In the long nineteenth century the “modernization” of the Ottoman Empire went hand in hand with intensive discussions in intellectual circles about the (modern) nature of collective identities. “Cultural nationalisms” like the Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian, Armenian, Turkish or Arab developed to become increasingly significant factors in cultural and political life. But these “new” projects also stood in relation/competition with supra-ethnic projects like Ottomanism, Islamism, Pan-Slavism, Neo-Byzantinism, etc. The aim of this course is to a) recapitulate the different cultural nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire, b) see which common traits can be found in their evolution, and c) discuss also the interconnectedness of cultural nationalisms with the state-run policy of Ottomanism and/or other forms of identifications transcending the “national divides”. close