In the nineteenth century, the search for the artistic, architectural and written monuments promoted by the French State with the aim to build a unified nation transcending regional specificities, also fostered the development of local or regional identitary consciousness. In Roussillon, this distinctive consciousness relied on a basically cultural concept of nation epitomised mainly by the Catalan language – Roussillon being composed of Catalan counties annexed to France in 1659. In The Antiquarians of the Nation, Francesca Zantedeschi explores how the works of Roussillon's archaeologists and philologists, who retrieved and enhanced the Catalan specificities of the region, contributed to the early stages of a ‘national’ (Catalan) cultural revival, and galvanised the implicit debate between (French) national history and incipient regional studies.

Linking together two of the most significant developments of the Romantic period, this study shows how Romantic nationalism in Britain developed irony's potential as a powerful source of civic cohesion. Britain's politics of deference, its traditionalism, and its celebration of productivity all became occasions for the development of loyalist irony by non-English conservatives.

Explores how emerging ideas of infancy and childhood gave Romantic writers and readers new ways of understanding history and literature.

This is the second of three volumes based on papers given at the 'Fragile Tradition' conference in Cambridge, 2002. Together they provide a conspectus of current research on the cultural, historical and literary imagination of the German-speaking world across the whole of the modern period. This volume highlights the connections between cultural identity and the sense of nationhood which are to be found in literary writing, the history of ideas, and the interaction between European cultures from the late Middle Ages to the present day. It focuses particularly on the way myths of cultural identity are passed on and transformed historically; on the fashioning of various models of modern German identity with reference to the cultures of Greece, France, England and Renaissance Italy; on the reflection of 19th-century nationalism in literary writing and ideas about language; and on the ways in which cultural values have asserted themselves in relation to moments of catastrophe and abrupt political change in the 1920s, the 1940s, and the 1990s.

This critical bibliography of museum studies comprises an organized collection of essays on the various types of museums--art, natural history, history, science and technology, and folk--and on general aspects--collections, education, exhibitions, etc.--that cut across the media. Most of the essays are cogent, substantial if not comprehensive, and clear. The editor has taken care to see that they follow a similar format of historical essay followed by a full bibliography of items discussed. Library Journal As the number of museums in the United States has grown to more than 6500 in this century, the museum profession has experienced similar growth. In addition to academic training and accreditation programs in the field, an expanding body of literature on museum history, philosophy, and functions has evolved, little of which has received the critical attention it deserves. This reference volume serves as an up-to-date guide to this wealth of literature, identifying and evaluating works that introduce the general reader, the museum studies student, and the beginning professional to the history, philosophy, and functions of museums. The volume presents a series of informative, historical outlines and critical bibliographic essays on all aspects of museum history, philosophy, and functions. Contributors treat such subjects as art museums, natural history museums, science and technology museums, history museums, collections, exhibition, education and interpretation, and the public and museums. Each chapter consists of an introductory historical narrative, a survey of sources, and a bibliographic checklist that contains cited and additional sources. A set of appendices include a geographically organized bibliography of museum directories, a guide to archives and special collections, and a selective list of museum-related periodicals. The book concludes with a comprehensive general subject index. This work will be an important reference tool for museum professionals and cultural historians, as well as for courses in museum studies. It will also be a valuable addition to both academic and public libraries.

Women Speak Nation underlines the centrality of gender within the ideological construction of nationalism. The volume locates itself in a rich scholarship of feminist critique of the relationship between political, economic, cultural, and social formations and normative gendered relations to try and understand the cross-currents in contemporary feminist theorizing and politics. The chapters question the gendered depictions of the nation as Hindu, upper caste, middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied Indian mother. The volume also brings together interviews and short essays from practitioners and activists who voice an alternative reimagining of the nation. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender, politics, modern South Asian history, and cultural studies.

Europe’s nation-states emerged from a complex of nineteenth-century developments in which cultural consciousness-raising played a formative role. The nineteenth-century reflection on Europe’s national identities involved a re-inventory and revalorisation of the vernacular cultural past and, above all, the nation’s literary heritage. Everywhere in Europe, foundational texts (including medieval epics and romances, ancient laws and chronicles) were retrieved from their obscure repositories. In new, printed editions, prepared according to the emerging academic standards of textual scholarship, they were appropriated, contested and canonised as public symbols of the nation’s permanence in history. This often neglected, but crucially important Europe-wide process of ‘editing the nation’s memory’ involved old states and emerging nations, large and small countries, metropolitan and peripheral regions; it straddled politics, the academic professionalization of textual scholarship and of the human sciences, and literary taste. This collection of studies by outstanding specialists offers a comparative synopsis on exemplary cases from all corners of the European continent.

The late sixteenth century saw a redrawing of the borders of north-west Europe. Wales and Brittany entered into unions with neighboring countries England and France. This book uses Brittany and Wales' responses to unification to describe a comparative history of national identity during the early modern period.

In the early years of the republic, the United States government negotiated with Indian nations because it could not afford protracted wars politically, militarily, or economically. Maureen Konkle argues that by depending on treaties, which rest on the equal standing of all signatories, Europeans in North America institutionalized a paradox: the very documents through which they sought to dispossess Native peoples in fact conceded Native autonomy. As the United States used coerced treaties to remove Native peoples from their lands, a group of Cherokee, Pequot, Ojibwe, Tuscarora, and Seneca writers spoke out. With history, polemic, and personal narrative these writers countered widespread misrepresentations about Native peoples' supposedly primitive nature, their inherent inability to form governments, and their impending disappearance. Furthermore, they contended that arguments about racial difference merely justified oppression and dispossession; deriding these arguments as willful attempts to evade the true meanings and implications of the treaties, the writers insisted on recognition of Native peoples' political autonomy and human equality. Konkle demonstrates that these struggles over the meaning of U.S.-Native treaties in the early nineteenth century led to the emergence of the first substantial body of Native writing in English and, as she shows, the effects of the struggle over the political status of Native peoples remain embedded in contemporary scholarship.

Excavating Nations traces the history of archaeology and museums in the contested German-Danish borderlands from the emergence of antiquarianism in the early nineteenth-century to German-Danish reconciliation after the Second World War. J. Laurence Hare reveals how the border regions of Schleswig-Holstein and Snderjylland were critical both to the emergence of professional prehistoric archaeology and to conceptions of German and Scandinavian origins. At the center of this process, Hare argues, was a cohort of amateur antiquarians and archaeologists who collaborated across the border to investigate the ancient past but were also complicit in its appropriation for nationalist ends. Excavating Nations follows the development of this cross-border network over four generations, through the unification of Germany and two world wars. Using correspondence and site reports from museum, university, and state archives across Germany and Denmark, Hare shows how these scholars negotiated their simultaneous involvement in nation-building projects and in a transnational academic community. --Provided by publisher.