New Yugoslav Studies (NYS) is an interdisciplinary research group of Bay Area scholars interested in the study of Yugoslav culture and society from a comparative and transnational perspective. Founded in 2022, the group facilitates critical scholarly inquiry, promotes exchange of knowledge about Yugoslavia, and brings together researchers, teachers, and students from across different backgrounds.
NYS has become a preeminent center of Yugoslav research, developing a full program of study and organizing over 80 events in collaboration with its partners at Berkeley’s Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Stanford’s Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREEES), the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), the departments of Art & Art History and Slavic Languages & Literatures (Stanford), the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (Berkeley), the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures (Berkeley), the Townsend Center for the Humanities (Berkeley), and the California Institute of Integral Studies (San Francisco).
NYS members have been at the forefront of a number of related initiatives. They launched the ASEEES-affiliated New Yugoslav Studies Association, which currently boasts 750 members and five research hubs similar to Berkeley-Stanford NYS – in New York, Toronto, London, and Vienna. The STAV (Student Translators and Volunteers) Translation Collective, founded by NYS Berkeley and Stanford students, marks the first sustained effort to translate news from student protests in the region into English. Kino Klub Berkeley saw a dedicated group of students studying the work of Yugoslav filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s while filming and screening their own experimental shorts. Since 2022, Berkeley-Stanford NYS has also organized 40 reading group discussions on classic and emerging works of Yugoslav scholarship, including a dozen book discussions attended by their authors.