Diego Rivera, "Emiliano Zapata" (1932) History 367/English
386:
Narrating the Nation: Historical and Literary Approaches to Nationalism
Anuradha Needham (English) x 58571
Steven Volk (History) x58522
Tu/Th 9:35-10:50
Syllabus on the Internet: http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/367S04syllabus.htm
Diego Rivera, "Emiliano Zapata" (1932)
Narrating the Nation is an interdisciplinary, intensive seminar which offers
an analysis of the narratives through which nationalisms -- both official and
alternative -- acquire (or are denied) credibility and authority. This discussion-centered
class will examine the nationalisms of Latin America and South Asia with particular
reference to those of Argentina and Mexico, India and Pakistan. Narrative theor(ies)
as deployed in and by the disciplines of History and English literary studies
provide the overarching critical methodologies for interdisciplinary analysis.
Our concern in this course is both thematic and methodological -- particularly
as concerns epistemological challenges of History and literary criticism and
the manner in which each can be made to push the other to greater insights.
The course is offered for four hours of credit
(two in History; two in English). You will be expected to keep up with a large
amount of reading, and to attend class regularly. Attendance will be taken and
unexcused absences noted. As students in a seminar, you will be expected to
engage actively in class discussions; part of your grade (20%) will involve
your participation in class. You should speak to one of the instructors if you
find that there is some constraint to your active participation and engagement
with the materials and the class members.
COURSE FORMAT: In general, and once we have finished with some introductory materials, the course will run as a discussion class. All students will be assigned into small study/presentation groups of 4-5 students each at the beginning of the semester. These groups will serve as study groups and will also be assigned specific weeks in which to serve as discussion leader. Each group will lead class discussion twice, once in the first part of the semester, once in the second. Each student in the group will be expected to turn in a short reflection paper (1 page) at the start of the week in which they are leading the discussion.
REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING: As noted above, you will be required to keep up with the reading and to attend class regularly. There are two 12-15 pages, due on March 25 and May 13. If you turn in a paper late without the permission of one of the instructors, your grade will be decreased one grade step (e.g., from a B+ to a B) for each day it is late. Each paper counts as 25% of your final grade. If you choose to turn in a rough draft of your paper, you must do so no later than one week prior to the due date of the paper.
HONOR CODE: In this course, as in all others, you are expected to adhere to the spirit and letter of the Honor Code and to sign the Honor Code on all work that you turn in. ("I affirm that I have adhered to the Honor Code in this assignment.") Please refer to the "Plagiarism and the use of sources" information (a useful document prepared at Hamilton College) and the American Historical Association's statement on plagiarism for further information.
A note on readings: Readings will be available in one of three forms: (1) As a book which is recommended for purchase. A copy of all these books will be on reserve at the library, and you can also get extra copies through Ohio LINK, if you choose not to purchase them. The books are available at the bookstore, and can also be purchased in cheaper used editions through Amazon.com or other on-line booksellers; (2) in Electronic Reserves (ERes). You can get to ERes by clicking on the hot link on the electronic syllabus or by the following link: http://eres.cc.oberlin.edu. We will give you the password prior to the start of classes; and (3) in Blackboard: Course Documents. If you can't find what you're looking for, make sure you are looking in the right place, and then ask us if you still can't find it.
Books Recommended for Purchase
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz, rev. ed. (Noonday Press), 1991.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The General in His Labyrinth, paperback reprint ed. (NY: Vintage), 2003.
Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines (South Asia Books), 1998.
Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column, 2nd. Ed (Penguin India), 1992.
Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Post-Colonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 1994.
Salman Rushdie, Shame (London: Picador), 2000.
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (New York: Penguin USA), 1995.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism, trans. Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, intro. Ilan Stavans (New York: Penguin Books), 1998.
Sara Suleri, Meatless Days (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1991.
Syllabus
Feb. 10, 12: Questions of Methodology and
Epistemology: Historians, Cultural Critics, and the Production and Organization
of Knowledge
Readings:
Feb. 10 J.M. Coetzee, "The Novel Today," Upstream 6:1 (Summer 1988) (1988). ERes Feb. 10 J.M. Coetzee, "Realism," in Elizabeth Costello (NY: Viking, 2003), 1-34. Blackboard: Course Documents Feb. 10 David William Cohen, "The Production of History," in The Combing of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 1-23. ERes Feb. 12 Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Post-Colonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), Chapter 1. Book Feb. 12 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "The Post-modern Condition: The End of Politics?" in Sarah Harasym, ed., The Post-Colonial Critic. Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Routledge, 1990), 17-34.
ERes Feb. 12 Ranajit Guha, "Chandra's Death," Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society V (1987):135-165. Blackboard: Course Documents
Feb. 17, 19: Theorizing the Nation
Readings:
Feb. 17 John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, ed., Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994): Introduction, and from Part I: Stalin & Weber (pp. 3-13, 18-25); from Part II Kedourie, Gellner, Gellner, Nairn, & Hobsbawm (pp. 47-83). Blackboard: Course Documents Feb. 19 Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, Becoming National. A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Introduction (3-37); Renan (41-55); Smith (106-130); Balibar (132-149); and Duara (151-177). Blackboard: Course Documents Feb. 19 Partha Chatterjee, "Whose Imagined Community?" The Nation and its Fragments. Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 3-13. ERes
Feb. 24, 26: Constructing the Bourgeois Nation: The Meanings of Independence
in the 19th Century - Sarmiento
Reading:
Feb. 24 Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism, trans. Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, intro. Ilan Stavans (New York: Penguin Books), 1998. Read Ch. 1 Book Feb. 26 Facundo: Or, Civilization and Barbarism, Chs. 2-7.
Book
Justo Barboza, "Facundo"
March 2, 4: Re-Constructing the Bourgeois Nation: The Meanings of Independence in the 20th Century - Garcia Marquez
Reading:
March 2 Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth (Vintage), 2003. Read about half of book Book March 4 The General in His Labyrinth. Finish book.
Book
March 9, 11: Constructing the Democratic Nation: Mallon, Peasant & Nation
Reading:
March 9 Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Post-Colonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), Chs. 2-3. Book March 11 Peasant and Nation: The Making of Post-Colonial Mexico and Peru, Ch. 4, 5, 7. Book March 11 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Deconstructing Historiography," Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society IV (1985): 330-363.
ERes
March 16, 18: Constructing the Revolutionary Nation: Mexico (Fairs, Museums,
Art)
Reading:
March 16 Alan Knight, "Popular Culture and the Revolutionary State in Mexico, 1910-1940," Hispanic American Historical Review 74:3 (August 1994): 393-444. JSTOR March 18 Alex Saragoza, "The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929-1952," in Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds., Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 91-115. Blackboard: Course Documents March 18 Steven S. Volk, "Frida Kahlo Remaps the Nation," Social Identities 6:2 (June 2000): 165-188. ERes Optional "Mexico: Splendor of Thirty Centuries," an electronic exhibit. A real exhibit of the same name which was produced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY) in the late 1980s. The lavish catalog of the exhibit is available for use in the Art Library. http://www.humanities-interactive.org/splendors/
Frida Kahlo, "Self Portrait On the Borderline" (1932)
March 23, 25: Deconstructing the Revolutionary Nation: Fuentes
Reading:
March 23 Carlos Fuentes,The Death of Artemio Cruz, rev. ed. (Farrar Straus or any other edition), 1964. Begin book. Book March 25 The Death of Artemio Cruz, finish book. Book March 25 Film: Amores Perros (Dir: Emilio Echeverría, 2000). View film outside of class and be prepared to discuss.
Reserve
March 30, April 1: Spring Break
April 6, 8: Histor(ies) of India
Reading:
April 6 M.K. Gandhi, Indian Home Rule (Hind Swaraj). ERes April 8 Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1946), Pages to be assigned. ERes
Jawaharlal Nehru (l) and Mahatma Gandhi (July 6, 1946)
April 13, 15: (Re-)writing (histories of) India
Reading:
April 13 (For preparation, recommended): Fredric Jameson, "Third World Literature in the Age of Multinational Capitalism," Social Text 15 (Fall 1986): 65-88. Blackboard: Course Documents April 13 Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (NY: Penguin), 1995. Book April 15 Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, "Re-playing the Indian Subcontinent: Salman Rushdie's Methods of Critique," Using the Master's Tools (NY: St. Martin's Press, 2000), Ch. 2. ERes April 15 Salman Rushdie, "'Errata': or Unreliable Narration in Midnight's Children," and "The Riddle of Midnight, India, August 1987," in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991 (London: Granta, 1991), pp. 22-33.
ERes
April 20, 22: The Charge of Memory in Imagining the (Partitioned) Nation
Reading:
April 20 Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column,2nd. Ed (Penguin India), 1992. Book April 20 (For preparation, recommended): Antoinette Burton, "Memory Becomes Her: Women, Feminist History and the Archive" in Dwelling in the Archive : Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India (NY: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 3-30. Blackboard: Course Documents April 20 (For preparation, recommended): Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, "Multiple Forms of (National) Belonging: Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column" from Modern Fiction Studies 39:1 (Winter 1993): 93-112. Blackboard: Course Documents April 22 Sunlight on a Broken Column, finish. Book April 22 Film: Garam Hawa (to be arranged)
Attia Hosain, Salman Rushdie, and Amitav Ghosh (left to right)
April 27, 29: The Nation from the Position of Migrants and Women
Reading:
April 27 Salman Rushdie, Shame (London: Picador), 2000. Begin. Book April 29 Shame, finish. Book
May 4, 6: Gendered Narratives of Nation
Reading:
May 4 Sara Suleri, Meatless Days (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1991. Begin. Book May 6 Meatless Days, finish. Book
May 11, 13: A Critique of (Indian) Nationalism
Reading:
May 11 Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines (South Asia Books), 1998. Begin. Book May 13 The Shadow Lines, finish. Book
