Category Archives: Workshops

Rethinking the History of Nationalism

Doctoral and post-doctoral workshop

Florence, 16-17th May 2019

The University of East Anglia and the University of Florence

The surge of nationalism across Europe and beyond poses the need to deeply rethink its historical roots to shed light on the intellectual and cultural challenges ahead of us. One element usually neglected are the transnational elements contributing to the shaping of nationalistic feelings of belonging. In fact, as Anne Marie Thiesse has argued some time ago, nationalism emerges always in confrontation with other groups. If we were to accept that ‘there is nothing of more international than the creation of national identities’, then the tendency to consider nationalism from an ‘internal’ perspective alone might lead to serious misconceptions and misunderstandings. This conference two-day event will offer a contribution to ongoing debates from the historian’s perspective, highlighting how nationalism is shaped transnationally through complex othering processes that incessantly create borders by transcending them. The main aim is to question the assumptions underlying ‘methodological nationalism’ by looking at concrete historical examples and case studies that might help us challenge commonly accepted views.

The time span will range from the eighteenth to the twentieth century.

The two-day event will be divided into themed panels with ample time for reflection and discussion about Nationalism Studies from the perspective of the historian.  We also plan to record the training sessions for dissemination online. 

This call for papers, circulated among PGRs of the UK consortium part of the CHASE consortium, is intended for doctoral and post-doctoral students affiliated to the Department SAGAS (University of Florence) and the Department of History and Civilization (EUI, Florence).

If you would like to present a paper (10/15 minutes), please send an abstract (max. 300 words in English) with a title and a short biography by  Dr Matthew D’Auria (m.dauria@uea.ac.uk), not later than 31 March 2019.

Please note that the working language will be English. There will be no fees for participating and limited funding might be available.

1967 – 2017: Nationalism and its Discontent in Israel/Palestine

7 June 2017 , 13:00-19:00 hours, Theatre , Badia Fiesolana

Workshop organized by:

Feike Fliervoet (SPS Researcher)

Jan Rybak (HEC Researcher)

The year 2017 marks the anniversary of one of the most pivotal events that shaped the political landscape of Middle East, and in particular the small strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: the 1967 Six-Day War. The conflict caused dramatic shifts in world- and regional politics, and was a turning point in Israeli/Palestinian power relations. Not only did Israel assert itself in the region, but through the conquest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it came to rule over (initially) one million Palestinians, and in many regards turned into an “Accidental Empire” (Gershom Gorenberg). The subsequent development of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as the emergence of a distinctly Palestinian national movement which was directed against the occupation, were defining factors in the shaping of the current situation and the formation of national identifications on both sides of the Green Line. While the Oslo accords promised the establishment of a Palestinian state, and Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip in 2005, the West Bank remains largely under Israeli control and came to be an ideological battleground on which both Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian national identities are fought over and defined against one another.

This half-day workshop on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the June 1967 war looks at the history and the current situation of the conflict from various perspectives. It aims to analyse the processes of identity-formation, discuss the prospects for the region, and offer new tools for understanding the complexities of the ongoing rivalry in Israel/Palestine.

Attached the programme and the abstracts.