Gary Gerstle’s paper on the major struggles over race and nation in an era defined by the war on terror, the presidency of Barack Obama and the election of Donald Trump opens our new seminar series ‘The Long History of Ethnicity & Nationhood Reconsidered’. The paper will be accompanied by the presentation of the second edition of Gary Gerstle’s book ‘American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century’, to be released by Princeton University Press in February 2017. In this sweeping history of twentieth-century America Gerstle traces the forces of civic and racial nationalism, arguing that both profoundly shaped American society.
‘The Long History of Ethnicity & Nationhood Reconsidered’ Seminar aims at systematically rethinking the history and theory of ethnicity, nationhood and nationalism. The full programme of the seminar is available at torch.ox.ac.uk/identity.