Center for the Study of Nationalism

Director Carsten Schapkow, L.R. Brammer, Jr. Presidential Associate Professor in History, Department of History and Schusterman Center for Judaic and Israel Studies

The Center for the Study of Nationalism, under the leadership of Carsten Schapkow, associate professor of history and Judaic studies and L.R. Brammer Jr. Presidential Professor, brings together OU faculty from across the campus who are interested in nationalism studies. The center has also been a leader in establishing international research partnerships.

An essential part of the center’s activities is the collaboration with Nord University in Bodø, Norway. A workshop on "Nationalism in a Transnational Age" with a group of international scholars took place at Nord University on Nov. 25-26, 2019. The workshop and follow-up collaboration produced an edited volume that is forthcoming with de Gruyter Berlin in the summer of 2021. The Center for the Study of Nationalism will hold an online book celebration with the authors once the volume has been published.

An additional workshop on the topic of "Nationalism and Populism: Expressions of Fear and Political Strategies" was scheduled to take place on the OU campus in April 2020 but had to be postponed due to the pandemic. Some contributions from the proposed workshop will be published with de Gruyter in 2022 under the title, Nationalism and Populism: Expressions of Fear or Political Strategies?

The Center for the Study of Nationalism plans to extend the partnership with Nord University to faculty and student exchanges.

Illustrative of its role in integrating faculty from a wide range of disciplines, over the past 18 months the Center for the Study of Nationalism has hosted research-in-progress talks with OU faculty members Sandy Holguin (History), Afshin Marashi (International and Area Studies), Deonnie Moodie (Religious Studies), Erin Duncan-O’Neill (Art History) and Kaleigh Bangor (German/Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics). The Center also organized a March 2021 Zoom lecture by Professor Robert Norton, Notre Dame University, on the topic of “The Long Path to Democracy in Germany: Ernst Troeltsch and the First World War. ”