Course objectives: The aim of this course is to enable students to analyse cultural representations, political ideas and historical narratives in and about Southeast Europe, by using the concepts of memory and identity. The course deals with social memory as one of the key factors in shaping the representations of Southeast Europe. It discusses the role of social memory in past and present societies, with special reference to examples from Southeast Europe. During the course, issues of memory and identity are analysed from the perspectives of several different disciplines: anthropology, history, political science, social science, and psychology. Students will study the main theories and key theoretical approaches in memory studies, as well as analyse specific case studies and practices in the region of Southeast Europe. They will be introduced to various macro-processes such as: the relationship between individual and group/collective memories; the relationship between remembering and forgetting in social, political and cultural contexts; the relationship between memory, identity and trauma; the relationship between memory, official histories and politics of history.

Students will study ways in which representations and interpretations of the past are defined and re-examined in the societies of Southeast Europe, and used for legitimization, integration, disintegration, and polarisation. In the seminars, students will analyze selected case studies and apply theoretical approaches in specific research situations. The course also includes fieldwork related to sites or events that communicate a certain social memory, including cooperation with individuals, organizations and associations that deal with memorialization in their practical work.

In that sense, the goals of the course are: to introduce students to basic concepts and theoretical and methodological approaches to the multidimensional phenomenon of social memory and enable them to apply these approaches in specific research situations; to enable students to critically analyse processes related to memorialization, representation, conflict, trauma, and the politics of history and memory in past and contemporary South East European societies, in personal, local, national, regional, international, and global settings; to develop students’ methodological competencies by studying selected theoretical texts, written and visual sources, and by visiting selected lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) during the course’s fieldwork.

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) Critically examine cultural perceptions of Southeast Europe

(2) Analyse and compare different historical narratives and national historiographies in Southeast Europe

(3) Analyse political ideas and processes in Southeast Europe

(4) Design and conduct small-scale qualitative research

Expected learning outcomes at the level of the course:   

Students will:

(1) identify and analyse key concepts related to social memory and the complex relationship between memory and identity

(2) analyse and evaluate different theoretical approaches to research of social memory

(3) apply theoretical postulates in the analysis of selected studies on the phenomenon of social memory in Southeast Europe

(4) analyse primary and secondary sources and integrate them into a written and oral work

(5) conduct an independent research of a selected case study in a specific historical-political and cultural context

Course content (syllabus):   

(1) Introducing the course: goals, outcomes, assessment, literature

(2) Social memory: key concepts

(3) Theories and theoretical approaches to the study of memory

(4) Interdisciplinary research in the field of social memory

(5) Social memory and politics of history and memory – the state as an interpreter of the past (forms of official history, memory laws, declarations, history curricula and textbooks; government’s bodies for dealing with the past)

(6) Cultural trauma and politics of memory

(7) Trauma of war and social change in Southeast Europe

(8) Institutions of cultural memory: archives, museums, documentation centres, digital collections…

(9) Spatialization of cultural memory: making and contesting sites of memory (monuments, cemeteries, memorial plaques, street names)

(10) Practices of cultural memory: national holidays, celebrations and commemorations

(11) Practices of cultural memory: festivals, reenactments, theme parks

(12) Literature, art, music and film as vectors of social memory

(13) Forms of remembering and forgetting – examples from Southeast Europe (e. g. remembering and forgetting socialism)

(14) Debates about the past and memory – historiography, politics, public debates, debates on war crimes and war crime trials

(15) Is there a common European memory? The politics of memory of the European Parliament

Format of instruction: lectures, seminars and workshops, field work

Student responsibilities: Student responsibilities include: regular and active class attendance, participation in discussions and seminar work, conducting individual research under the supervision of course teachers, writing a seminar paper based on the research, 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 presenting the seminar paper) are a prerequisite for taking the exam.

Monitoring student work: class attendance, seminar paper, written exam         

1. ALEXANDER, Jeffrey C. et al. 2004. Cultural trauma and collective identity. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London. University of California Press. (1-30)
2. BLANUŠA, Nebojša. 2017. “Trauma and Taboo: Forbidden political Questions in Croatia”. Croatian Political Science Review, Vol. 54, No. 1-2: 170-196.
3. CONNERTON, Paul. 1989. How societies remember? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. ERLL, Astrid i Ansgar NÜNNING (ed.). 2010. Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin – New York: Walter de Gruyter (selected chapters)
5. EYERMAN, Ron. 2019. Memory, Trauma, and Identity. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. (1-20)
6. KOLSTØ, Pål. (ed.). 2005. Myths and Boundaries in South-Eastern Europe. London: Hurst & Company. (introduction)
7. KOREN, Snježana. 2015. „Twentieth-century wars in history teaching and public memory of present-day Croatia“. Studi sulla formazione, 18(2):11-33.
8. NORA, Pierre. 1996. Realms of Memory. The Construction of the French Past, vol. 1. Conflicts and Divisions. New York: Columbia University Press (introduction).
9. ŠKRBIĆ ALEMPIJEVIĆ, Nevena, Sanja POTKONJAK. 2016. “The Titoaffect. Tracing Objects and Memories of Socialism in Postsocialist Croatia”. Sensitive Objects. Affect and Material Culture, ed. Jonas Frykman, Maja Povrzanović Frykman. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 107–123.

1. ASSMAN, Aleida. 2016. Shadows of Trauma: Memory and the Politics of Postwar Identity (translated by Sara Clift). New York: Fordham University Press.
2. BALLINGER, Pamela. 2002. History in Exile. Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans. Princeton – Oxford: Princeton University Press.
3. BERGHOLZ, Max. 2016. Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community. Ithaca – London: Cornell University Press.
4. CONNERTON, Paul. 2009. How Modernity Forgets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5. FELMAN, Shoshana & Dori LAUB. 1992. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. New York – London: Routledge.
6. JAMBREŠIĆ KIRIN, Renata, Maja POVRZANOVIĆ (ed.). 1996. War, Exile, Everyday Life. Cultural Perspectives. Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku. (selected chapters)
7. KATZ, Vera (ed.). 2007. Revizija prošlosti na prostorima bivše Jugoslavije. Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju. (selected chapters)
8. LEBOW, Richard Ned, Wulf KANSTEINER, Claudio FOGU (eds.). 2006. The Politics of memory in Postwar Europe. Duke University Press (selected chapters)
9. POVEDAK, Istvan (ed.). 2014. Heroes and celebrities in Central and Eastern Europe. Szeged: Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. (selected chapters)
10. SUBOTIĆ, Jelena. 2019. Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism. Ithaca – London. Cornell University Press. (17-44)
11. SVENSSON, Birgita. 1995. “Lifetimes – Life History and Life Story. Biographies of Modern Swedish Intellectuals”. Ethnologia Scandinavica, 25:25 – 42.
12. TODOROVA, Marija (ed.). 2004. Balkan Identities. Nation and Memory. New York: New York University press. (selected chapters)
13. VUKOV, Nikolai & Svetla KAZALARSKA (ed.). 2018. Heroic Art and Socialist Realism: Monuments, Memory and Representations of the Socialist Past after 1989. Sofia: Cultural Arcs Foundation.
14. WOOD, Nancy. 1999. Vectors of Memory. Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe. New York: Berg.