Promišljanje Balkana - između integracije, isključenja i reinvencije

Ciljevi izučavanja predmeta

This course aims to critically examine the Balkans as both a geographical region and a cultural construct shaped by external representations and internal contestations. Drawing on the concepts of Balkanism and Orientalism, the course explores how the Balkans have been imagined as Europe’s “Other,” while simultaneously serving as a space of overlapping histories, identities, and cultural practices. Students will engage with debates on how these discourses influenced scholarly, political, and everyday understandings of the region. At the same time, the course situates the Balkans within its historical trajectories, from imperial legacies and interwar nation-building, through socialism and its transformative visions of modernity, to the complex realities of postsocialist and neoliberal transition. Particular attention will be paid to the everyday lives and popular cultures of Balkan societies, examining how people negotiated change, expressed identity, and experienced continuities and ruptures across different historical moments. By combining theoretical perspectives with case studies from political science, history and anthropology, the course seeks to develop students’ capacity for critical thinking about categories such as region, identity, modernity, and periphery. Ultimately, the aim is to encourage nuanced, reflexive, and de-essentialized understandings of the Balkans as a space of ambiguity, contestation, and resilience.

Ishodi učenja (stečena znanja)

By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Critically analyze the concepts of Balkanism and Orientalism, explaining how these discourses have shaped scholarly, political, and popular understandings of the Balkans.
- Identify and evaluate key historical legacies - imperial, socialist, and postsocialist – that continue to influence political, social, and cultural life in the region.
- Examine everyday practices and popular culture as lenses for understanding identity formation, continuity, and change in Balkan societies across different historical periods.
- Compare and contrast socialist and postsocialist models of development, with particular attention to the effects of neoliberal transition, deindustrialization, and changing class dynamics.
- Apply interdisciplinary approaches (from political science, history, anthropology, and cultural studies) to produce nuanced and reflexive interpretations of the Balkans as a space of ambiguity, contestation, and resilience.

Sadržaj teorijske nastave

1. The Balkans: What’s in the name?
2. Imperial Legacies: history and politics
3. Discourses on the Balkans: Orientalism, Balkanism
4. Identities: religion, nation, language
5. Population movements 1: migrations, expulsions, abandonment
6. Population movements 2: marking territories
7. Mid-term assignment
8. After the Factories: Class, identity, and the neoliberal transformation in the Balkans
9. Transitions of Care: Health, Society, and Policy in the Post-Socialist Balkans
10. Tastes of Belonging. Food and Identity in the Balkans
11. Resonant Identities. Music and Politics of Heritage in the Balkans
12. Playing the Nation: Sport and National Identity in the Balkans
13. Framing the Balkans: Film, Memory, and the Politics of Representation
14. Reading week
15. Exam

1. Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford University Press, 2009

2. Okey, Robin. “Central Europe / Eastern Europe: Behind the Definitions.” Past & Present, no. 137, Nov. 1992, pp. 102-133

3. Okey, Robin. “Central Europe / Eastern Europe: Behind the Definitions.” Past & Present, no. 137, Nov. 1992, pp. 102-133

lectures, book discussions, movie discussions, ethnographic fieldwork, one on one supervision, peer mentorship