ACS Bulletin no. 72, 2025
- Association Croatian Studies
- Dec 29, 2025
- 18 min read
Annual President’s Note
Dear ACS members and friends,
As the year nears its end we’d like to share some updates, among them a report on ACS’s successful participation at the 57th Annual ASEEES Convention in Washington DC (Washington Hilton) from November 20-23, 2025. We are seeing increased involvement of scholars from Croatia at ASEEES panels while at the same time a decrease in the ability of junior scholars working on Croatian themes in the U.S. to attend or even enter scholarly ranks due to the current austerity measures in academia. ACS’ primary task continues to be facilitating collaboration on Croatian topics across continents and bringing together scholars from different institutions to ASEEES’ venues. We encourage you all to consider submitting your papers to the Journal of Croatian Studies, a scholarly publication with a long tradition (established in 1960) which covers a broad range of fields, including history, literature, fine arts, music, philology, philosophy and political science.
ACS’s annual business meeting was held on November 21 at Washington Hilton with the discussion focusing on the next year’s panels, fundraising efforts to assist junior scholars with conference expenses, and a program of development for the Journal of Croatian Studies.
This year’s convention brought together a group of Croatian associations to celebrate the 1100th Anniversary for the Coronation of King Tomislav at The Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in Washington on November 2021, 2025. In addition to the ACS, these included the National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation, Croatian Academy of America (CAA), and the Association of Croatian American Professionals DC chapter (ACAP). The gathered were greeted by His Excellency Pjer Šimunović, Ambassador of the Republic of Croatia, Steve Rukavina, President of the National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation (NFCACF), John Kraljic, President of the Croatian Academy of America (CAA), and distinguished Croatian medieval historians, Dr. Tomislav Galović (Zagreb) and Dr. Željko Bartulović (Rijeka), with special guests, University of Zagreb Professors, Dr. Dragan Damjanović and Mr. Sc. Tatjana Tomaić.
Looking ahead to next year’s convention, with the overarching theme of “States and Empires”, we invite you to consider attending and presenting in Chicago (Palmer House Hilton) from November 12-15, 2026, in particular because the convention will have a spotlight on the Balkan studies. The ASEEES has defined the theme as follows:
“In our region, political power, collective identities, and cultural expressions have long been profoundly affected by states and empires, while these forces in turn shaped and reshaped the fates of states and empires. With key institutions of the democratic state under assault in our region and beyond, and with Russia’s war against Ukraine ongoing, this is a critical time to take stock of what our scholarly community has learned, what it continues to debate, and what lessons our collective scholarship offers when it comes to thinking about states and empires historically and comparatively.
What political forms and agendas count as empire and imperialism has long been contested in scholarship on our region and more globally. Similarly debated are the legacies of their rule. How have the legacies of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires shaped the modern-day states of East-Central Europe? Was the USSR an empire, perpetuating many tsarist legacies? What about Russia today? Are there ways in which the supranational reach of the European Union invites comparisons with imperial formations? If imperialism can come in multiple forms, what are the core differences, and how should these differences inform our analytical frameworks for describing and explaining “imperial” and “anti-imperial” projects, as well as our normative designations of them?
Debates about the state are likewise enduring. In our region, people have fought and died for sovereign statehood, and stateless nations have viewed the state as the ultimate guarantor of survival. Yet critical voices describe the state as an instrument of oppression and exclusion, and even as an outdated institution that ought to give way to new political and social arrangements. How should we assess the possibilities, limitations, and prospects of the state in light of these divergent perspectives? What insights do the historical and contemporary experiences from our region offer for understanding both the sources of democratic backsliding in modern states and the forms of resistance to assaults on democracy?”
The deadline for all proposals is March 1, 2026 and we encourage you to be ion touch with proposals.
With a wish for the world to be a better place next year, we send holiday greetings to all!
On behalf of the ACS Board,
Aida Vidan
ABSTRACTS OF PRESENTATIONS PERTAINING TO CROATIAN CULTURE AT ASEEES 2025
Panel: Conflict, Memory, and Identity in the Yugoslav Successor States
“Historical Trauma and Cultural Resentment: The Problems of Nazi-Looted Art Restitution in Serbia and Croatia”
Jelena Subotić, Georgia State U
This paper explores the legacies of historical trauma of the Second World War in Serbia and Croatia in relation to a largely under-researched issue: the restitution of Nazi-looted art. After the end of the war, the private property of war victims, including large Jewish minorities, was nationalized by the Yugoslav communist government. This property included numerous works of art that was declared “heirless,” and then handed over to national museums. Private Jewish cultural property then became seamlessly incorporated into Yugoslav national cultural heritage and formed the basis of public art collections of major state museums. As the international norms about art restitution developed and institutionalized in the 2000s, more and more claims for restitution and return started to arrive at these museums’ doors. The local response to these demands eventually diverged. In Serbia, these claims were violently rejected. The Serbian government and cultural institutions argued vehemently that these artifacts should remain in national museums as a form of “restitution in kind” for the trauma and violence Serbia suffered at the hands of both the Nazis and the Allies during the war. The diplomatic efforts here were uniformly geared toward rebuffing restitution claims and sustaining state narratives of righteous victimhood. In Croatia, restitution claims were met more favorably, as compliance with international policies, such as those about art restitution, served to signal liberal international identity and cultural belonging. In explaining different state attitudes regarding the same set of demands, this paper illustrates the long-term legacies of historical trauma and, more important, narratives about that trauma, on contemporary foreign policy choices and diplomatic negotiations.
“Identity in Excursion: State-sponsored Trips to Vukovar in Croatian Schools”
Ivana Polić, Florida State U
While the predominant scholarship on history education in Croatia focuses on the analysis of history textbooks and their shifting narratives over time, this study seeks to examine the role of contemporary state-sponsored eighth grade school excursions to Vukovar, where one of the most difficult and decisive battles in Croatian war of independence (1991-1995) took place, and where the clashes over collective memory between Croat and Serb communities are still very palpable. Combining government-issued materials pertaining to the purpose and recommended itinerary of the visits, interviews with students and teachers who have so far participated in the trip, and wider scholarly analysis of post-conflict research, the study centers on the topic of national identity as one of the central elements of the excursion content. In particular, it examines the ways in which the intended program transmits ideas of Croatian national narrative to the students, and the reactions that have so far highlighted some problematic aspects of such presentation.
Panel: Remembering after Yugoslavia: Archives, Feelings, and Anachronistic Memories
“How Material Objects Remember Yugoslavia: An Inventory of Feelings through Things in the Post-Yugoslav Novel”
Maša Kolanović, U of Zagreb
During Yugoslav period of 70’s and 80’s various artistic and cultural projects in Yugoslavia were focused on making inventory of things in everyday life such as Vladimir Dodik Trokut’s Antimuseum (1972-2018), Mladen Stilinović’s Exploitation of Dead (1986-1990) or an open call for making the Lexicon of YU Mythology in newspaper Start in 1989 to name just few. By stressing out objects and things in broader context of contemporary Yugoslav culture, those projects could be seen as anticipating devastating impact of the political events on the horizon but also anticipating important questions of who and how and under which circumstances is doing the framing of the memory. Namely, those questions became crucial in cultural wars since the breakup of Yugoslavia and are vividly lasting to our present times. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, particularly material objects became only palpable connection with the period of socialism which also means the subject of manipulation and controversies, negotiation, struggle and emancipation. Certain number of post Yugoslav authors (D. Ugrešić, M. Jergović, L. Bastašić and others) are taking material objects as central in making their own literary poetic of eccentric inventory of cultural memory on Yugoslavia and thus continuing the aforementioned Yugoslav artistic and cultural traditions in problematizing framework of memory in new context. Each of them is shaping its own (his)story about remembering Yugoslavia trough material objects and things and thus articulating alternative archive of private life during socialist Yugoslavia which was embedded in specific social structure and structure of feelings.
Panel: The Impact of Popular Cultural Memory Work in Post-Yugoslav Spaces
“Post-Yugoslav Commemorative Street Art: From Hegemonic Narratives to Slow Memory Activism”
Vjeran Ivan Pavlaković, U of Rijeka
Although commemorative street art in the West is frequently subversive and gives voice to marginalized social groups, in the post-Yugoslav space elaborately conceptualized and sophisticated political graffiti and mnemonic, or “memory-making”, murals more often reproduce dominant ethno-nationalist narratives of the wars of the 1990s. Nevertheless, mnemonic murals have the potential to function as counter-narratives in the contested memoryscapes of Southeastern Europe. Drawing upon comparative research in the Americas and Europe, as well as the concept of Slow Memory, this paper explores the impact of the muralization of war as memory work in the Yugoslav successor states.
Panel: Left Perspectives on Aesthetics across Media I: Eco-Poetic-Cinema from Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Yugoslavia
“The Origins of Associative Editing in Vatroslav Mimica’s Cinema: Is Nature Indifferent to Revolution? “
Filip Sestan, UC Berkeley
The legendary Yugoslav filmmaker Dušan Makavejev once claimed in a 1969 article that his compatriot Vatroslav Mimica discovered “associative editing” for Yugoslav cinema in the 1960s. This genealogy goes back to the montage theory of Sergei Eisenstein—the Soviet filmmaker, who according to Makavejev, “invented” the very practice of montage itself when he “first discovered” how to put two pieces of film together to produce “a third meaning.” Makavejev’s genealogy poses a number of theoretical rich questions about what we mean by montage and how the historical meaning of it has evolved over time and space. Unlike the well-known uses of associative editing by Makavejev to bring together the archival materials of society, Vatroslav Mimica’s “first” application of associative editing in Yugoslavia has wholly different roots. Building on some of Eisenstein’s remarks in Nonindifferent Nature, I argue that Mimica’s cinematic practice takes the natural world and our environment as the site of montage’s origins. I present a reading of Mimica’s Monday or Tuesday (1966) and Kaya, or I’ll Kill You (1969) as films where the art object emerges as a form of spiritualized, revolutionary nature.
Panel: Taking a Stand: Culture, Commitment, and Critique
“Socializing Naturalism in Krleža's Croatian God Mars”
Dominick Lawton, Stanford U
The first story in Miroslav Krleža's antiwar collection Croatian God Mars (first ed. published 1922) ends with the despairing ruminations of a Croatian coroner on the Galician front of the First World War, culminating in the phrase "and there will never be an end to it" (i nikada tome ne će biti kraja), the story's last words. But Krleža wrote and published this story in a time when both the war and the Habsburg empire at large had come to a definitive end. This paper takes a closer look at the early Krleža's much-commented-upon naturalism, that is, his embrace of a fin-de-siecle aesthetics of degeneration, disillusionment, and decay. The purpose of such stylistic "naturalism" for Krleža, I argue, is precisely to establish the deeply social character of nature itself, upending the timeless ideologies of the crown and the peasantry alike and lighting the way toward a transformed world.
“The Yugoslav Praxis School on the Autonomy of Art”
Kathryn Coyne, UC Berkeley
In this paper, I put two philosophical works by Praxis School philosophers—Milan Kangrga’s “Ideology as a Mode and Form of Human Existence” and Gajo Petrović’s “Alienation and De-alienation”—into conversation with each other. I argue that Kangrga’s account of ideological consciousness invites a distinction between ‘present’ and ‘blocked’ possibilities; ideological consciousness makes an error in assuming that present possibilities are exhaustive of all possibilities. I ask whether it is possible to articulate this notion of a ‘blocked possibility’ without compromising on Petrović’s insistence that mankind—which we might think includes mankind’s possibilities—is not something given once and for all.
“The Ministry of Pain and the Theology of Hell”
Đorđe Popović, UC Berkeley
The Ministry of Pain, Dubravka Ugrešić’s celebrated 2005 novel, ends with the narrator-protagonist standing at the edge of an abyss, reciting her famous “Balkan litany.” Having already been dispossessed of things once socially owned—her country, her language, her future—the narrator now appears also to be losing properties inalienable by definition: what she identifies as her voice and her trace. It is at this exact moment, when the narrative, historical, and philosophical subject undergoes near-complete annihilation, that Ugrešić offers a rare glimpse of hope, a redemptive element that has received little critical attention.
Panel: 925-2025:Memories of the 1100th Anniversary of the Kingdom of Croatia
“Memory of Medieval Croatia in Stone: Epigraphic Monuments in Istria”
Tomislav Galović, U of Zagreb
The earliest Glagolitic monuments in Istria date from the period of the Medieval Croatian Kingdom, within whose borders portions of Istria were found. This Glagolitic tradition continued into the early modern period, in both Habsburg- and Venetian-ruled Istria, where, with the concurrent use of Latin monuments, epigraphic monuments can be more closely analyzed. This presentation will review some of these monuments with an emphasis on their role in preserving historical memory.
“Memories of the Medieval Croatian State: Between Legend and Reality on the 1100th Anniversary of the Kingdom of Croatia”
Željko Bartulović, U of Rijeka
This paper will analyze original historical texts about Croatian ruler King Tomislav, the question of his royal title and the differences between the use of medieval term “rex” as “ruler of the people” and “ruler of the state.” The origin of the theory of Tomislav’s royal title in the second half of the 19th century was used to resist Hungarization. The memory of King Tomislav and the Croatian Kingdom was also integral to both resist and support the Royal Yugoslav state after 1918 (e.g., in 1925 when the 1000th anniversary of King Tomislav’s coronation was celebrated) and the Yugoslav Communist regime after 1945.
“Historiography, Memory and Art: Croatia's Early Medieval Heritage and Croatian Art during the First Half of the 20th Century”
Dragan Damjanović, U of Zagreb
The study of medieval Croatian history (9th to the beginning of the 12th century), when Croatia had its own rulers, began to have an increasingly strong influence on contemporary Croatian art from the end of the 19th century. The use of the past by Croatian architects, painters, sculptors and graphic designers became particularly evident on the eve of World War I, when Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and in the period between the World Wars, when, in connection with the celebration of the so-called 1000th anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom, a series of memorials to the first Croatian king, Tomislav, were erected, as well as a series of church buildings based on early medieval architecture. This presentation will show how historiographical research strongly influenced the formation of a nationalized visual language that still has a presence in Croatia today.
“Memory: Commemorating the 1100th Anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom”
Tatjana Tomaić, Inst of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar (Croatia)
In March 2024, the Croatian Parliament adopted a joint proposal by the Society of the Brethren of the Croatian Dragon and the Matrix Croatica to declare 2025 the “Year of Commemorating the 1100th Anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom.” Tomislav, as the first Croatian king crowned in 925, is important to Croatian history in his role in preserving identity and cultural heritage. This presentation will, among other things, discuss some of the 28 projects that will take place throughout 2025 to revive memories of this important event from Croatia's past.
Panel: Gender and Post-Imperial Legacy in Early 20th Century East and Southeast Europe
“'In the Home of the Last Emperor': Gender and Post-Imperiality in August Cesarec’s 'Today’s Russia'”
Slaven Crnić, U of Rijeka
The diffuse and in many ways hybrid collection of travel writings Today’s Russia by the legendary Croatian Marxist writer and revolutionary August Cesarec (1893-1941) chronicles the author’s three-year (1934-1937) travels across the USSR. Narratively framed mostly as a series of journalism-style reportages and interviews with common people, Russia Today brings forth an enthusiastic portrayal of Soviet economic, cultural, scientific and technological breakthroughs that was meant to popularize socialism in Yugoslavia, the author’s home country. In this presentation, I will explore the ways in which Cesarec’s idealistic picture of the Soviet Union relies upon his interconnected engagements with gender and cultural memory of the bygone Russian Empire. On the one hand, this presentation will analyze representations of the many emancipated women Cesarec’s narrator encounters and interviews. These women teachers, metallurgists, artists, and politicians function in the travelogue as a powerful symbol of socialist modernity and are, furthermore, often brought into conjunction with the topic of Soviet’s modernizing approach to gender-related issues such as abortion and divorce. On the other hand, the paper will trace Cesarec’s continual thematization of symbolic and material remnants of the Russian empire and analyze the way in which the cultural memory of the overturned imperial past drives the seemingly unstoppable socialist future.
“Women's Place in Nation-Building: Ana Katarina Zrinski in Croatian Literature”
Matea Magdić, U of Zagreb
Ana Katarina Zrinski’s (c. 1625–1673) portrayal in Croatian literature offers a case study of gender and nationalism, particularly the literary mythologization of women. As a noblewoman and poet, Zrinska challenged traditional gender norms by participating in political resistance. In the 20th century, however, she is portrayed as a villain who drags her husband and his brother to their tragic death. In this portrayal, instead of being silenced (as suggested by the “madwoman in the attic” archetype), Zrinska becomes hypervisible as a dangerous conspirator.
In this presentation, I will analyze the literary figurations of Zrinska as a political and sacrificial actor. By depicting Zrinska as the origin of the conspiracy, literature repeatedly reinforces stereotypes of political women as emotional, impulsive, and dangerous when involved in politics. When Zrinska is portrayed in literature as a malicious instigator, it suggests that Croatian literary memory struggled interpretating a noblewoman who wielded political power, resulting in her being portrayed as either a tragic victim or a dangerous seductress.
“'My beloved, only brother! With tearful eyes I write this letter': The Epistolary Character of Nikola Tesla in Marica Kosanović’s Letter Writing”
Ivan Flis, U of Rijeka
Nikola Tesla’s nachlass, kept in the archives of the inventor’s eponymous Museum in Belgrade, houses his lively correspondence with a variety of people during his long life. A few dozen of these letters were written by the inventor’s younger sister, Marica Kosanović (née Tesla; 1858–1938). In this paper, I will provide a close reading of Marica’s letters to her brother and the ways in which they construct a certain version of Tesla that goes against the grain of the larger-than-life collective memory that emerged during the twentieth century. Among other things, these letters paint a picture of Tesla as a fragile young man, a distant brother, a rich uncle, a precocious nephew, and a sickly son. Marica’s letters remained mostly unanswered since, according to Tesla’s archive, the inventor’s part of the correspondence was destroyed when the Kosanović’s Rijeka apartment was ransacked by D’Annunzio’s soldiers. If Marica is to be believed, however, Tesla mostly never meant to answer them in the first place. In Marica’s letters, we encounter the voice of a woman trying to counteract her brother’s disinterestedness and desperately trying to keep a family together by epistolary means, telegrams and gifts sent across great distances amidst the disintegrating devastation of an imperial frontier.
Panel: (Post)Yugoslav Cinema: “Prague School” and Its Legacy - U Street
“Representations of Social Resistance by the 'Prague School' Authors in (Post)Yugoslav Cinema”
Marija Grujić, Inst. for Literature and Art (Serbia)
The paper explores the cinematic works of a group of prominent Yugoslav film directors, informally known as the “Prague School.” The group of well-known filmmakers, including Goran Marković, Rajko Grlić, Goran Paskaljević, Lordan Zafranović, and Srđan Karanović, attended their studies during the turbulent period of the “Prague Spring” and social resistance to authoritarianism in Czechoslovakia. Upon their return to Yugoslavia, these authors have produced numerous films deconstructing the symbols of social oppression. The paper deals with ways these authors have communicated subversive elements to their audiences, and the influence this poetics has had on the cinema of the post-Yugoslav period.
Panel: Away from Home: Memories and Echoes of Yugoslavia in Post-Yugoslav Prose Portraying Exile
“The Exile and the Memory of Yugoslavia in Dubravka Ugrešić’s Novel 'The Museum of Unconditional Surrender'”
Andrea Anđelinić, U of Zagreb
Drawing on Andrea Zlatar’s 2004 study Writing in Exile/Asylum from Text, Body, Trauma: Essays on Contemporary Women’s Literature, this paper analyzes how Dubravka Ugrešić’s The Museum of Unconditional Surrender explores the problems of memory and forgetting, particularly through its fragmented narrative and autobiographical elements. It examines how Ugrešić intertwines personal and collective histories to critique national identity as a narrative construct, rather than a fixed essence, while also considering the role of photography as a metaphor for memory. Ultimately, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender serves as a metaphorical archive of discarded memories, revealing the fragility of identity and the selective nature of historical remembrance in the post-Yugoslav era.
Magdalena Marija Meašić, U of Rijeka (Croatia).
Panel: Youth Perceptions of the 1990s Wars: Violence and Their Aftermath in Post-War Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina
“Croatian Youth Perspectives on the Dark Side of the 1990s: Between Official Narrative and Ignorance”
Anja Gvozdanović, Institute for Social Research (Croatia)
This paper explores the perspective of youth in Croatia on the 1990s wars, their information sources, level of knowledge, and views on war crimes committed by Croatian army forces. Also, it examines the role of the official narrative on youth's war perspective as well as in building their social values, specifically regarding minority rights. The findings show that a significant part of youth tend to relativize war crimes and minority civil rights and that their perspective is largely shaped by the official narrative and family war experiences.
“Give Peace a Chance: Youth Perceptions and Public Memory of Croatia’s Peace Process”
Tamara Banjeglav, Scientific Research Centre SAZU (Slovenia)
The paper examines what younger generations (those born after the war) in Croatia today know about the process of peaceful reintegration and the UNTAES mission that ended the 1991 – 1995 war. The paper examines the level of knowledge among the young in the context of the knowledge and representations of these events mediated in the society. A survey was conducted with students of history about the events from the 1990s war, with emphasis on events concerning peaceful reintegration of the Danube region. Furthermore, the paper examines how peaceful reintegration is presented in history education, what are the curricular instructions regarding the teaching and learning about the topic, but also what (and how much) history textbooks teach students about these events. It is argued that the educational system is a reflection of how memories and narratives of the peace process slowly “travel” to younger generations, resulting in their poor knowledge of these important historical events.
Panel: Islands of Memory and the Memory of Islands
“'Where Donkeys Go to Die'”
Russell Scott Valentino, Indiana U Bloomington
The dialectal word kulah, which is still attested in the Kornati Islands, resembles other similar words in villages along the Dalmatian coast (e.g., Sveti Filip i Jakov) and in the Elaphiti Islands to the south. The fact that this word designates open sea on the Adriatic alone is explained by its derivation from the old Venetian “colfo” or gulf. It is an old reference to the water “out there” as the Gulf of Venice. This is one example among many others of the ways in which the language, or languages, of the islands and coastal region in question often retain aspects of history and historical practices long since past. In this presentation, I wish to explore a curious aspect of the association of Dalmatia with the donkey, which is so well-known as to be both a stereotype and an insult. But I wish to do so through the prism of island life, where a good donkey, as Vladimir Skračić puts it in his 2021 “intimate lexicon,” Kornati, kad su bili Kurnati, could “like a boat, have the status of an institution.” The very long history of donkeys in the islands is also reflected in the practice, which is older than anyone living could possibly remember, of naming islands after them—thus the many Ošljaci (singular Ośljak or Ośjak) in the eastern Adriatic. That this word is not a name for a donkey used in any of the languages of the region today helps to indicate both the age of the naming practice and the respect accorded the donkey in the region. Finally, I’ll return to the stereotype and the diminishing role of the donkey in the islands of today.
“The Bay of Silence: What’s in a (Literary and Cinematic) Landscape”
Aida Vidan, Tufts U
From the tranquil bay in which the father of Croatian literature Marko Marulić composed his verses in the early sixteenth century, over the locale to which Petar Hektorović arrived from Hvar in a three-day long journey described in his piscatorial eclogue Fishing and Fishermen's Conversation nearly fifty years later, to the socialist bungalow tourist site by Union Dalmacija built in the 1980s and a subsequent overcrowded development erected from a questionable financial scheme of the new Croatian state, the bay of Nečujam on the island of Šolta serves as a prime example of what Rob Nixon names slow violence. Drawing also on Jurica Pavičić’s more recent Book About South (2018), this paper examines the mechanics of capitalist geography which violently transformed a vernacular landscape thereby erasing centuries of cultural practices and accrued spiritual meaning for local communities.
“From Bunkers to Heritage”
Mladen Zobec, U of Graz
Lastovo used to be a military island in socialist Yugoslavia. Numerous military installations, including bunkers, tunnels, machine-gun nests, rocket-launching pads, and ship hangars, transformed the landscape of the remote island. However, the prohibition of foreign tourism and strict regulation of domestic visits for military reasons prevented the island and its waters from deteriorating or becoming polluted. Today, Lastovo remains a remote island with some unique, though gradually disappearing, biotic features, yet it is increasingly integrated into broader developmental and tourist trends in the Adriatic. The abundance of abandoned military structures serves as a constant reminder of the island’s militarized socialist past for both islanders and visitors. This paper, drawing on digital and oral history sources, explores how various groups - locals, tourists, and former soldiers - engage with these decaying military ruins, what kind of emotions the ruins evoke and how they shape the collective memory of socialist Lastovo. Distinct personal histories and connections to socialist Lastovo evoke emotions ranging from sadness, nostalgia and shame to wonder and fascination. Meanwhile, planned tourism investments in the former military zones raise questions about how Lastovo’s military past should be memorialized. This article argues that these sites already function as heritage, creating certain value and meaning for different groups. Rather than viewing the ruins as unprofitable rubble or unwanted heritage to be erased during repurposing, I argue that Lastovo’s inhabitants, visitors and former military can enhance these objects’ potential new uses by contributing their own knowledge and memories of these places.
Panel: The Balkans and World Literature
“Borges in the Balkans: Interpretations of Magical Realism”
Sylvie Vidan, University of California, LA
Beginning in the 1960s, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges gained international recognition for his fantastic fictions. A precursor to the magical realist movement of Latin America, Borges cultivated a distinct style that later inspired various Balkan writers, such as Danilo Kiš, Milorad Pavić, and the Zagreb “borgesovci” group of the 1970s. This paper examines their different interpretations of Borges in their own writing and how they adapt his style and thematic concerns to the context of the Balkans.
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