[ANTH V3980] Nationalism

I don't want to gush because then people will not take this review seriously. Partha Chatterjee is, simply put, a fantastic professor, and for so many reasons. 1) You do the readings and then Chatterjee has a way of boiling down the concepts and making them so much easier to grasp all while raising issues you would not consider on your own. Just a wonderful lecturer. 2) He's clearly brilliant, distinguished in his field, and without much spare time, but for an hour and a quarter 2 days a week he makes you believe that the class is the most important thing to him. 3) His writing is often the most impressive stuff on a subject but he doesn't ram his own work down your throat -- we read one book and one article by him out of the 5 books and dozens of articles over the semester. The list goes on and on -- there's tons to say about Chatterjee, but there's limited space here.

This class is not easy. It definitely brough out what I thought was my best writing, but he (and the TA) expect a lot from the papers. But if the topic intrigues you at all, you will probably love the class and the prof. I think I came away from this class with both a grasp of the information and also the methodology behind this field.

Since this class does address hot-button issues of what constitutes a nation and how nations are constructed and conceptualized, you will invariably get holier-than-thou, soap box standing, pontificators whom you may or may not want to punch in the face. If you can laugh off the fact that they use classtime as a pulpit for their radical commie views and concentrate on the substantive and wonderful things that Chatterjee says each and every day, you will love this class and it will definitely be up there with the best classes you've ever taken here.