* JULY 13-18, 2003, INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS, SANTIAGO, CHILE * OCTOBER 9-11, 2003, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE Scholarship and debate on the historical origins and meaning of nationalism has flourished in recen

* JULY 13-18, 2003, INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICANISTS, SANTIAGO, CHILE

* OCTOBER 9-11, 2003, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Scholarship and debate on the historical origins and meaning of nationalism has flourished in recent years but with far too little attention to the new nations that emerged in the Americas. Benedict Anderson pointed to the critical importance of these "Creole pioneers" in showing the world what the new nation states of the modern world would look like, but there has been little effort to explore the mutual influences between Europe, North America, and Latin America.

Nationalism was very much an international project that involved the entire Atlantic community in an exchange of ideas, models, and leaders.
Europe, North America, and Latin America were all transformed by the currents of nationalism that flowed across the Atlantic in the "long nineteenth century" between c1776 and c1919. In contrast to the European emphasis on imagined historical communities, American nationalism had to be fashioned out of multi-ethnic populations without a deep past who were thought to be united by civic ideals, collective interests, and a common destiny.

Our goal is to bring together scholars across disciplinary and national boundaries, to connect the European and American experience in nation building, and promote fresh ways of thinking about the nature of nationalism, its origins and meaning, and its appeal as a popular ideology.

The Santiago conference will be part of the 51st International Congress of Americanists (ICA) and will involve at least ten panels and 30 or more people. Travel and other expenses will be borne by the participants or their institutions. We welcome proposals that include entire panels but will also accept individual proposals. We expect many will want to participate in both events and they may wish to present versions of the same paper at each event.

For more on the 51st ICA, see: http://www.uchile.cl/vaa/americanista

The Vanderbilt conference will involve a smaller number of scholars who will be invited to prepare original essays as the basis for their oral presentations at the conference; others will be invited to serve as commentators and keynote speakers. We plan to publish a book of original essays selected from those submitted by the participants; it will be published in English and Spanish/Portuguese editions. All expenses and an honorarium will be awarded to those selected for this conference. (full funding is pending however).

The conferences will draw together a group of international scholars from a variety of disciplines including history, social sciences, literature, and cultural studies. Participants will be encouraged to cross national and academic frontiers that will join their work on the Americas to the larger discussion on nationalism. We invite papers that deal broadly with themes of nationalism and nation building in the Americas as well as the exchange between Europe and the Americas an within the Americas. Papers may focus on one nation or on broader geographic regions. They may deal with intellectual and political elites and their roles in formulating new nations or with popular nationalism as represented in literature, art, music, holidays, heroes, and myths. We also welcome theoretical papers that deal with the special features of nationalism and nation building in the Americas.

Send one-page proposals for either or both conferences, along with a brief C.V. to :

DON H. DOYLE, Nelson Tyrone, Jr., Professor of History, Vanderbilt University: don.h.doyle@vanderbilt.edu

or

MARCO PAMPLONA, Professor of History, Catholic University and Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: pamplona@rdc.puc-rio.br