Marie-Pierre Le Hir, Professor of French presented a lecture on March 26, 2008. It was the third in the series of Wednesday, March 26 colloquia by and for the faculty of the College of Humanities. Each occasion features a talk about current research by a member of the faculty followed by discussion. The venue for these colloquia is the Swede Johnson Building.

Many critics since Marx have predicted “the end of the nation,” only to be proven wrong. Does Norbert Elias’s concept of “national habitus” provide a better way of explaining the durability of the national form of social organization than theories of nationalism based on language, borders, race, and ethnicity? How valuable is this particular brand of sociology for literary and cultural criticism? These are some of the questions open for debate.