Course Description
This course explores the ways in which the Balkans
were (and, in a sense, still are) being transformed from a world of empires to
a world of nation states. The focus is not on history as such, but on the
mechanisms by which the imperial past is negotiated and articulated in the
present. The course apprehends imperial legacy as a long (and constant, still
ongoing) process of construction, dissemination, and transfer of cultural
knowledge through time. During the course the students will be introduced to important
conceptual approaches, such as: “backwardness” and “modernity”, postcolonial
theory, Orientalism, Occidentalism, Balkanism, nesting Orientalism(s),
self-colonizing cultures, their in-betweens and their beyonds. Particular
attention will be devoted to the practices of nation-building by which the
imperial past had been constructed, appropriated, or erased.
Assessment
The final grade will be formed by two components:
-- regular and active
participation
-- students develop their own
small research project (about culinary practices amongst migrants from
Southeastern Europe in Regensburg, for example)
-- brief literature notes on
one chosen text every week (40% of the final mark)
-- a portfolio consisting of
fieldwork sources and a written reflection of 5-6 pages (60% of the final mark)
