Updated Tuesday, January 11, 2011H35/EUST72, p1

Fascism

H35/EUST72

Prof. López

Spring 2011

T Th 10-11:20am

Office: 23 Chapin, x5846

This course addresses the vexing questions of what fascism is, whether it was a global phenomenon, and whether it has been historically banished. The semester begins with a consideration of conceptual issues related to nationalism, modernity, and fascism. Next we will address case studies, noting comparative continuities and regional peculiarities. The countries that will receive the most attention are Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Mexicoand Spain with additional attention to Australia,Chile,China, Japan, New Guinea, PalestinePortugal and Turkey. The course will close with an examination of women as agents of this radical ideology, links between fascism and environmentalism in Germany, and the applicability of the term “fascism” to contemporary movements in the Middle East. Two meetings per week.

In addition to introducing students to the historical debates surrounding fascism, this course uses guided readings, discussions, and frequent writing to help each student discover and pursue his or her own intellectual interests. Each student is expected to gradually identify for herself or himself the concerns that she or he finds most interesting, and to work through the dimensions of those issues. This is to be done through class discussions, conversations during office hours, journal writing, and the final project. Additionally, the course emphasizes how to formulate productive critical questions, how to draft concise analytical summations of the issues raised by texts, and how to devise your own intellectual inquiry and push along the avenues that you find most fascinating toward novel insights.

Books available at Food for Thought Books, downtown Amherst across from Starbucks):

  • Aristotle Kallis, Fascist Reader (NY: Routledge, 2003)
  • Richard Griffiths, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Fascism (Duckworth Publishers, 2001)
  • Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945 (Duke UP, 2010)

Coursepack available in history office in the basement of Chapin Hall

E-reserves available through your online portal.

Reading: Be an engaged, critical reader. Don’t absorb the text, argue with it. See “Getting to Know a History Book” on my website.

Map quiz: There will be a map quiz in which you will have to draw and label countries, cities, and regions on blank maps. The places you need to know are listed on the final page of this syllabus.

Writing:

  • Analytical journal, submitted in four installments. It will consist of the following:
  • A brief critical abstract of each reading (written in advance of each meeting, and revised after the meeting). In 3-5 sentences state the subject of the book or article, what the authors is trying to work out through his or her discussion of that subject, how he or she went about it, what sources her or she used and how he or she used them, what he or she argued, and what is at stake in his or her argument or interpretation.
  • Two critical/analytical questions for each meeting (NOT discussion prompts!) (written in advance of each meeting, and revised after the meeting). These can focus on issues you did not understand fully or that you found puzzling or contradictory; the authors’ use of inherently problematic or complex terms or ideas; themes that compare or contrast authors’ approaches, claims, or findings; or other issues that otherwise seem ripe for consideration.Every question must incorporate a clear indication as to why the question matters.
  • a 5-8page critical analysis of the texts from the section (This is not to be an overview, but a critical engagement through the texts with issues that you find engaging, confusing, and so forth) (you should work on this a little everyday, with final revision and organization just before the installment’s due date)
  • Final project
  • For the final project you have a choice:
  • Select a book that deals in some way with the topic of the course and write a 5-8 page critical analysis of some issue that emerges from your reading of that book
  • Or, you can propose some other kind of group or individual project that in some way grapples with the issues of the course. This can include the creation of original films, creative writing, visual art, or other possibilities. I encourage you to consider this option. If you decide to go this route, you must develop your project in conversation with me.

Formatting:All written work must be properly formatted. See the end of the syllabus for formatting instructions.

Attendance: Required. Five-College students must follow the AmherstCollege schedule for meeting times.

# &date / Title / Readings
01 / Introduction
02
Thurs. Jan. 27 / Nations & Nationalism /
  • (coursepack) Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Communities,” from Nations and Nationalism, edited by Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman (Edinburgh UP, 2005).
  • (coursepack) Walker Connor, “When is a nation?,” from Nationalism, edited by Hutchinson and Smith (New York: Oxford UP, 1994).
  • (coursepack) Walker Connor, “A Nation is a Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group, is a…” from Nationalism
  • (coursepack)(documents)from Nationalism
  • (document) Ernest Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” (1882)
  • (document) Joseph Stalin, “The Nation” (1913)

03
Tues. Feb. 1 / Historical Overview of Fascism in W. Europe /
  • (coursepack) Stanley Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945, pages 1-128

04
Thurs. Feb. 3 / Introduction to the Debates /
  • (book) Aristotle A. Kallis, editor, The Fascism Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003)
  • Gilbert Allardyce, “Generic Fascism: and ‘Illusion’”
  • Juan Linz, “Fascism as ‘latecomer’: An ideal type with negotiations”
  • Roger Eatwell, “A Spectral-Syncretic Approach to Fascism”
  • Stanley Payne, “”Fascism as a ‘generic’ concept”

05
Tues., Feb. 8 / Taking Seriously Fascist Ideology: Fascism and its Intellectuals in France /
  • (coursepack) A. James Gregor, Mussolini’s Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005), pp 1-60

06
Thurs., Feb. 10 / Taking Seriously Fascist Ideology: Fascism and its Intellectuals in Italy /
  • (book) Fascism Reader
  • Zeev Sternhell, “Fascist Ideology: A Dissident Revision of Marxism?”
  • (E-reserve) Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, ix-31

07
Tues., Feb. 15 / Race and Colonialism /
  • (coursepack) Stuart Hall, “Gramsci’s relevance for the study of race and ethnicity” in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (New York: Routledge, 1996), 411-440.
  • (book) Fascism Reader
  • Mark Neocleous, “Racism, fascism and nationalism”

08
Thurs., Feb. 17 / Map Quiz (I will be out of town, but someone will be available to administer the quiz)
09
Tues., Feb. 22 / Art, Race and Nation in the Avant Garde /
  • (coursepack) Mark Antliff, “Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The ‘Aestheticism’ of the ‘Action d’art’ Group, 1906-1921.” Oxford Art Journal 21(2)(1998): 101-120.
  • (coursepack) Mark Antliff, “The Jew as Anti-Artist: Georges Sorel, Anti-Semitism, and the Aesthetics of Class Consciousness.” Oxford Art Journal 20(1)(1997): 50-67.

10
Thurs., Feb. 24 / General Fascism Redux /
  • (book) Richard Griffiths, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Fascism (Duckworth Publishers, 2001), 1-113 & 153-155

First installment of journal due by the end of Friday, Feb. 25th. Email it to me a Word attachment. The subject of the email must be “Fascism Installment 1”
Part 2 / Global Fascism
11
Tues. , March 1 / England /
  • (coursepack)Martin Pugh, Hurrah for the Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (London, JonathanCape, 2005), 1-6, 51-74, 213-234, 261-286.
  • (book) Fascism Reader
  • Richard Thurlow, “Britain, the “British Union of the Fascists”

12
Thurs., March 3 / Spain /
  • (E-reserve) Ismael Saz Campos, “Fascism, fascistization and developmentalism in Franco’s dictatorship,” Social History 29(3)(August 2004): 342-357.
  • (coursepack) Juan Linz, “An Authoritarian Regime: Spain,” from Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century Spain, edited by Stanley Payne (New Cork: New Viewpoints, 1976), 160-207.
  • (book) Fascism Reader
  • Ellwood M. Sheelagh, “Spain: The ‘Falange’”

13
Tues., March 8 / Diffusion of Fascism?, German and Italian Policy /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe
  • Albrecht Hagemann, “The Diffusion of German Nazism”
  • Emilio Gentile, “I fasci italiani all’estero. The ‘Foreign Policy’ of the Fascist Party”

14
Thurs., March 10 / Diffusion of Fascism?, Iberian Policy /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe
  • Raanan Rein, “Francoist Spain and Latin America”
  • Helosia Paulo, “‘Portugal is here too!’ Salazarism and the Portuguese Community in Brazil”

Spring Recess: March 15 and 17. No class.

15
Tues., March 22 / No Class: I have to travel to Illinois for a talk
16
Thurs., March 24 / Nationalism as a Derivative Discourse? /
  • (coursepack) ParthaChatterjee, “Whose Imagined Community?” from The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton UP, 1993), 1-14.
  • (coursepack) Edward Said, Selections, from Culture and Imperialism

17
Tues., March 29 / Global Fascism I: East Asia /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe
  • Gregory Kasza, “Fascism from Above? Japan’s Kakusin Right in Comparative Perspective”
  • William Kirby, “Images and Realities of Chinese Fascism”

18
Thurs., March 31 / Global Fascism II: Eastern Mediterranean /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe
  • Firkret Adanir, “Kremalist Authoritarianism and Fascist Trends in Turkey during the Interwar Period”
  • Joseph Heller, “The Failure of Fascism in Jewish Palestine, 1935-1948”

19
Tues., April 5 / Global Fascism III: South Pacific /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe (divide up the readings)
  • John Perkins and Andrew Moore, “Fascism in Interwar Australia”
  • John Perkins, “The Swastika Among the Coconuts: Nazism in New Guinea in the 1930’s”
  • Mario Sznajder, “Was there fascism in Chile? The Movimiento Nacional Socialista in the 1930’s”

20
Thurs., April 7 / Global Fascism IV /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe
  • Stein Ugelvick Larson, “Was there Fascism outside Europe? Diffusion from Europe and Domestic Impulses”

Second installment of journal due by the end of Friday, April 8th. Email it to me a Word attachment.The subject of the email must be “Fascism Installment 2”
Part 3 / Fascism in Latin America: Three Cases (Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil)
21
Tues., April 12 / Mexico /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe
  • Nicolás Cárdenas and Mauricio Tenorio, “Mexico 1920’s-1940’s: Revolutionary Government, Reactionary Politics”
  • (to be distributed) “Gerardo Murillo (aka Doctor Atl): Father of Muralism?”
  • (to be distributed) (document) Dr Atl, speech, “La importancia mundial de la revolución mexicana,” (Dec. 12, 1914) from El símbola y la acción, edited by Olga Sáenz (Mexico: El Colegio Nacional, 2005), 588-601.
  • (E-reserve) (document) Carleton Beals, “The Mexican Fascisti,” Current History vol. 19 (October 1923 – March 1924), pp257-261.

22
Thurs., April 14 / Argentina I /
  • (book) Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945 (Duke University Press, 2010), overview and pp1-118

23
Tues., April 19 / Argentina II /
  • (book) Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism, pp 118-end
  • (coursepack)(document) from Daniel James, Doña María’s Story, pp 70-91.

24
Thurs., April 21 / Brazil /
  • (to be distributed) from Fascism Outside of Europe
  • Trindade Helgio, “Fascism and Authoritarianism in Brazil”
  • (coursepack) (document) Bailey Diffie, Comments on the Estado Novo, from Brazil Reader 200-203.
  • (coursepack) (document) Plinio Salgado, “The Fourth Era of Humanity Dawns” (1934) and “The Soul of the Nation Awakens” (1935), from Fascism, edited by Roger Griffin (NY: Oxford UP, 1995), 234-237

Third installment of journal due by the end of Friday, April 22nd. Email it to me a Word attachment. The subject of the email must be “Fascism Installment 3”
Part 4 / Three Debates: Women, Nature, and Islam
25
Tues., April 26 / Women and Gender in Fascism in Europe and Latin America, Part I /
  • (coursepack) Kevin Passmore, Introduction and Conclusion, Women, Gender, and Fascism in Europe (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2003).
  • (coursepack) Richard Evans, chapter 6, Comrades and Sisters: Feminism, Socialism and Pacifism in Europe, 1870-1945 (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1987)
  • (coursepack) Victoria de Grazia, “Nationalizing Women: The Competition between Fascist and Commercial Cultural Models in Mussolini’s Italy,” from The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, edited by Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (Berkeley: University of California, 1996).

26
Thurs., April 28 / Women and Gender in Fascism in Europe and Latin America, Part II /
  • (coursepack) Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Spreading Right-Wing Patriotism, Femininity, and Morality,” from Radical Women in Latin America: Left and Right, edited by Victoria González and Karen Kampwirth (University Park: PennsylvaniaStateUniversity, 2001).
  • (coursepack) Blackshirt women article (I have a copy on my computer)
  • (coursepack) Martin Dunham, “Britain,” from Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe.

27
Tues., May 3 / Nazism’s Legacy in German Environmentalism /
  • (coursepack) Michael Imort, “A Sylvan People: Wilhelmine Forestry and the Forest as a Symbol of Germandom,” in Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History, edited by Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers UP, 2005). 55-80.
  • (coursepack) Jonathan Olsen, Nature and Nationalism: Right-Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), pp1-6

28
Thurs., May 5 / “Islamo-Fascism”? /
  • (to be distributed) Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (YaleUniversity Press, 2009), 1-14
  • (to be distributed) Jeffrey Bale, “Islamism and Totalitarianism,” Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions Jun2009, Vol. 10 Issue 2, p73-96.
  • (to be distributed) Jeffrey Herf, interview.

Final installment of journal due by the end of Friday, May 6th. Email it to me a Word attachment. The subject of the email must be “Fascism Installment 4”
Final paper or project due by the end of May 10th.

To study for the map quiz:

Countries AND their capital cities
Afghanistan / China / Israel / Portugal
Algeria / Egypt / Italy / Russia
Argentina / England / Japan / Spain
Australia / France / Mexico / Syria
Austria / Germany / Morocco / Turkey
Brazil / India / New Guinea
Chile / Iraq / Poland
Regions
Africa / Black Forest (Germany) / Mediterranean Sea / Palestine
Alps / Central America / Middle East / South America
Asia / Europe / North Africa / Southern Cone
AndesMountains (full extent) / Iberia / North America

Grading:

Class Attendance and Participation……………………………….…………….……...37%

Attendance12%

Participation25%

Map quiz……………………………………………………………….……….………..5%

Written work and Final project (all weighed equally)……………………. .….…..…..58%

*Students with any disability should speak with me at the beginning of the semester about any special arrangements they may require

Formatting

Instructions

Important!

Points will be deducted for noncompliance

Every written assignment must

  • Place your name at the top of the document
  • Font must be black, 12pt, Times
  • Pages must be numbered
  • Ideas and quotes from others that you build upon must be acknowledged in the prose of your writing (Example: “Though Alexander de Grande argues that fascism was thuggery with no intellectual content, Gregor encourages us to consider….)
  • Ideas and quotes from others must be footnoted (do not use in-text citations)
  • All footnotes must be properly formatted. Note that bibliography entries and footnotes citations are formatted differently than one another. The first time you cite something in a journal installment or an essay you must include the full citation; subsequently you can use the short form.
  • Margins must be 1 inch on all sides (not 1.25”, not .8”)
  • The subject of the email carrying the attachment must read “Fascism Installment #”, replacing the # with the number of the Installment.
  • If it is a journal installment, include ONLY the material from that section of the syllabus, NOT everything we have done thus far in the semester

Note on plagiarism: When you take the words, work, or ideas of someone else and pass them off as your own you are committing plagiarism. This includes misusing works that are cited elsewhere in your paper. Always be explicit about when you are building upon the ideas of others, and when you are taking things in your own direction. If you decide to plagiarize your will receive an “F” for the entire course and I will turn the matter over to the dean with a recommendation for expulsion from AmherstCollege. If you have any doubt about how to acknowledge the work of others in your footnotes, consult the style guide or come see me.

January 24, 2011: All day: Classes begin

March 12, 2011 until March 20: Spring Recess. (Residence halls remain open.)

May 6, 2011: All day: Last day of classes

May 7, 2011until May 8: Reading/Study Period

May 9, 2011until May 13: Examination Period

May 16, 2011 9:00 am: Grades due for seniors

May 18, 2011 4:00 pm: Grades due for non-seniors

May 22, 2011 All day: Commencement