This course is designed as a comparative study of “post-Yugoslav literature,” a term increasingly used in reference to a diverse, transnational, and multilingual body of works produced over the last three decades by people (and the descendants of people) who once lived in a common, socialist state of Yugoslavia. Today these authors live and write in various forms of exilic displacement, scattered throughout Yugoslavia’s successor states and around the world.
What happens to communities, culture, and literature following the experience of rising nationalism and the violent demise of a multicultural and multiethnic state? Is a shared historical experience enough to hold a post-Yugoslav cultural and literary constellation together? Does the emerging literature have its own aesthetic conventions, thematic concentrations, political and social aspirations? Can the ideals that once unified the nation be preserved in literature or are they lost irrevocably to political violence?
These are some of the questions we will explore as we read novels and short stories written by David Albahari, Lana Bastašić, Rumena Bužarovksa, Aleksandar Hemon, Miljenko Jergović, Lejla Kalamujić, Damir Karakaš, Maša Kolanović, Semezdin Mehmedinović, Saša Stanišić, Pajtim Statovci, Dubravka Ugrešić, Nenad Veličković, and more.
The course is offered once a year, usually in the spring. All reading assignments are in English and no prior knowledge of the languages these texts are written in (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian or BCS, Macedonian, German, and Finish). Students interested in reading and discussing some of these texts in BCS can register for an additional one-unit Slavic 100L course or join our concurrent third-year language course (Slavic 171). For more information, contact Djordje Popović.
