Recent research on the relationship between nations and empires have emphasized the need to rethink not only the very nature of this relationship, but also some of the standard paradigms in studies on nation-building, nationalism and the modern nation-state, from the late Middle Ages to the modern era. Scholarship on the late medieval and early modern period has drawn attention to early, avant la lettre occurrences of these phenomena, dating back as early as the 15th century. Meanwhile, historians of the modern period hold that there was no clear transition from empire to nation-state: in fact, imperial and national narratives and practices often resemble each other (Judson 2006, Schenk 2013). Eventually, the concept of nation often comes entangled with notions of “race,” “religion,” “ethnicity” and “class,” as well as with other markers of collective identifications in the early modern and modern period (Berger and Lorenz 2008).
The international conference “Nations and empires” aims to explore these relationships in all their conceptual and phenomenological complexity, through examples from Europe, Africa, and the Americas during the early modern and modern periods.
The conference will be structured around four main questions, bridging chronologies and spaces:
1) Inheritance, extension, reinvestment: (re-)thinking the transition to the national and its entanglements with the notion of empire.
2) Imagined communities, between empires and nations: issues, practices and representations.
3) Is the nation “modern”? Historical and historiographical constructions.
4) Embeddedness, compatibility, competition: (re-)thinking the relationship between empires and nations beyond the “ladder game” (Revel 2016).
The conference will be organized in four sessions, each of them consisting in a thematic round-table during which pre-circulated papers will be discussed.
How to apply?
Applicants are invited to send a 500-word long abstract and a short CV to the following email address before Monday, December 2nd, 2019: mathieu.grenet@univ-jfc.fr.
Please specify which of the four aforementioned general questions you intend to address in your paper.
Proposals will be reviewed by the conference’s organizing committee, and successful applicants will be notified by December 16th, 2019.
Paper contributions shall be sent to the organizing committee no later than Monday, March 30th, 2020, so as to be circulated among all participants.
The conference’s organization will pay for accommodation in Toulouse (2 nights); we therefore suggest guests to apply to their university or research center for travel funding and possible extra nights in Toulouse.
Please contact Mathieu Grenet with any questions: mathieu.grenet@univ-jfc.fr.
Organising Committee:
Volker Depkat, Universität Regensburg, Germany
Mathieu Grenet, Institut National Universitaire J.-F. Champollion, Albi, France
Susanne Lachenicht, Universität Bayreuth, Germany
Natacha Laurent, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France
Mathilde Monge, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France
Emmanuelle Perez-Tisserant, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France
Sébastien Rozeaux, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France