Gender and Nationalism Studies

What a wonderfully thoughtful exchange! I totally agree that there is need for more studies that explore how gender functions as a historical variable. However, my own impressionistic archival and literature survey related to a significant historical moment (Shrivastava, 2016) makes me see the existing literature on women’s participation in nationalist movements in a very different light.

Call for Papers:

Imagination und Wirkungsmacht

Frauen ∙ Männer ∙ Westen ∙ Osten

eine interdisziplinäre Tagung

von 8. bis 9. Dezember 2016

in der Österreich Bibliothek Bernhard Stillfried Klausenburg

Wenn wir die Welt wahrnehmen, bewerten und über sie sprechen, bedienen wir uns verschiedener Ordnungskategorien – so teilen wir beispielsweise Menschen ein in ‹weiblich› oder ‹männlich›; Orte in ‹östlich› oder ‹westlich›. Diese Begriffe bezeichnen diskursive Konstruktionen, die auf verschiedenen Ebenen enorme Wirkungsmacht ausüben.

Dear all,

In that context, I'd like to point you to my own work on banal nationalism and sexuality, in my recently defended PhD on '(Trans)national Queers Online: An Analysis of LGBTQ Websites in Poland and Turkey'.

In that work, I deal with many aspect of the complicated relationship between nation/alism and sexuality, drawing on such concepts as 'homonationalism', 'queering the nation', 'domesticating the nation', and of course 'banal nationalism'. My condensed conclusions could be found in two recently published articles:

Thanks Nicole for sharing a great bibliography...and thank Ryan for referring us to an interesting text .
Nicole also observes that the burgeoning literature on sex/gender and nationalism isn't being incorporated into
the 'mainstream' literature....questioning its invisibility. Ryan makes an interesting distinction between how (male?)
nationalists Imagine 'woman' in the nation and how women activists experience nationalism and conceptualize
themselves in the nation. The former focus on sexuality and reproduction; the latter on agency and change..

If you have not encountered it, I'd recommend reading Prasenjit Duara's article "The Regime of Authenticity: Timelessness, Gender, and National History in Modern China," History & Theory 37.3 (1998), 287-308. It's less about women nationalists than about how Chinese nationalists imagined "Woman" in the nation -- but it places gender squarely in the frame of nationalism studies.

Ryan Dunch
University of Alberta

Thanks very much for the references and for the interest shown...
I already see that one problem is language with important texts on the theme in languages I don't read. Much can be gained by sharing our experiences across language barriers. For example, the rich literature in French on gender and nationalism in Quebec is surveyed by Micheline de Seve in the special issue of the Journal of Canadian Studies (2000) on the theme of 'Canadian Women's Experiences with Nationalisms ' that also focuses on Indigenous nationalisms.

Dear All, 

I've created a page that will automatically hold all H-Nationalism content pertaining to gender and nationalism studies based on the keyword: Gender and Nationalism Studies.  The page is here and already holds our current thread.  H-Nationalism would love to see more discussion of this subject, and if any of you are interested in helping out in an editorial capacity on this front, please let me know at dmprior@unm.edu.