Nationalism Archives - Public Seminar

To Cancel or Not to Cancel? Questioning the Russian Idea

October 1, 2024 • by George Pattison

Nine months after the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech in which he argued that although Western leaders always claim to be the champions of freedom, Western liberalism was now engaged in the complete suppression of anything that contradicted its view of what was socially and culturally desirable. ...

To Cancel or Not to Cancel? Questioning the Russian Idea

South Asia

The World’s “Largest Democracy”?

Modi leads India down a dark path

May 30, 2024 • by Udeepta Chakravarty

Corrosive nationalism and monarchic consciousness have become so normalized that other political forces, including the opposition, are now mimicking Modi’s practices....

Podcast

MAGA Is the Newest, and Oldest, American Myth

Episode 51: A conversation with American Studies scholar Richard Slotkin about his new book, A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America

April 12, 2024 • by Claire Potter

Slotkin examines the history of the two Americas that exist side-by-side today, with their clashing and common myths, two American cultures that will meet at the ballot box in November 2024 to decide the fate of American democracy....

MAGA Is the Newest, and Oldest, American Myth

Feminism

When Fascism Is Female

In Europe, right-wing feminism is on the rise—and nationalist women are taking power

August 31, 2022 • by Sophie Boulter

This fascist “fire” that Meloni references and kindles is burning throughout Europe, and she is not alone in tending to its flames....

Europe & Central Asia

Making Sense of the War

As the shock of war gives way to reflection, Ukrainian public discourse has turned to questions of the past, present and future

July 6, 2022 • by Tatiana Zhurzhenko

In Ukraine, the initial shock, anger, and sorrow have slowly given way to the sober realization that the war is not going to end soon. The first month passed like one day, but meanwhile, the feeling of time has returned. People and institutions are adjusting and even trying to make ...

Politics

Beyond the Two-State Solution

A decimated Left is at a crossroads. Is the only chance for meaningful opposition to drop the doctrine that Zionism requires a Jewish State? A discussion

March 25, 2021 • by Omri Boehm, Micha Brumlik, Shimon Stein and Moshe Zimmerman

_____ The Left in Israel has been decimated, its options reduced to propping up Netanyahu or his hardline challengers. Some, including philosopher Omri Boehm, believe that the only chance for meaningful opposition is for the Left to drop the doctrine that Zionism requires a Jewish State. The Zionist Left, so this ...

Politics

The Fishy Origins of Brexit

From herring and the Hundred Years War to the “cod wars” of the 20th century

January 25, 2021 • by Daniel Davies

After four years of negotiation, it all came down to fish. Britain left the European Union on January 1, 2021–but only after a last-ditch deal secured increased quotas for Britain’s fishing industry. At first glance this minor part of the British economy appears a surprising sticking point. But, as critics have ...

Reviews

Whose Home? Whose Rule?

Nandita Sharma’s Home Rule and the politics of autochthony

May 21, 2020 • by Mat Cusick

Nandita Sharma, Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press: 2020) In February 2002, five months after Narendra Modi became chief minister of Gujarat, an anti-Muslim pogrom erupted in his state. In three months of violence, Hindu nationalist rioters raped and murdered hundreds of Muslim ...

East Asia & Pacific

Hong Kong’s Protests Looked a Lot Like Shanghai Anti-colonial Protests a Century Ago

But this time, the protests were against a new imperial power: China

April 22, 2020 • by Mark Frazier

Protesters demanded electoral reforms, investigations of police conduct during the protests, and the preservation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, under which Beijing had promised to maintain “one country, two systems” after Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997. The protests have continued online — including anti-government slogans in a popular video ...

Hong Kong’s Protests Looked a Lot Like Shanghai Anti-colonial Protests a Century Ago

Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism

An interview with Banu Subramaniam

July 26, 2019 • by Banu Subramaniam

Her critique is genealogical in nature. It consists in an attempt to show how modern Hindu nationalism is being constructed through a tactic she calls “archaic modernity” -- a phrase coined to capture the way that the ancient religious civilization of India is being read as prefiguring modern scientific techniques ...

Feature

The Özil Affair and the Limits of Progressive Nationalism

Why liberal nationalists can’t have their cake and eat it, too

August 28, 2018 • by Lior Erez

This July, German football star Mesut Özil resigned from the national team. His resignation provides a dramatic illustration of the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe. Özil, the son of Turkish immigrants, resigned with a public letter on social media. “I am a German when we win, an immigrant when we lose,” he ...

The Özil Affair and the Limits of Progressive Nationalism

Feature

Institutionalizing Children, Referees, and Charlottesville

Past Present Episode 142

August 7, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Niki, and Natalia debate the history of the institutionalization of children, the thankless job of refereeing youth sports, and the legacy of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, one year after the Unite the Right rally. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: ...