Seminars

ASEN Event

The ASEN Seminar Committee is pleased to invite you to the following seminars.

ASEN Seminar: Pan-Nationalism Based Upon a Standard Language:

The Cases of German, Turkish, and Arabic

Speaker: Prof. John Myhill (University of Haifa)

Venue: Room H103, Connaught House, LSE

Time and Date: Wednesday May 14th 2008, 6:00 PM

There have been only three cases of nationalities constituted on the basis of a common standard language but without a common spoken language, religious affiliation, or state, these being the Germans (between the Confederation Period and 1945), the Turks (during the Young Turk period (1908-18)), and the Arabs (since the interwar period). The languages which united each of these groups were collections of radically diverse dialects constructed as being single languages through the use of common standards. The purpose of constructing such artificial nationalities—in effect pan-nationalities in disguise—was the maintenance, reconfiguration, or resurrection of a pre-modern multinational empire along modern language-based national lines. These groups have been supremely unstable, as the pursuit of their national goals has led them to develop convoluted and dangerous racial and religious ideologies, to initiate catastrophic wars, and to perpetrate genocide on an enormous scale.

John Myhill is a linguist in the English Department at the University of Haifa. He has been living in Israel since 1995. He has a Ph.D. in linguistics From the University of Pennsylvania (1984) and has written extensively on the Connection between language and nationalism. His two most recent books are Language in Jewish Society (Multilingual Matters 2004) and Language, Religion, and National Identity in Europe and the Middle East (John Benjamins 2006).

The Obi Igwara Memorial Lecture

The Politics of Believing

Morality, Rationality and Agency in Contemporary Africa

Speaker: Prof. Patrick Chabal (King's College London)

Date: Wednesday 16 January 2008

Time: 6:00pm

Venue: U8 Lecture Theatre, Tower 1, LSE

Patrick Chabal who studied political science at Harvard, Columbia and Cambridge universities, is Professor of Lusophone African Studies at King's College London, University of London. He has taught and done research in a number of African countries as well as in the USA and Europe. He is the author of a large number of articles and books on political change, leadership, identity, culture and literature. He will present a chapter from his forthcoming book on African Politics.

Athena S. Leoussi is a Lecturer in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading, UK. She is a founder editor of the journal Nations and Nationalism and author and editor of many articles and books on nationalism and national art.

Visualising Nationhood - A Grand Theory of National Identity

Speaker: Dr. Eric Kaufman (Birkbeck Collage)

Date: Wednesday 30 January 2008

Time: 6:00pm

Venue: Room D206, Clement House, LSE

Eric Kaufman is a Reader in Politics and Sociology in Birkbeck Collage. His main research focus is on issues of national identity and ethnic conflict, with other interests in cosmopolitanism and globalization, demographics and politics, politics and society in Northern Ireland, US/Canadian politics, and social capital/social change. He is author of The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America: the decline of dominant ethnicity in the United States (2004), editor of Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (2004).

The Rise of Nationalism in Turkey during the EU Accession Process

Speakers: Prof. Sami Zubaida, Dr. Can Dundar and Dr. Welat Zeydanlioglu

Date: Wednesday February 6 2008

Time: 6:00pm

Venue: Room D502 Clement House LSE

Prof. Sami Zubaida is an Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Research interests include Middle East Politics, Religion and Law, coupled with Nationalism.

Dr. Can Dundar was born in 1961 in Ankara. He graduated from the Media Department of the Ankara University. He was awarded his doctorate in 1996 by the Middle East Technical University. He has been working as a journalist since 1979. He is a current affairs columnist in Milliyet (newspaper). In addition, he has a TV programme on NTV (a Turkish television channel). He has also written several books and been involved in the production of many documentaries.

Dr. Welat Zeydanlioglu completed his PhD in Cultural Studies at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge in August 2007, titled ‘Kemalism’s Others: The Reproduction of Orientalism in Turkey.’ He is a founding member of the Research Unit for Intercultural and Transcultural Studies (RUITS) at the same university. His main research interests and publications are in the area of postcolonial theory, politics of nation-building and modern Turkish and Kurdish history.

Constructing national identities - Banknotes in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s

Speaker: Prof. Tim Unwin (Royal Holloway)

Date: Wednesday 5 March 2008

Time: 6:00pm

Venue: Room H101, Connaught House, LSE

The collapse of Soviet power in the late 1980s unleashed a diverse range of nationalist interests in central and eastern Europe during the 1990s. Almost two decades after these dramatic events, it is not easy to recapture something of the energy, dynamism and challenges associated with the shaping of new political, economic and social identities that were emerging in the region at this time. This paper reflects back on a British Academy funded project during the late 1990s that analyzed banknotes as expressions of these identities, and explores something of the relevance that they continue to have in shaping contemporary understandings of these places. The research combined innovative analysis of banknote imagery, and interviews with politicians, bankers, graphic artists and designers, and was undertaken in collaboration with the then curator of paper money at the British Museum, Virginia Hewitt. Tim Unwin is UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and Professor of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London.