Nations and Identities

This anthology brings together selections from some of the most significant writings on the idea of national identity over the last 400 years and includes important contributions to contemporary debates in the social sciences and postcolonial studies.

"Pecora is an extremely thoughtful, intelligent, and substantial scholar. This book will be enormously helpful to students and teachers in colonial and postcolonial studies. The selections are wide-ranging and acutely chosen, and will allow students to connect history to the present, or better still, to see the present as part of a continuing, questionable history." Michael Wood, Princeton University "This is a timely, reader-friendly anthology that should be widely used both for academic and for more general purposes. It offers 'classic readings,' as well as a range of 'contemporary perspectives.' The introduction provides a clear overview from the 1600s down to our postcolonial and transnational moment." Patrick Brantlinger, Indiana University "Providing an excellent selection of key documents from Hobbes's Leviathan (1651)to Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism (1993), Nations and Identities offers the reader genuine insight into the way problems of nation-building and unbuilding, identity-formation and deformation have been addressed across time. Pecora introduces the anthology with an incisive essay that outlines major issues shaping the contemporary discussion of nations and national identity. This book will be of great value for its readers both in courses and across the disciplines." Dominick LaCapra, Cornell University

Vincent P. Pecora is Professor of English and Director of the Center for Modern and Contemporary Studies at UCLA. His book publications include Self and Form in Modern Narrative (1989) and Households of the Soul (1997).