UCL ResNet Conference 2024: Historical Roots, Modern Realities - Nationalism Across the Americas

The history of nationalism in the Americas is a complex and multifaceted one. From the revolutionary anti-imperial imaginaries of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries to the recent rise of the ‘new nationalism’ of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Javier Milei, ideas of nationhood have indelibly shaped the political, social, and cultural lives of those living within the Americas. Nationalism has been marked by both inclusive and exclusionary tendencies, promoting national integration and cultural and intellectual production while simultaneously defining ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’ and fuelling conflict and ethnic, racial, religious, and gendered violence.

Historical Roots, Modern Realities is dedicated to exploring nationalism throughout the Americas and the Caribbean, in all its many forms, through trans- and inter-hemispheric perspectives. National ideologies neither exist nor develop in isolation. They are instead moulded by international dynamics of empire, globalisation, trade, migration, environment, religion, and culture, among others. Exploring nationalism beyond geopolitical borders highlights how nationalism is both defined by and in opposition to such transnational dynamics, encouraging a more expansive understanding of nationalism’s many international effects. We welcome papers that investigate the formation and effects of nationalism in unexpected places, times, and contexts. Inspired by Benedict Anderson’s classical argument regarding nationalism’s American origins, we are also interested in how nationalism within the Americas diffused across the Atlantic, Pacific, and beyond, shaping how the nations of the Americas exist within the world and in relation to each other.

For queries and submissions please email nationalismacrosstheamericas@gmail.com 

Programme

STATE-BUILDING IN LATIN AMERICA

10.00- 11.30 | Chair: Pablo Uchoa

Stephanie Ashton-Sanchez (UCL) | Centennial Celebrations of Colombia’s Independence: The Case of Ciénaga, 1910-1911

Marieta Valdivia Lefort (UCL) | Reparation for Chile’s Economic Independence: The Role of Citizenship Formation in National Progress (1912-1931)

Fernando Remache-Vinueza (Bremen) | Modernization in the Southern Cone: National Identity Myths and Developmentalism in Argentina 1958-1962

BLACK THOUGHT

11.45 - 13.15 | Chair: Frankie Chappell

Marietta Kosma (Oxford) | Nationalism and Motherhood in Alice Walker’s Meridian

Jordan Powell (UCL) | Ontological Antonyms? On W.E.B Du Bois’ Disaffected ‘American Negro’

Laura Wilson (Independent Scholar) | ‘The Ambiguous Domain’: Representations of Cuba and Haiti in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

NATIONALISM BEYOND BORDERS

14.15-15.45 | Chair: Shodona Kettle

Francesca Edgerton (UCL) | A Diplomatic Defence of Asylum: Mexico at the Inter-American Conferences of 1928 and 1933

Aidan Jones (KCL) | The Theatre of Diplomacy and Nationalism: Prince Alfred and the Americas

Zaka Toto (Université des Antilles) | Martinique has its Flag

NATIONALISM & COMMEMORATION IN THE U.S.

16.00-17.30 | Chair: Thomas Cryer

Nathalie Dupont (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale) | Godsploitation, Godlywood and American Nationalism

Michelle Graabek (Independent Scholar) | The ‘Swedish Rebellion’ in Utah of 1902 and Tension between Religion, Cultural Identity, and Nationalism

Pat O’Connor (Wichita State) | Commemoration, Honor, and Fraternity: The Sons of Confederate Veterans Mechanized Cavalry

Will Ranger (UCL) | Celebrating America’s Birthday: Young People, Public Education, and the American Revolutionary Bicentennial of 1976

NEW BOOK PANEL, CO-SPONSORED BY USSO: THE NEW NATIONALISM IN AMERICA & BEYOND 

17.40-18.30 | Chair: Will Ranger

United States Studies Online co-sponsored discussion of The New Nationalism in America and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2023) with the authors Eric Taylor Woods (University of Plymouth) and Robert Schertzer (University of Toronto).

KEYNOTE ADDRESS 

19.00-20.00

A distinguished keynote from Alvita Akiboh (Yale) the author of Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2023).