COR 396 COMPARATIVE NATIONALISM, COMPARATIVE REGIONALISM: ITALY AND THE UNITED STATES
In the 1860s, Italians and Americans were each in the business of making nations. A complex coalition of Italians from the North and South pushed occupying armies out of their peninsula, peeled back the temporal authority of the Pope, and created the modern nation of Italy. In the United States, white Southerners fought to create a new nation, the Confederate States of America, while white Northerners and black Americans fought to preserve the Union and to give the United States a "new birth of freedom." After the conclusion of the American Civil War states ratified a series of amendments that fundamentally altered the role of the federal government. This course will explore the rise and meaning of nationalism in the Italian and American contexts with special attention to nationalism's remarkable malleability and its use by both centralist and separatist movements. This course is writing intensive. Open to students in the third or fourth year of study. Counts toward the Italian Studies minor."