CfP: Discourses of war(s) in 1990s in the (ex)-Yugoslav area
Post-Yugoslav Area Research Center (PROP) and the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences kindly invite to the workshop on
Discourses of war(s) in 1990s in the (ex)-Yugoslav area
May 29-30th, 2023, on-line form
The concept for the workshop was born during a class with students on the 1990s war in the former Yugoslavia. Speaking about that period, we wanted to take into account the different usages of communication, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, common and scholar. It turned out to be difficult to find a coherent language for the 1990s, as it is not clear whether we can talk about one or several wars, or the former Yugoslavia, even though a state with that name existed until 2003. These hesitations are reflected in the parentheses in the conference title.
The differences in discourses reveal discrepancies in experience, but also various political and identity interests and projects. We propose to discuss ways of talking about the war, or the wars, of the 1990 period and to consider whether the discourses can be commodified, taking into account the existing narratives. We also want to look at the language used to talk about these phenomena.
Here are some frame topics we propose to discuss:
- dominant and alternative discourses and discourses of power
- figure of victim and hero, notions of victory and victimhood
- conflicting sites of discourse
- main producers of the discourse: people, institutions, media
- rhetoric of narratives on war(s) and recent history
- how to talk about war(s) in a non-Shtokavian language: perspective from the outside
We invite discourse researchers, historians, culture studies experts, anthropologists, sociologists and linguists, dealing with the area of former Yugoslavia. We are particularly interested in presenting the diversity of narratives and the accompanying semantic conflicts.
Please send a short abstract until April 3oth. We will let you know about details of the conference by April 15th. The workshop will be held on May 29–30th in an on-line form via Zoom. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
We are looking forward to meeting you and discussing the topics together.
Organizers:
Maciej Falski, University of Warsaw, mfalski(at)uw.edu.pl
Ewa Wróblewska-Trochimiuk, Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, ewa.wroblewska(at)ispan.edu.pl