Collective identities play not only a crucial role in the cultural, social and political life, but also in humanities research. The aim of this reading group is to exchange and profit from the theoretical, conceptual and empirical variety provided by humanities research on various forms of collective identities (i.e. national, ethnic, regional, civilizational, artistic, imaginary, political, religious, spatial, urban etc.). Next to reading the work of renowned classic humanities scholars and cutting edge ones, the emphasis however will be on discussing draft versions of participants' own work. 

In this way, the reading group contributes both to the scope of knowledge on collective identities (given the different themes and approaches) and to the concrete applicability of this variety to one’s own research. Since many mechanisms and phenomena within collective identities (such as boundary making, stereotyping, essentialism, identification, politicization, etc.) transcend particular case studies or disciplines, scholars can benefit concretely from each other’s knowledge.  [....]

We are proud to announce that Kim Simonsen, post-doc at SPIN, was awarded the Faroese Literature Price 2014 in the category fiction for his collection of poems "Hvat hjálpur einum menniskja at vakna ein morgun hesumegin hetta áratúsundi" (2013). The judges on the collection: "Words, images and design are a part of an artistic whole, which represents the existential foundation of the persona in the collection. Travels, arrivals and departures as well as heartbreak, boredom combined with the ever-present blind chance of human biology, these forces of life no one can escape are crystallised in how the persona images the role of man and our consciousness. The poems are serious and operate with wide geographical and intertextual angles. Time and space are not fixed, only death defines a natural and endless circulation, questioning if anyone of us did leave any trace in the many billiard years lifetime of the Earth." Check out the ceremony and an interview with Simonsen for Faroese Television here.

University of Groningen, the Netherlands

27-29 November 2014[....]

Funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, a project on “National Music” is being developed at the University of Amsterdam in close collaboration with SPIN. The SPIN website will include a a variety of materials on musical nationalism.

This will include:[....]

The time-dynamic maps of cultural developments across Europe and across the 19th century (accessible under the menu header "SpInTime mappings") are now demonstrated by means of four short demonstration videos explaining how to use their interface.

You can view these videos by way of the links below[....]

This year's SPIN lecture will be delivered by Benedict Anderson. The title is: Lost in Translation: The odd history of «Imagined Communities», 1983-2013. The lecture, which is co-organized with the Huizinga-Institute and the University of Amsterdam's Departments of History and European Studies, will take place on Thursday 12 September at 17:00 in the Oudemanhuispoort, hall D008.

This is the fifth annual SPIN lecture. SPIN lecturers in previous years were John Breuilly, Miroslav Hroch, Peter Burke and Anne-Marie Thiesse.

The second volume of the Proceedings of the Germanisten (held in Lübeck in 1847, as a follow-up to the Frankfurt 1846 meeting) has now been fully digitized as a searchable text and placed online under Resources > Writings. The session was once again chaired by Jacob Grimm, and many delegates were to become members of the Frankfurt Parliament the next year.

For more information on this crucial interface between philology and nationalism, see the introduction by Katinka Netzer, and her book Wissenschaft aus nationaler Sehnsucht: Verhandlungen der Germanisten 1846 und 1847 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2006).

The text of the 2012 SPIN lecture, held by Anne-Marie Thiesse of the CNRS and author of the classic La création des identités nationales, is now online. Its title is The Transnational Creation of National Arts and Crafts in 19th-Century Europe. The text can be accessed in PDF form under the rubric "Outcomes"  (together with the texts of the other SPIN lectures) or by clicking [[download file="pdf/Thiesse2012.pdf" icon="" text="here" title="" ]].

Dynamically visualizing how exchange networks evolve in space and time

SPIN aims to map the epidemic dissemination of cultural nationalism across Europe by charting networks as they evolve over time. A new, expanded and more flexibly interactive version is now online. These features can be accessed by clicking here  (NOTE: this will work in most browsers, but NOT in Internet Explorer 8).[....]

Nineteenth century literature articulated a specific romantic of the nation. Almost all European literatures contain foundational texts in the literary foundation of the country’s identity. Many of these texts are online. Click here.