Syllabus
COURSE OUTLINE (summer term 2023)
Week 1 (February 20)
The West and the rest. Representing the East and the Balkans. Orientalism and Occidentalism. Balkanism.
Reading: Bakić-Hayden, M. (1995) Nesting orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia, Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), 917–931.
Week 2 (February 27)
Family models in traditional Europe: Is there any East/West difference?
Reading: Goody, Jack (1996) Comparing Family Systems in Europe and Asia: Are There Different Sets of Rules?, Population and Development Review 1/22: 1–20.
Week 3 (March 6)
Ethnobotany, Food Anthropology, and Human Survival: Highlights from the Balkan War (Naji Sulaiman)
Reading: Redžić, Sulejman (2010) Use of wild and semi-wild edible plants in nutrition and survival of people in 1430 days of siege of Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995). Collegium antropologicum, 34/2: 551–570.
Slavková, Markéta (2019) Starving Srebrenica and the Recipes for Survival in the Bosnian War (1992–1995), Český lid 106/3: 297–316.
Week 4 (March 13)
Ethnic minorities in Poland. (Richard Keračík)
Reading: Damrosz, J., 1978. Social Change and Ethnic Processes in Contemporary Poland. The Polish sociological bulletin, 1(41): 71–80.
Week 5 (March 20)
Lemkos in Poland. People from the borderlands and on the border of their own existence. (Richard Keračík)
Reading: Dudra, Stefan (2018). Lemkos – the rediscovered nation. Przegląd Narodowościowy [online]. Sciendo, 2018, 8(1): 303–311. doi:10.2478/pn-2018-002
Week 6 (March 27)
Roma in Central and Eastern Europe.
Reading: Szuhay, Péter (2005) The self-definition of Roma ethnic groups and their perception of other Roma groups, In I. Kemény (ed.), Roma of Hungary. Social Science Monographs, Boulder, Colorado, Atlantic Research and Publications, Inc., Highland Lakes, New Jersey, Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 237–246.
Week 7 (April 3)
Social and cultural anthropology and Eastern European ethnology: A clash of scholarly traditions?
Reading: Frykman, Jonas (2012) A Tale of Two Disciplines: European Ethnology and the Anthropology of Europe, In U. Kockel – M. Nic Craith – J. Frykman (eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Europe. Wiley – Blackwell, 572–589.
Week 8 (April 10) Easter Monday. Holiday – no lecture.
Easter Monday is a national holiday in the Czech Republic. The students are supposed to do participant observation of traditions and customs associated with Easter in the Czech Republic.
Week 9 (April 17)
Socialism, collectivization and grey economy in Eastern Europe.
Reading: Sampson, Steven (1983). Rich Families and Poor Collectives: An Anthropological Approach to Romania´s “Second Economy”, Bidrag til Ostatsforskning 11(1): 44–77.
Week 10 (April 24)
Postsocialism and transition in Eastern Europe.
Reading: Kaneff, Deema 1996. Response to „Democratic“ Land Reforms in a Bulgarian Village. In R. Abrahams (ed.), After Socialism. Land Reform and Social Change in Eastern Europe. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 85–114.
Week 11 (May 1) National holiday
There will be a substitute lecture, probably on Tuesday, May 2, 2023. Details will be announced in the course of the term.
Week 12 (May 8) National holiday
Annotation
The course will introduce the region of Central and Eastern Europe and its cultural, language, and religious diversity. The study of the region will be approached from the perspective of ethnology and cultural anthropology.
Cultural diversity of Central and Eastern Europe will be presented via some key concepts and phenomena associated with this part of Europe, like, for example, socialism, postsocialism, transition, integration of Roma minority, or balkanism. Students will also learn some differences (and convergences) between the various scholarly traditions that have focused on the region (like social anthropology, ethnology, and folkloristics).