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Course Description
The course will outline some key concepts and interpretations of Balkan history and conceptualizations of Southeastern Europe as a specific region, their transformations and re-assessments since the 19th century until present. The first few lectures dedicated to the pre-WWII period will shed light on the origins of the term Balkans and highlight the contributions of the founding fathers of Balkan studies such as Konstantin Jireček, Nicolae Iorga and Jovan Cvijić. The following lectures will be dedicated to some of the "canonical" oeuvres of post-WWII historiography (Leften Stavrianos, Traian Stoianovich, Maria Todorova), main issues of modern history (19th and 20th century), competing nationalist interpretations of history, the contested role of journalists as interpreters of the Balkan past, deconstruction of persistent images and stereotypes associated with the area (alleged backwardness, violence, chaos, "balkanization" etc.) and, finally, to the question whether Southeastern Europe/the Balkans does indeed still exist as a specific region. The texts and excerpts selected as required reading for each lecture present a wide-range of themes and methodological approaches. Goals and methods The main goal of the course is to explain the main concepts, interpretations and authors whose ideas have influenced the interdisciplinary field of Balkan studies and wider discussions about the region. This will be achieved through a combination of lecture and seminar in each class, regular reading and discussions. The progress of each student will be checked by a final exam (test) and a final paper. Last update: Šístek František, M.A., Ph.D. (14.02.2019)
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For required reading for each class + recommended literature, please see the syllabus. Last update: SISTEK (16.02.2012)
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Requirements
Regular attendance and meaningful participation in discussions. In case that you cannot participate in a weekly class, please inform the teacher in advance.
Regular reading of the required texts for each class is obligatory for all participants. For most texts, a principal presenter will be selected in advance. After he/she outlines the main ideas of a particular text in an oral presentation (15-20 minutes), a general discussion will follow.
A final paper (15 pgs), closely linked to the content of the course, due after the course. Students are encouraged to discuss the proposed topics in advance. Topics can also be assigned by the teacher instead.
Evaluation and classification:
• 91 and more = A • 81 - 90 % = B • 71 - 80 % = C • 61 - 70 % = D • 51 - 60 % = E • 0 - 50 % = F
participation in class 10% contribution to discussions 10% oral presentation 20% test 20% final paper 40%
Last update: Šístek František, M.A., Ph.D. (06.02.2019)
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Conceptions and Interpretations of Balkan History
František Šístek, Ph. D. e-mail: frantsistek@volny.cz
Course Description
The course will outline some key concepts and interpretations of Balkan history and conceptualizations of Southeastern Europe as a specific region, their transformations and re-assesments since the 19th century until present. The first few lectures dedicated to the pre-WWII period will shed light on the origins of the term Balkans and highlight the contributions of the founding fathers of Balkan studies such as Konstantin Jireček, Nicolae Iorga and Jovan Cvijić. The following lectures will be dedicated to some of the "canonical" oeuvres of post-WWII historiography (Leften Stavrianos, Traian Stoianovich, Maria Todorova), main issues of modern history (19th and 20th century), competing nationalist interpretations of history, the contested role of journalists as interpreters of the Balkan past, deconstruction of persistent images and stereotypes associated with the area (alleged backwardness, violence, chaos, "balkanization" etc.) and, finally, to the question whether Southeastern Europe/the Balkans does indeed still exist as a specific region. The texts and excerpts selected as required reading for each lecture present a wide-range of themes and methodological approaches.
Requirements
Attendance and meaningful participation in discussions. In case that you cannot participate in a weekly class, please inform the teacher in advance.
Regular reading of the required texts for each class is obligatory for all participants. For each text, a principal presenter will be selected in advance. After he/she outlines the main ideas of a particular text in an oral presentation (cca 20 minutes), a general discussion will follow.
A final paper (15 pgs), closely linked to the content of the course. Students are encouraged to discuss the proposed topics in advance. Topics can also be assigned by the teacher instead.
1. Introduction: The Term "Balkan Peninsula" and Conceptualizations of Southeastern Europe as a Specific Region
Introductory lecture, distribution of assignements, questions.
"Balkans before the Balkans" - antiquity, Turkey-in-Europe, old maps and geographical fantasies. The origins of the term "Balkan Peninsula" - Johann August Zeune (1808). The first conceptualizations of Southeastern Europe as a specific region.
Required Reading: None
2. Founding Figures of Balkan Studies Before WWII
The lecture will outline the beginnings and institutionalization of historiography in different countries of Southeastern Europe. It will underline the close links that the Balkan studies in Southeastern Europe proper maintained with the outside world - throughout the 19th and early 20th century especially with Central Europe. The contributions of the founding fathers of Balkan studies such as Konstantin Jireček and Nicolae Iorga will be highlighted.
Required Reading: None
Recommended Reading:
Nicolae Iorga: Byzance après Byzance, Bucuresti 1935. http://www.unibuc.ro/CLASSICA/byzance/cuprins.htm
3. Characterology of Balkan Populations
Since the end of the 19th century until the end of WWII, there have been numerous attempts to describe and classify the geographic distribution, ethnography, mentality and ethnopsychology (national or regional "character") of Balkan populations. Special attention will be devoted to the works of Serbian ethnographer Jovan Cvijić (La péninsule balkanique, 1918) and German slavicist Gerhard Gesemann.
Required Reading
Ulf Brunnbauer, Robert Pichler: Mountains as "lieux de mémoire." Highland Values and Nation-Building in the Balkans, In: Balkanologie, vol 6, 1-2, 2002 http://balkanologie.revues.org/index433.html
Marko Živković: Violent Highlanders and Peaceful Lowlanders. Uses and Abuses of Ethno-Geography in the Balkans from Versailles to Dayton http://www.c3.hu/scripta/scripta0/replika/honlap/english/02/08zivk.htm
Jovan Cvijić: La péninsule balkanique, Paris 1918.
4. Leften Stavrianos: The Balkans since 1453
The lecture will be devoted to the analysis of the most influential synthesis of Balkan history published in the post-WWII period, The Balkans since 1453 by Leften Stavrianos.
Required Reading
Leften Stavrianos. The Balkans since 1453, New York 1959. 1-14 81-115
5. Traian Stoianovich: Balkan Worlds
The lecture will evolve around the most ambitious post-WWII attempt to conceptualize a specific Balkan civilization, history and society: Traian Stoianovich´s Balkan Worlds, inspired by the French Annales school of historiography.
Required Reading
Traian Stoianovich: Balkan Worlds. The First and Last Europe, Armonk (N.Y) and London: M.E. Sharp, 1994. Introduction, 1-3 Chapter 2: Biotechnics and Social Biology, 47-68. Chapter 4: Society, 120-185.
6. Balkans in the 19th Century
19th century - the age of "national revolutions" and "struggles for national liberation" as well as modernization of the Balkans along Central and West-European lines. Special attention will be dedicated to the classical overview of 19th century Balkans by Barbara Jelavich.
Required Reading
Barbara Jelavich: History of the Balkans, vol I. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Cambridge University Press, 1983, 235-298.
7. Competing Discourses about History I: Contested Interpetations of Controversial Events
Contesting, mutually exclusive interpretations of history represent a recurrent problem as well as topic of Balkan historiographies.
Required Reading
David Bruce MacDonald: Balkan Holocausts? Serbian and Croatian victim-centered propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia, Manchester and New York 2002, 132-182.
The overlapping histories of certain ethnically mixed regions such as Transylvania, Bosnia or Macedonia have provided material for long-standing controversies between respective nationalist viewpoints.
Required Reading
Andrew Ludanyi: "The Legacy of Transylvania in Romanian and Hungarian Historiography", In: Tibor Frank, Frank Hadler (eds.): Disputed Territories and Shared Pasts. Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe, London 2011, 247-272.
9. Journalists as Interpreters of the Past
Journalistic accounts of the region are often dismissed by academically-trained scholars for alleged stereotyping and insufficient knowledge of facts. However, some popular historical overviews and travellogues written by journalists have achieved greater success and influence than most academic works.
Required Reading:
Robert D. Kaplan: Balkan Ghosts. A Journey Through History, New York: Vintage, 1994, 3-28, 79-99.
10. Deconstructing the Discourse of "Balkanism": Maria Todorova´s Imagining the Balkans
The entire lecture will be dedicated to Maria Todorova´s pioneering work Imagining the Balkans, probably the most influential book on the Balkans published in the last two decades.
Required Reading:
Maria Todorova: Imagining the Balkans. London and New York, 1998. Introduction, 3-20.
11. New Approaches to Balkan History after 1989
New methods and directions in Balkan historiography of the last two decades, especially the influence of anthropology.
Required Reading
Katherine Verdery: The Political Life of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Post-Socialist Change, New York 1999, 1-53.
Recommended Reading:
Sorin Antohi, Balázs Trenscényi, Péter Apor, eds: Narratives Unbound. Historical Studies in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, Budapest - New York: CEU Press, 2007.
Ulf Brunnbauer, ed: (Re)Writing History. Historiography in Southeast Europe after Socialism, Münster, 2004.
12. From Balkans to Southeastern Europe?
Should the term "Southeastern Europe" replace "the Balkans"? Do the Balkans really exist as a specific region? If so, what role does this area play in world history?
Required Reading:
Alexander Vezenkov: Should We Always Think of the Balkans As Part of Europe? http://www.iwm.at/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=153&Itemid=125
Florian Bieber: The Conflict in Former Yugoslavia as a "Fault Line War?", In: Balkanologie 1/1999 http://balkanologie.revues.org/index283.html
Last update: SISTEK (19.02.2013)
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