Table of Contents

Acknowledgments. List of Contributors. Introduction. 1. The Small Nation With a Big Dream: Québec National Myths (eighteenth–twentieth centuries) 2. National Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age: The Case of English Canada 3. The Myth(s) that Will Not Die: American National Exceptionalism 4. Ethnic Myths as National Identity in Brazil 5. Understanding Mexico’s Master Myth: A Case for Theory 6. 1066 and All That: Myths of the English 7. Polish Mythology and the Traps of Messianic Martyrology 8. Myths and National Identity Choices in Post-Communist Russia 9. Myth and the Postnational Polity: The Case of the European Union 10. Transforming Myths, Contested Narratives: The Reshaping of Mnemonic Traditions in Israeli Culture 11. War Room Stories and the Rainbow Nation: Competing Narratives in Contemporary South African Literature 12. Gender, Nehanda, and the Myth of Nationhood in the Making of Zimbabwe 13. War, Myths, and National Identity Formation: Chinese Attitudes toward Japan 14. Lineages and Lessons (for national myth formation) of Japan’s Postwar National Myths 15. Myths of the Nation, Cultural Recognition, and Personal Law in India 16. National Myths: An Overview

About the Author

Gérard Bouchard is a Member of the Royal Society of Canada and the Académie des lettres du Québec. He is Professor at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Trained in sociology and history, he has spent over twenty years conducting empirical, multidisciplinary research in various fields of the social and historical sciences. At the same time, he has headed the BALSAC Project, a computerized population register covering the whole population of Quebec up to the 1960s. He is now doing comparative research on social myths and collective imaginaries, for a Canada Research Chair. He has been awarded a number of prestigious distinctions, including the French Légion d’Honneur.