Course objectives: The aim of the course is to introduce the students to the main concepts, theoretical approaches and developments as well as to research and academic practices in regional studies. The course will introduce, but also problematize the concepts of “cultural areas” and “cultural regions”. The students will gain insight into the key factors of conceptualization of regions and formation of regional studies, into the development and the changes in the research approaches and into the creation of regional Otherness in political, academic and popular discourse. Contemporary approaches to regional studies will also be presented, which also include postcolonial critical theories. The emphasis will be placed on the politics and mechanisms of the formation of regions in Southeast Europe, which take into account effects of recent regional restructuring in Eastern Europe.

Enrolment requirements and/or entry competences required for the course: None

Learning outcomes at the level of the programme to which the course contributes:   

1. Explain the fundamental concepts and approaches to regional studies.
2. Explain and compare theoretical approaches to Southeast European studies in the social sciences and humanities
3. Critically assess and apply theoretical approaches to the analysis of phenomena and processes in Southeast Europe
4. Explain features of cultural systems in the context of Southeast Europe

Expected learning outcomes at the level of the course:

1. List and explain key terms in regional studies
2. Describe the history and contemporary trends and tendencies in regional studies
3. Analyze professional and scientific articles in the area of regional studies
4. Describe cultural processes which lead to the formation of cultural regions
5. Give examples of the constructions of regional identities in Southeast Europe

Course content (syllabus):   

1. Week 1: Course overview
2. Week 2: Definitions and explanations of key terms and main concepts from regional studies; the analysis of the concepts of cultural regions; connection with the concepts of diversity of cultural systems
3. Week 3: Conceptualization of space in regional studies; world divisions in academic and political context
4. Week 4 and Week 5: History of research in regional studies
5. Week 6 to Week 9: Theoretical and methodological approaches, trends and developments in research on regions; key works and main representatives of the presented schools
6. Week 10: Deconstruction of regions and theories from regional studies from poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives; anti-regional studies
7. Week 11: Formation of Otherness inside regional studies (Orientalism, Balkanism, Mediterraneanism)
8. Week 12: Theoretical standpoints of contemporary regional studies
9. Week 13: Regions and politics of knowledge
10. Week 14 and Week 15: Regions and research on regions in Southeast Europe

Format of instruction: Lectures, seminars and workshops, independent assignments    

Student responsibilities: Regular and active class attendance, participation in discussions and seminar work, writing five reaction papers (reports) that present critical overviews of the relevant literature and sources, handing in and oral presentation of the classwork, as well as sitting in for the written exam at the end of the classes. Completed seminar obligations (handing in and presentation of five reaction papers) are a prerequisite for taking the exam.

Monitoring student work: Class attendance, Report

1. APPADURAI, Arjun. 2000. Globalization and Area Studies: The Future of a False Opposition. Public lecture. Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies.         
2. BHABHA, Homi. 2007. Location of Culture. London – New York: Routledge.  (selected chapters)          
3. CLOWES, Edith, Shelly Jarret BROMBERG, eds. 2016. Area Studies in the Global Age: Community, Place, Identity. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. (selected chapters)
4. MIELKE, Katja, HORNIDGE, Anna-Katharina, eds. 2017. Area Studies at the Crossroads. Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. (selected chapters)
5. SAID, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
6. TODOROVA, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. New York – Oxford: Oxford University Press.

1. BOŠKOVIĆ, Aleksandar, ed. 2008. Other People’s Anthropologies. Ethnographic Practice on the Margins. New York – Oxford: Berghahn.
2. HERZFELD, Michael. 1999. Anthropology through the looking-glass. Critical ethnography in the margins of Europe. Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press. (selected chapters)
3. EVANS-PRITCHARD, Edward Evan. 1940. The Nuer. A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
4. GIBSON-GRAHAM, J. K. 2004. “Area studies after poststructuralism”. Environment and Planning, vol. 36:405–419.
5. HARRIS, William Vernon, ed. 2005. Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6. JELAVICH, Charles, ed. 1969. Language and Area Studies: East Central and Southeastern Europe; A Survey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
7. MEAD, Margaret. 1963. Sex and temperament in three primitive societies. New York: William Morrow and Company.
8. MINTZ, Sidney. 1998. “The Localization of Anthropological Practice. From area studies to transnationalism”. Critique of Anthropology, vol. 18(2):117–133.
9. MORRIS-SUZUKI, Tessa. 2000. “Anti-Area Studies”. Communal/Plural: Journal of Transnational and Crosscultural Studies, vol. 8(1):9–23.
10. SZANTON, David, ed. 2004. The Politics of Knowledge. Area Studies and the Disciplines. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
11. THOMAS, Nicholas. 1991. Entangled objects: exchange, material culture and colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge – London: Mass – Harvard University Press.
12. WOLFF, Larry. 1995. Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilisation on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.