Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Violence in the Contemporary World

What is the nature of ethnicity? How is ethnicity politicized into nationalism? What is the nature of nationalism? How does nationalism often lead to political violence? What are the dynamics of political violence? Finally, what strategies can the central state use to deal with violent ethnonationalist movements? This course seeks to answer these types of questions both conceptually and within a comparative framework. Particular emphasis will be placed on understanding and critically assessing competing descriptive and explanatory theories for these phenomena. In addition, we will analyze the comparative origins, dynamics, and trajectories of several ethnonationalist movements within the context of the thematic readings. The primary goal of this course is to provide students with a critical understanding of the complex phenomena of ethnicity, nationalism and political violence, and to spark their intellectual curiosity into areas for future explanatory research.