Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Mezey

J.D. Seminar 331 (cross-listed) | 3 credit hours

From Belfast to Brooklyn, there has been a growing awareness of the demands for inclusion, recognition and autonomy, both political and cultural, made by minority groups. This seminar will address the relationship between such claims made on the basis of cultural identity (broadly defined) and nationalism. This seminar will explore the various theories of nationalism and take pains to think about how nations are distinct from states, what it means to be a nation, how nations are imagined and invented, and what the effects of national imaginings have been on those systematically excluded from them. While the course will focus on the United States, its history and current struggles as a pluralist state, the readings will be relevant to those interested in writing about issues of nationalism and cultural identity around the globe.

Students must register for the three-credit section of the seminar if they wish to write a paper fulfilling the Upperclass Writing Requirement. Students in the two-credit section will write a paper.