Syllabus
IMAGES AND STEREOTYPES OF THE BALKANS 1. Introductory Lecture
Practical issues, requirements, general information about the course.
Terminology (image, stereotype, representation, alterity, the Other)
General overview of research into images and sterotypes, major authors and topics, theoretical and methodological approaches.
Recommended Reading
Walter Lippman: Public Opinion, New York 1922. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper2/CDFinal/Lippman/cover.html
Edward Said: Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, London and New York: Penguin 1979. 2. The Western “Discovery“ of the Balkans and its Peoples
Required Reading
Božidar Jezernik: Wild Europe. The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers, London: Saqi 2004, kapitola “The Land Where the East Begins,“ 23-46.
Recommended Reading
Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Englightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994.
Larry Wolff, Venice and the Slavs. The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2002. 3. Balkans as a “Gate to the Orient“
Required Reading
Gingrich, Andre, ‘Frontier Myths of Orientalism: The Muslim World in Public and Popular Cultures of Central Europe.’ In Mediterranean Ethnological Summer School, eds. Bojan Baskar and Borut Brumen. Piran: Institut za multikulturne raziskave 1996, pp. 99–127.
Recommended Reading
Omer Hadžiselimović, At the Gates of the East: British Travel Writers on Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, Boulder: East European Monographs 2001.
Jitka Malečková, The Turk in the Czech Imagination (1870s – 1923), Leiden: Brill 2021. Open Access: https://brill.com/display/title/58995?language=en
František Šístek (ed.), Imagining Bosnian Muslims in Central Europe, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books 2021. 4. The Bloody and Violent Balkans
Required Reading
Robert D. Kaplan: Balkan Ghosts. A Journey Through History, New York: Vintage 1994, 3-28, 79-99.
Recommended Reading
Slobodan G. Markovich: British Perceptions of Serbia and the Balkans, 1903-1906, Paris 2001
Eugene Michail, Western Attitudes to War in the Balkans and the Shifting Meanings of Violence, 1912- 91, In: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 47, No. 2 (April 2012), pp. 219-239
František Šístek, Diskurzy o příčinách násilí na moderním Balkáně, in: Bedřich Loewenstein, Milan Hlavačka, František Šístek (eds.), Násilí: jiná moderna, Praha: Historický ústav 2017.
Open Access: http://www.kroatistikabrno.cz/sistek_studie.html 5. Romantic Representations of the Balkans
Required Reading
Božidar Jezernik: Wild Europe. The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers, London: Saqi, 2004, 103-146.
Recommended Reading
Samuel Foster, Yugoslavia in the British Imagination. Peace, War and Peasants Before Tito, London: Bloomsbery 2021.
Ján Jankovič: Boje Čiernohorcov a túžby Slovákov (1839-1914), Bratislava: JUGA, 2004.
František Šístek: Junáci, horalé a lenoši. Obraz Černé Hory a Černohorců v české společnosti 1830-2006, Praha: Historický ústav, 2011 / Naša braća na jugu. Slika Crne Gore i Crnogoraca u češkom društvu, 1830-2006, Cetinje – Podgorica: Matica crnogorska 2009. 6. The Balkans through the Eyes of Female Travellers
Required Reading
John Hodgson: “Edith Durham“, In: John B. Allcock; Antonia Young, eds: Black Lambs and Grey Falcons. Women Travelling in the Balkans, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000, 9-31.
Recommended Reading
Mary Durham: High Albania, London 1909 http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/durham/albania/albania.html
Rebecca West: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, London, 1942.
Ctibor Nečas: Mezi muslimkami: Působení úředních lékařek v Bosně a Hercegovině v letech 1892-1918, Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 1992. 7. Images and Stereotypes of the Balkans in Fictional Literature
Required Reading
Vesna Goldsworthy: Inventing Ruritania. The Imperialism of the Imagination, New Haven and London, 1998, Preface IX-XI; Chapter 4: “War and Diplomacy in the New Ruritania: Comic Visions of the Balkans“, 111-159; Reclaiming Balkan Erewhons, 201-212.
Recommended Reading
David N. Norris, In the Wake of the Balkan Myth. Questions of Identity and Modernity, Macmillan 1999. 8. Representations of the Balkans in Film
Students will watch 2 films (to be specified in class) containing representative images of the Balkans. We will then analyze and discuss them in class.
Recommended Reading
Dina Iordanova: Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media, London and Berkley: BFI and University of California Press 2001.
Pavle Levi: Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2007.
Jana Dudková: Balkán alebo metafora. Balkanizmus a srbský film 90. rokov, Bratislava: Slovenský filmový ústav, VEDA 2008. 9. Representing the Wars of Yugoslav Succession (1990s)
Required Reading
Peter Maass: Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, London: Papermac 1996, 3-15; 36-57; 271-277.
Recommended Reading
Laura Silber, Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, London: Penguin 1995.
(check out the BBC documentary series of the same name at youtube – highly recommended!)
Sabrina P. Ramet: Thinking about Yugoslavia. Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, Cambridge University Press 2005.
Misha Glenny: The Fall of Yugoslavia, Penguin 1992.
Bernard Henry Lévy: Le lys et la cendre, Paris 1996.
Mark Thompson: A Paper House. The Ending of Yugoslavia, Vintage 1992.
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Annotation
Western perceptions of the Balkans and its inhabitants, since the beginning of the modern era until today, represent a rich and fascinating source of contradictory images and stereotypes. Negative representations of the supposedly “unstable“, “chaotic“, “barbarian“ and “violent“ region as well as a markedly more romantic discourse focused upon the heroic, authentic and hospitable character of the Balkan peoples have survived until today and can be frequently encountered in the media, in political discourse, literature, film and elsewhere. The goal of this course is to analyze and deconstruct the most frequent types and forms of images and stereotypes about Southeastern Europe in a long historical perspective from the beginning of the modern era until present. We well discuss both outside (Western, Central European etc.) representations of the Balkans and its different forms (the Balkans as a European Orient, the “unstable and violent“ Balkans, romantic adoration of Balkan peoples as heroic fighters for freedom etc.) as well as mutual stereotypes of Balkan peoples themselves (neighbors, “hereditary enemies“, internal others), the ambivalent relation between the region and Europe as well as conflicting representations of the wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The required reading consists partly of the most relevant scholarly texts on the topic (Maria Todorova, Vesna, Goldsworthy, Božidar Jezernik and others), partly of primary sources which include characteristic examples of different images and stereotypes (in texts such as travelogues but also in film).
CZECH / ČESKY
Balkán a jeho obyvatelé byli v minulosti tradičně nahlíženi a popisováni za pomoci řady stereotypů, klišé a opakujících se obrazů. Negativní představy o "neklidném", "výbušném", "chaotickém", "barbarském" a "násilném" Balkáně i romantičtější diskurs o údajné pohostinnosti, statečnosti a opravdovosti "horkokrevných" Balkánců úspěšně přetrvaly až do současnosti. Cílem tohoto kursu bude přiblížit základní okruhy obrazů a stereotypů o evropském jihovýchodě v historické perspektivě od jejich vzniku na prahu moderní doby až po dnešek. Prozkoumáme jak vnější ("západní") pohled na Balkán a jeho podoby (Balkán jako "brána Orientu", "věčně neklidný Balkán", romantizaci Balkánců jako "ušlechtilých junáků" apod.), tak také vzájemné předsudky tamějších populací nebo jejich vztah k "Evropě". K většině přednášek se vztahuje povinná četba: částečně jde o zásadní odborné texty k tématu (Larry Wolff, Maria Todorova, Vesna Goldsworthy, Božidar Jezernik apod.), částečně pak budeme společně rozebírat obrazy a stereotypy obsažené v charakteristických ukázkách publicistického nebo cestopisného charakteru i reprezentace "balkánství" ve filmu.