On 22 June I retired from the chair of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam. My valedictory lecture was entitled "Hiding in the Popcorn: How Romantic Nationalism survived into the 21st Century". A video recording of the event can be found here, and the text text of the lecture is here.
I am very happy to announce that my Charismatic Nations: A Cultural History of Nationalism in Europe from 1800 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2026) has appeared.
Charismatic Nations is the synoptic monograph analysing the materials brought together by hundreds of specallsts in the Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (“ERNiE”; Amsterdam University Press, ²2022).
Both are available in open access: ERNiE here and Charismatic Nations here.
The Dutch “History Month” this year thematizes fakes and fabrications, under the title Echt Nep (“real fake”). Given my own interest in the topic, I am contributing a public lecture for the Studium Generale programme of Maastricht University. The lecture’s powerpoint slides (in Dutch!) can be downloaded here as a PDF.
I have posted a conceptually indicative and incomplete checklist of some groups, individuals and symbols involved in racist nationalism since 1945.[....]