NISE has published the 2012 SPIN lecture by Anne-Marie Thiesse on the use made of so-called traditional folk art for the modern formation of nations.
This building block in the cultural construction of the nation as imagined community, part of its personification as a physical body, represented even a vital mobilising activity. The author also proves successfully, presenting examples from all over the world, that those presumably old art and folk traditions were the product of transnational cultural transfers from the 19th century onwards.
Anne-Marie Thiesse is researcher at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and member of the NISE Scientific Council.
She will present the publication at the next NISELecture, on 27 March 2014, at the Flemish Heritage Library in Antwerp (Belgium).
The international comparative angle and the focus on the transfer of ideas in the text, originally a lecture delivered for a NISE Network member, the SPIN project directed by Joep Leerssen from the University of Amsterdam, fits hand in glove with the NISE remit.
As explained in its introduction, the publication inaugurates the transition of NISE to a next stage putting the database central to its activities.
Moreover, this publication is the first in the new NISE Monographs series.
Order your copy here.
PDF available here