Friday, July 25, 2008

Syllabus for Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism

Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism
ICP
3 Credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2008
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.
And
Munara Omuralieva


Course Description: This course will cover the relationship between the overlapping and interrelated concepts of ethnicity, nationalism and race. It will focus on the dynamics involved in transforming ethnic categories into national or racial ones. Throughout the course we will examine the cultural basis of ethnicity, the political claims upon territory by nationalists, and the essential and primordial definitions of racial groups created and enforced by the state. Among the topics that will be covered in this examination are the creation and survival of national diasporas, ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the construction of modern nation-states.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, student led discussions, an annotated bibliography, a literature review and two oral presentations. Each week between three and five students, one for each article, will be assigned to lead class discussion on the topic on Wednesday. Every student will be responsible for conducting class discussion once during the semester. Additionally, every student will have to compile an annotated bibliography dealing with ethnicity, nationalism and race in a specific country. This bibliography should contain no less than fifteen journal articles found on JSTOR or EBSCOHOST. Students will be required to give a short oral report on this bibliography during weeks five, six and seven. A written version is due on week seven. Students are then to turn this annotated bibliography into a formal literature review. They will be required to do an oral report on this work during weeks twelve, thirteen, fourteen and fifteen. A written version of the literature review is due at the start of week sixteen. The literature review should be between 3000 and 4000 words long. Late papers will lose one letter grade for each day they are late. Students must come to class on time. Being more than fifteen minutes late will count as an absence. Students will lose one letter grade after four unexcused absences and fail the course after seven. Written proof of an emergency from a doctor or other appropriate authority is required for an absence to be excused. No mobile phones are to be visible during class. They are to be out of sight and turned off. I will eject any student from class that has a visible cell phone or whose cell phone rings during class. This will count as an unexcused absence. Finally, I have a significant hearing loss and may have to ask people to repeat their questions or statements from time to time. You can minimize this by speaking loudly and clearly. This syllabus is tentative and subject to change.

Readings: All of the required readings can be found on JSTOR. Finding these articles using the bibliographic information provided below is part of the assigned work for this class.

Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying of from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, end note or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by putting it completely in your own words and citing it with the proper footnote, end note or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.

Grading:

Leading and conducting assigned seminar: 20%

Oral report on annotated bibliography: 10%

Written version of annotated bibliography: 25%

Oral report on literature review: 15%

Written version of literature review: 30%

Class Schedule:

Week One: Introduction to Course and Review of Syllabus

Week Two: Ethnicity and Nationalism

Calhoun, Craig, “Nationalism and Ethnicity,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 19 (1993), pp. 211-239.

Connor, Walker, “Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?,” World Politics, Vol. 24, No. 3 (April 1972), pp. 319-355.

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, “Ethnicity Versus Nationalism,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 28, No. 2 (August 1991), pp. 263-278.

Smith, Anthony D., “Culture, Community and Territory: The Politics of Ethnicity and Nationalism,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 445-458.

Week Three: Diasporas

Armstrong, John, “Mobilized and Proletarian Diasporas,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (June 1976), pp. 393-408.

Clifford, James, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 3, (August 1994), pp. 302-338.

Cohen, Robin, “Diasporas and the Nation-State: From Victims to Challengers,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 507-520.

Van Den Berghe, Pierre, L. “The African Diaspora in Mexico, Brazil and the United States,” Social Forces, Vol. 54, No. 3 (March 1976), pp. 530-545.

Week Four: Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide

Bryant, Chad, “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939-1946,” Slavic Review, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 683-706.

Falah, Ghazi, “The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and Its Aftermath: The Transformation and De-Signification of Palestine’s Cultural Landscape,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 86, No. 2 (June 1996), pp. 256-285.

Hayden, Robert M., “Schindler’s Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers,” Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter 1996), pp. 727-748.

Mirkovic, Damir, “Ethnic Conflict and Genocide: Reflections on Ethnic Cleansing in the Former Yugoslavia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 548 (November 1996), pp. 191-199.

Wood, William, “Geographic Aspects of Genocide: A Comparison of Bosnia and Rwanda,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2001), pp. 57-75.

Weeks Five, Six and Seven: Student presentations of Annotated Bibliography – Written versions of the bibliography due on Wednesday of week seven.

Week Eight: Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR

Martin, Terry, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 1998), pp. 813-861.

Morris, James, “The Polish Terror: Spy Mania and Ethnic Cleansing in the Great Terror,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 5 (July 2004), pp. 751-766.

Williams, Brian Glyn, “The Hidden Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims in the Soviet Union: The Exile and Repatriation of the Crimean Tatars,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 3 (July 2002), pp. 323-347.

Week Nine: Ethnicity and Race in the USSR

Hirsch, Francine, “Race without the Practice of Racial Politics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 30-43.

Lemon, Alaina, “Without a ‘Concept?’ Race as Discurvsive Practice,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 54-61.

Weiner, Amir, “Nothing but Certainty,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 44-53.

Weitz, Eric D., “Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 1-29.

Weitz, Eric D., “On Certainties and Ambivalencies: Reply to my Critics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 62-65.

Week Ten: Soviet and Post-Soviet Nation Building

Blitstein, Peter, “Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjuncture: Soviet Nationality Policy in Its Comparative Context,” Slavic Review, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 273-293.

Handrahan, L.M., “Gendering Ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan: Forgotten Elements in Promoting Peace and Democracy,” Gender and Development, Vol. 9, No. 3 (November 2001), pp. 70-78.

Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 414-452.

Suny, Ronald Grigor, “Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, No. 4 (December 2001), pp. 862-896.

Week Eleven: Ethnicity and Race in Israel/Palestine

Rouhana, Nadim and Ghanem, Asad, “The Crises of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (August 1998), pp. 321-346.

Shohat, Ella, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims,” Social Text, No. 19/20 (Autumn 1988), pp. 1-35.

Yiftachel, Oren, “ ‘Ethnocracy’ and its Discontents: Minorities, Protests, and the Israeli Polity,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer 2000), pp. 725-756.

Weeks Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen: Student Presentations of Literature Review

Week Sixteen: Written Version of Literature Review due on Monday and Concluding Remarks

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