Glorified Sausage: Performing the Nation among Slovenian Migrants in Interwar USA

Abstract This article examines the glorification of everyday objects as a modality of nationalism, focusing on the case of the Kranjska sausage ( kranjska klobasa ) among Slovenian emigrants in the United States between 1919 and 1945. While existing scholarship has analyzed glorification primarily at institutional and elite levels, this study extends theories of “everyday nationalism” by highlighting how symbolic elevation of the nation also unfolds in mundane practices and material culture. Drawing on approximately 3,200 references to the Kranjska sausage in the Slovenian migrant press — retrieved from the Digital Library of Slovenia across major periodicals — the article traces how the sausage was represented, celebrated, and invested with national meaning. Methodologically, the study adopts a heuristic case study approach, treating newspapers not as transparent reflections of migrant life but as media artifacts that both represented and actively shaped collective identities. By demonstrating how the glorifying impulse permeated communal celebrations, advertising, and everyday discourse, the article argues that national imagination was reproduced not only through state rituals and elite narratives but also through the festive, humorous, and affective practices of ordinary people.