Catalogue Description: Reading and discussion course for majors covering a specific topic of history. Emphasis on historiography; consideration of numerous interpretations.
Topic Description: What does it mean to be "Southern?" What does it mean to be "Italian?" Who gets to decide? In the same era that secessionists like William Lowndes Yancey and Robert Barnwell Rhett in the American South dreamed of creating a new Confederacy, Italians such as Giuseppi Mazzini and Giuseppi Mazzini struggled to "throw off the Austrian yoke" and create a "reborn nation" of Italy. Their efforts provoked a Civil War in America and generated the Italian Risorgimento. In the aftermath, Americans and Italians struggled to reconcile their first nationalist hopes with the realities, disappointments, and unexpected opportunities of post-unification. In this seminar we will explore the story of the creation and collapse of the Confederate nation and the contemporaneous movement for Italian unification and its consequences. We will read some engaging recent comparative studies of the two movements, explore the biographies of key leaders and those who opposed them (including aristocrats and slaves, commoners and competitors), examine how local communities (the Carolina Piedmont and the Italian Piemonte region, for example) encountered nationalism, and will consider the ways that the histories and symbols created in this era still energize and divide Americans and Italians. Along the way we will look at concepts of nationalism in the trans-Atlantic context, study the role of language, religion, economics, history, and legend in shaping national identity, and ponder how ideas of nationalism refracted along lines of class, gender, race, and geography.