpretative offers of modern ‘intellectual history’ in analyzing this material, the course hopes to problematize some of the key tenets of the ‘national’ historiographies about the uniqueness and incomparability of the respective cultures, at the same time pointing out the considerable situational and discursive cleavages among different projects of nation-building. The course also aims at critically reconsidering the explanatory models of Nationalism Studies seeking to grasp the structure of the modern nationalist ideologies. Bringing together the more encompassing models of interpretation with a more context-sensitive approach of situating the texts in their cultural-political setting, the participants will develop their skills of doing comparative research in the East-Central European setting. Apart from the methodological gains, the main expected result of the course is providing an overview of East-European intellectual history between roughly 1860 and 1945, and developing a framework of interpreting nationalism, historiographical and literary canon-building, and the transformation of political culture in our region.
Assessment : 
Progress in the course will be evaluated as follows: Seminar Presentation 20% of the overall grade Term Paper 50% Class Participation 30% In each class, one of the students will be invited to present (in 10-15 minutes) a chosen original excerpt in the context of other available primary sources and also using the relevant secondary literature. The term paper is a fifteen-page piece on a topic suggested by the student and accepted by the instructor, preferably based on the comparative analysis of at least two national contexts. Class participation means regular attendance, in-class comments and questions related to the weekly topics and readings.
Full description: 

 

COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS

One: Introduction. Strategies of interpretation

Readings:

  • Hayden White, “Interpretation in History,” in: Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 51-80. [savepdf]
  • Jörn Rüsen, “New directions in historical studies,” in: Jörn Rüsen, Studies in Metahistory (Pretoria Human Sciences Research Council, 1993), pp. 203-219. [pdf]
  • Jürgen Kocka, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg” (in Forum on Comparative Historiography), in: History and Theory, Vol. 38, No. 1. (Feb., 1999), pp. 40-50. [ pdf]
  • Noël Carroll, “Interpretation, Narrative, History,” Geoffrey Roberts, ed., The History and Narrative Reader (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 247-265. (optional) [ pdf]

Two: Intellectual History, Begriffsgeschichte, history of mentalités

Readings:

  • Arthur O. Lovejoy, “Reflections on the History of Ideas,” in: The History of ideas: canon and variations, edited by Donald R. Kelley, (University of Rochester Press, Rochester, N.Y., 1990),  pp. 1-21. (optional) [pdf]
  • Melvin Richter, “Charting the History of Political and Social Concepts” in: The history of political and social concepts : a critical introduction (Oxford University Press, 1995) , pp. 9-25. [pdf]
  • J. G. A. Pocock, “The concept of a language and the metier d'historien: Some considerations on practice,” in: Anthony Pagden, The Languages of political theory in early-modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 19-38. [pdf]
  • Reinhart Koselleck, „Social History and Begriffsgeschichte,“ in: History of concepts: comparative perspectives, edited by Iain Hampsher-Monk, Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, (Amsterdam University Press, 1998),  pp. 23-35. [pdf]
  • Roger Chartier, “Intellectual History or Sociocultural History? The French Trajectories,” In: Modern European intellectual history: reappraisals and new perspectives, edited by Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 13-45. (optional) [pdf]
  • Iain Hampsher-Monk, “Speech Acts, Languages or Conceptual History?” in: History of concepts: comparative perspectives, edited by Iain Hampsher-Monk, Karin Tilmans, Frank van Vree, (Amsterdam University Press, 1998),  pp. 37-50. (optional) [pdf]


Three: Liberalism and the making of the modern state, 1867-1914

Readings:

  • Otto Urban, “Czech Society 1848-1918,” in: Mikuláš Teich, Bohemia in History (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), pp. 198-214. [pdf]
  • Richard Clogg, A short history of modern Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 70-104. [pdf]
  • Diana Mishkova, “The Interesting Anomaly of Balkan Liberalism,” in: Iván Zoltán Dénes, ed. Liberty and the Search for Identity: The Liberal Nationalisms and the Heritage of the Empires (Budapest: CEU Press, 2005). [pdf]
  • Steven Bela Vardy, “Baron Joseph Eötvös: Statesman, thinker, reformer,” in: The Austro-Hungarian mind : at home and abroad, ed. Steven Béla Várdy and Agnes Huszár Várdy (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1989), pp. 73-87. (optional) [pdf]
  • Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Realism in Polish politics : Warsaw positivism and national survival in nineteenth century Poland (New Haven, Con.: Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1984), 126-146. (optional) [pdf]


Excerpts:  

1. František Palacký, The Idea of the Austrian State (1865)
2. József Eötvös, The nationality question (1865)
3. "Tarnovo” Constitution (1879)
4. Kalliroi Parren, The life of a year, Letters of an Athenian lady  to a lady from Paris (1896-97)
1. Aleksander Świętochowski, Political Hints (1882)

Four: Self-determination, sovereignty, and the homogenizing state, 1914-1945

Readings:

  • Bernard Lewis The emergence of modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 239-296. [pdf]
  • A.L. Macfie. The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1923 (London: Longman, 1998) 182-208. [pdf]
  • James Felak, “ Slovak considerations of the Slovak Question: The Ludak, Agrarian, Socialist and Communist Views in Interwar Czechoslovakia,” in John Morison, The Czech and Slovak experience (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 136-62. [pdf]
  • John Lampe, “Struggling with Liberal and National Transitions in the 1920s,” in: Balkans into Southeastern Europe (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 63-104. (optional) [pdf]


Excerpts:

1. Alexandros Papanastasiou, Republican Manifesto (1922)
2. Afet İnan, “Nation”; article in ‘Civilizing Norms for the Citizen’ (1930)  
3. Ivan Dérer, Why we are against autonomy (1935)
4. Eduard Beneš, Czechoslovakia’s Struggle for Freedom (1941)

Five: “National projects” and their regional framework


Readings:

  • Eva Schmidt-Hartmann, “The Fallacy of realism: some problems of Masaryk’s approach to Czech National Aspirations,” in: Stanley B. Winters, ed., T.G. Masaryk (1850-1937), vol. I., Thinker and Politician (London : Macmillan, 1990), pp. 130-150. [pdf]
  • Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a nation, breaking a nation : literature and cultural politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 67-127. [pdf]
  • Robert N. Berki, “The Realism of Moralism: The Political Philosophy of István Bibó,” The History of Political Thought, XIII, 3. (1992). pp. 513-534. [pdf]


Excerpts:

1. Tomáš Masaryk, The Czech question (1895)
2. Eleytherios Venizelos, The Program of his Foreign Policy (1915)
3. Jovan Cvijić, On national work (1907)
4. Ferdinand Peroutka, How are we (1923)
5. Anton Strashimirov, Book for the Bulgarians (1918)
6. István  Bibó, On European Balance and Peace (1942-44)

Six: Federalism and the decline of empires

Readings:

  • Robert A. Kann, Multinational empire: nationalism and national reform in the Habsburg monarchy, 1848-1918 (New York: Octagon Books, 1983), pp. 179-207. [pdf]
  • Adam Bromke, Poland's politics: idealism vs. realism (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 19-30. [pdf]
  • Attila Pók, „The Sovial Function of Sociology in fin-de- siecle Budapest,” Gyorgy Ranki ed., Hungary and European civilization (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1989), pp. 265-283. [pdf]
  • Marius Turda, The idea of national superiority in Central Europe, 1880-1918 (Lewiston, N.Y. : Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 142-158. [pdf]


1. A.C. Popovici, The United States of Great Austria (1906)
2. Oszkár Jászi, The Future of the Monarchy.The Fall of Dualism and the Danubian United States (1918)
3. Tomáš  G. Masaryk, The New Europe. The Slav Standpoint (1918)
4. Jozef Pilsudski, Address in Vilnius (1922)
1. M. Römer, Answer to J. Piłsudski (1922)
6. Milan Hodža: Federation in Central Europe, Reflections and Reminiscences, (1942)

Seven: Socialism and the nationality question

Readings:

  • Georges Haupt, “Model party: the role and influence of German social democracy in South-East Europe,” in: Aspects of international socialism, 1871-1914: essays (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 48-80. [pdf]
  • Robert A. Kann, The Multinational empire : nationalism and national reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918 (New York : Octagon Books, 1983), vol.II. pp. 154-178. [pdf]
  • Bernard Wheaton, Radical socialism in Czechoslovakia : Bohumír Smeral, the Czech road to socialism and the origins of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (1917-1921) (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1986), pp. 3-26. [pdf]
  • Alex N. Dragnich,  Populism in Serbia,” in: Joseph Held, ed., Populism in Eastern Europe: Racism, Nationalism and Society. (Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs, 1996), pp. 219-244. (optional) [pdf]


1. Hristo Botev, The People (1871)
1. Svetozar Marković, Serbia in the East (1871)
3. Jozef Piłsudski, On patriotism (1902)
4. Bohumír Šmeral, National Question and Social Democracy (1909)
5. Abraham Benaroya, The first career of the Greek proletariate (1931)
6. Attila József, At the Danube (1936)



Eight: Cultural modernization: Institutionalisation of "national sciences"

Readings:

  • Donald R. Kelley, Fortunes of history: historical inquiry from Herder to Huizinga (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 304-338. [pdf]
  • Selim Deringil, "The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908," Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (1993) 1, pp. 3-29. [pdf]
  • Alex Drace-Francis, The making of modern Romanian culture : literacy and the development of national identity (London, New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006), pp. 178-195. [pdf]
  • Virgil Nemoianu, “Variable Sociopolitical Functions of Aesthetic Doctrine: Lovinescu vs. Western Aestheticism,” in Kenneth Jowitt, ed., Social Change in Romania, 1860-1940: A Debate on Development in a European Nation (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1978), pp. 174-207. [pdf]


Excerpts:

1. Ilarion Ruvarac, On Prince Lazar (1888.)
2. Dimitar Marinov, Living Antiquity (1891)
3. Zsolt Beöthy, The Small Mirror of Hungarian Literature (1896)
4. Dimitrie Gusti, The Science of Nation, (1937)
5. Boyan Penev History of New Bulgarian Literature  (1930)
6. Eugen Lovinescu, The History of Modern Romanian Civilisation 1924

Nine: The “Critical turns”: Subverting the Romantic narratives

Readings:  

  • Maciej Janowski „Three historians,“ in: Central European University History Department Yearbook 2001-2002, (Budapest 2002), pp. 199-232. [pdf]
  • Milan Hauner, “The Meaning of Czech History: Masaryk versus Pekař,” in: Harry Hanak, ed., T. G. Masaryk (1850-1937), vol. 3. Statesman and Cultural Force (New York, 1990), pp. 25-42. [pdf]
  • Jelena Milojkovic-Djuric, Tradition and avant-garde: literature and art in Serbian culture, 1900-1918 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1988), pp. 129-168. [pdf]
  • Jerzy Jedlicki, A Suburb of Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999), pp.  205-241. [pdf]


Excerpts:

1. Titu Maiorescu, Against the Present Direction of Romanian Culture (1868)
1. Michał Bobrzyński, The outline of Polish history (1879)
3. Georgios Skliros, Our social question, 1907
4. Josef Pekař, Meaning of Czech History (1929)
5. Jovan Skerlić, The new youth magazines and our new generation (1913)
6. Garabet Ibrăileanu, The Critical Spirit in Romanian Culture (1906)

Ten: Literary representations of the national character

Readings:

  • Alexander Kiossev, "The Debate about the Problematic Bulgarian: A View on the Pluralism of the National Ideologies in Bulgaria in the Interwar Period," in: Katherine Verdery and Ivo Banac, eds., National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe (New Haven: Yale UP, 1995), pp. 195-217. [pdf]
  • Robert Pynsent, Question of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (London-Budapest: CEU Press, 1995), pp. 148-196. [pdf]
  • Stathis Gourgouris, Dream nation: enlightenment, colonization, and the institution of modern Greece (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 175-226. [pdf]
  • Stanislaw Eile, Literature and nationalism in partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 (New York St. Martin's Press, in association with School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London 2000) , pp.107-125. 9 (optional) [pdf]


Excerpts:

1. Henryk Sienkiewicz, With fire and sword, (1884)
2. Aleko Konstantinov. Bay Ganyo, 1895
3. Jaroslav Hasek The good soldier Svejk (1921)
4. I.L. Caragiale, The Rromanian (1898)
5. Stefan Zeletin, From the Country of Donkeys (1916)
6. Giorgos Seferis, On Makrygiannis (1942)

Eleven: Aesthetic modernism and the discourses of collective identity

Readings:

  • Jacques Le Rider, “Reflections on Viennese Modernity” in Modernity and crises of identity : culture and society in fin-de-siecle Vienna (Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1993),  pp. 11-29. [pdf]
  • Péter Hanák, “The Start of Endre Ady’s Literary Career (1903-1905),” in The Garden and the Workshop (Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 110-134. [pdf]
  • Jiří Kudrnáč, “The significance of Czech Fin-de-siècle Criticism,” in: Robert B. Pynsent ed., Decadence and innovation: Austro-Hungarian life and art at the turn of the century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), pp. 88-101. (optional) [pdf]
  • Derek Sayer, The coasts of Bohemia : a Czech history (Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 154-162, 195-208. [pdf]
  • Judit Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and turn-of-the century Budapest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) 89-115. (optional) [pdf]


Excerpts:

1. Artur Górski, Young Poland Manifesto (1898)
2. "Czech modern" manifesto, 1895
3. Endre Ady, Gog and Magog (1906) The song of the Hungarian Jacobin (1908)
4. Dimo Kiorchev. Our Sorrows, 1907
5. Giorgos Theotokas, Free Spirit, 1929
6. Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke (1937)

Twelve:  Regionalism, autonomism and the minority identity-building narratives

Readings:

  • Jan Křen, “Changes in identity,” in: Mikuláš Teich, Bohemia in History (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), pp. 324-343. [pdf]
  • Victor A. Friedman, “The Modern Macedonian Standard Language,” in The Macedonian question: culture, historiography, politics, edited by Victor Roudometof (Boulder: East European Monographs, 2000), 173-206. [pdf]
  • Irina Livezeanu, Cultural politics in Greater Romania: regionalism, nation building, & ethnic struggle, 1918-1930 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 129-187. [pdf]
  • Viktor Karády, The Jews of Europe in the modern era: a socio-historical outline (Budapest: CEU Press, 2004), 197-297. (optional) [pdf]


Excerpts:

1. Joseph Samuel Bloch, Zu den Gemeinderatswahlen in Wien, 1895.
2. Krste Petkov Misirkov, On Macedonian Matters  (1903)
3. Károly Kós, Transylvania. A Sketch of Cultural History (1929)
4. Romul Boilă, Study on the Reorganisation of the Unified Romanian State (1931),
5. Josef Pfitzner: Sudetendeutsche Geschichte (1935)