MA in Ethnicity and History, Buglaria

crossposted from Balkans List

Subject: CfA: MA in Ethnicity and National Relations in the Balkans,
2002-2003, Sofia

Sofia University "St. Kl. Ohridski"
Department of History

MA in Ethnicity and National Relations in the Balkans, 2002-2003

  The MA programme will put political events of recent Balkan history in
the context of the centuries-long and often turbulent history of the
relations between the different ethnic groups living there. It explores
the concept of ethnic relations in both theory and practice. The courses
will focus on specific aspects of ethnic and national relations in
South Eastern Europe in the modern era.
The programme is developed according to the guidelines adopted by the
Ministry of Education in Bulgaria following the basic precepts of the
educational policy of the countries of the EU. A full-time student will
complete the degree in one year, starting in October and taking four
courses each of the first two terms before writing a 20,000 to 30,000 word
dissertation. A part-time student will spread the degree over two
years. Dissertations should normally draw on primary source material and are
to be completed by next October.
The courses will be taught in English. The students will be expected to
write their dissertation in English. The suggested reading is in
English, French, German, Russian and Bulgarian.
A two-semester course in Bulgarian language and literature will be
provided for. The students will be assigned to different levels according
to their language skills. Courses in Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Turkish
and Greek are optional.
During the second semester and the summer months the students will take
part in two ten-day field trips - one in a locality with ethnically and
religiously mixed population; the other will include partaking in the
day-to-day activities of an active minority foundation.

FIRST SEMESTER
CORE COURSES

Modern History of the Balkans / end of 18th- mid 20th centuries
The course will give a basic idea of the geopolitical situation of
South Eastern Europe on the eve of modern times and the development of the
notion of the Balkans as a separate distinct entity - an inseparable
but different part of Europe. It will follow the intricacies of
nation-building and state-building in the Peninsula in modern times. Special
attention will be paid to the development of Balkan nationalism, to the
formulation and realization of the conflicting national programmes of the
Balkan states. The history of the numerous ethnic and national
conflicts in the Balkans will be dwelt upon in an attempt to present the
background of the events in recent decades.
The course will be taught by Prof. Ivan Ilchev who has researched on
the history of international relations in South Eastern Europe, social
history, history of ideas and features of Balkan nationalism. He has been
a Fulbright professor, a Woodrow Wilson Center professor and has taught
Balkan history in different Universities in the USA, Great Britain,
France, Japan and Yugoslavia. He is the author, editor and compiler of
more than fifteen monographs.

Modern Bulgarian History, 1877-1944
The course will cover the main trends in the demographic, economic,
social, political and diplomatic development of the Bulgarian state and
society. Special attention will be paid to the relations with  the
neighbouring Balkan countries. The course will be organized according to the
main periods in Bulgarian history: the establishment of the Bulgarian
state and of the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia; the Unification
and the crises in 1886-87; the development of the parliamentary regime
in the late XIX-th c.; the Personal regime at the beginning of the
XX-th c., the after-war period; the Authoritarian government in the late
30s and the WW II years.
The course will be taught by Dr Valery Kolev who has researched the
history of state institutions and local government in Bulgaria, on the
Bulgarian political parties, home and social policy between the two world
wars. He has been Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University, UK, at
Central European University in Budapest and at Vilnius University where
he presented occasional lectures. He has numerous publications in
history reviews.

National and Regional Identity in the Balkans
There exists no simple answer to the correlation between national and
regional identity in South Eastern Europe since it involves a number of
interwoven, albeit contested perspectives. These are products of the
co-existence of and rivalry between various historical identity models in
the region. The purpose of this course is to define and examine those
conflicting intersections of identity-building as contingent acts of
social and cultural projections. Its aim is to identify the problem
framework of regional identity. The study of national and regional identity
will focus on the following main markers:
- social agents/institutions effecting this projection;
- cultural and ideological codes enabling it;
-imaginary/symbolic borders - geopolitical and cultural images of self
and the other, constructions of the nation/region and channels of their
collective internalization);
  heuristic borders - historical legacies, modernization/nation-states,
economic small-state periphery, etc.);
-moving and permeable borders - "low" culture(s), traditional
identities, everyday-life     history; corridors of conflict and
cooperation;
-ideologies/projects/debates - political and/or utopian projects of
regional unification; uses and misuses of identities and borders; borders
of communication - cultural institutions and elites; etc.)
The course will be taught by Assoc. Prof. Diana Mishkova who has
researched the modernization of Balkan societies in 19-20th centuries and
history of ideas. She is author of a monograph on the comparative
political modernization of Serbia and Romania. She has taught courses at the
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, University of Uppsala, Sweden and
the University of Athens, Greece.


Ethnic Minorities in the Balkans
The course will focus on the influence of state policies on ethnic
minorities in different Balkan countries in the 20th century. A general
overview of the main ethnic minorities in the peninsula will be presented.
Then specific attention will be paid to four cases:
 From a relatively marginal group of former nomads, the Greek
Saracatzens became one of the symbols of the Greek national identity. This
shift
was related to interesting transformations of Greek national ideology
and was important for the fate of the Saracatzen community in Greece.
The ethnic Bulgarians in Banat are a privileged case for investigating
the policy of a Balkan state towards its diaspora in four periods - the
interwar period, the period of socialist internationalism, the period
of socialist nationalism and the post-socialist period. The changes of
the external homeland's -Bulgarian- policy were replicated by similar
shifts in the nationalising host state -Romania- and were immediately
followed by transformation in the local community.
The ethnic Turks are the largest ethnic minority in Bulgaria and are
related to a country often considered a potential enemy. In that case the
state policies were quite different, and so were their consequences on
the construction of the Turkish community.
The Roma community is related to no external homeland and the Balkan
countries' policies towards it reflected that fact. The Roma also present
a privileged case for studying the massive introduction of a relatively
new actor - the international institutions, whose presence and
intervention in Balkan ethnic issues acquired a new importance after 1989.
Dr. Ilia Iliev, who has researched the anthropology of religions,
social history and ethnography, will teach the course. He has numerous
publications in these fields. He has  lectured at University College London,
IWM, Vienna and EHESS, Paris.

Optional Courses
Bulgarian Language

The Other Europe - Modern East European History as a Part of the
European Historical Tradition
The course deals with the causes for the divergence of the history of
Eastern Europe from the mainstream European history. Drawing on a number
of historical facts and arguments it will enable students to understand
the reasons for the general lagging of Eastern Europe behind Western
Europe. A major part of the course will be dedicated to the growth of
nationalism in Western Europe and its reflection in Eastern Europe. It
will look at the history of the Balkans in 19-20th c. as both a gap and a
bridge between the European East and West.
The course will be taught by Prof. Andrei Pantev whose research
interests include the history of Bulgaria, the Balkans, Europe and the
United
States. He has published more than thirty monographs on different
topics. He has been a Fulbright scholar and he has lectured at a number of
European and American Universities.

SECOND SEMESTER
CORE COURSES

Church and Religion in the Balkans
This course aims at giving the students adequate information on the
historical background and the present situation of the most important
churches and religious groups on the Balkan Peninsula: Greek Orthodox,
Muslims, Catholics and Protestants. Special emphasis will be placed upon
the historical explanation of their present situation and the
relationships between them. An important aspect will be the meetings and
discussions with representatives of the Bulgarian churches and religious
groups,
human rights groups, officials from the Directorate of Religious
Affairs at the Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Human Rights
Commission.
  The course will be taught by Prof. Hr. Matanov who has researched the
field of mediaeval Balkan history and history of the religions in the
Peninsula. Prof. Matanov is author and editor of six monographs.

Federalist Ideas and Federalism in South Eastern Europe
The course will trace the development of these historical concepts from
the time of their inception to the present day, their diffusion and
their place in political theory and practice of the countries of the
region, as well as the attempts at their actual implementation. Federalist
ideas have been quite popular in the region and individuals and groups
from the extreme left to the extreme right entertained them. The plans
included formation of Danubian, Balkan, South Slav or other federations.
Federalism as a form of solving the problems of the region was favoured
by individuals and political groups in different European countries.
Yet the actual realisation of these ideas has proved to be disappointing,
the federalist structures have proved unstable and collapsed
comparatively easily. Still, federalist ideas and concepts have not
withered away
and are even now proposed as solutions to the problems of the region,
sometimes from the most unexpected quarters.
The course will be taught by Assoc. Prof. Roumen Genov, who has
researched Bulgarian, British and American history. He has lectured at the
American University in Blagoevgrad. He has published books and articles on
the role of the personal factor in history, on the policy of the Great
Powers in the Balkans.

Modernisation of South Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries
The course will focus on the major issue of the interaction between
politics and underdevelopment. It aims to demonstrate the identity of the
processes of modernisation, state-building, and nation-building in the
Balkans, in other words, to integrate social and economic modernisation
with political history in contrast to their explicit or implicit
treatment in opposition.  The approach rests on challenging two widely
shared
and interlocking interpretations of the Balkans: the East-West
dichotomy in the patterns of social and political development and the
negative
perspective of Balkan politics and Balkan nationalism. At least three
major fields of historical research and interpretation will be dealt
with: the social background and long-term goals of Balkan political
elites; the long-term effects of parliamentary institutions in the
late-industrialising Balkan societies, and the state-building and
nation-building
experiences in the Balkans as compared to those in contemporary Eu
ropean peripheries and Western Europe.
The course will be taught by Assoc. Prof. Diana Mishkova.

The Balkans: Modernisation Unfulfilled
The failure of the latest attempt to modernise the Balkans that began
after WW 2 is now painfully obvious. The current crisis differs in the
various countries of the Peninsula, even their number is uncertain, but
the general conclusion holds: the gap between them and the developed
part of the Continent seems to be widening; the sad fact is that the
Balkans are as far away as ever not only from Western, but also from
Central Europe. During the Communist period the disparities narrowed
somewhat
only to reopen again after the collapse. They are eternally considered
a European backwater and constant troublemaker. Why have the Balkans
failed to modernise? The former socialist states can blame communism as
an alien force imposed from outside, but Greek capitalism also has not
been a great success. What went wrong with this new, third - after the
late 19th C. and the interwar period attempt at Balkan modernisation.
The course attempts to answer these questions. I will put to analysis
the post WW2 economic, political and social developments in this
European periphery, juxtaposing them to the developments in Western Europe
and the wider world.
The course will be taught by Senior Research Fellow Ekaterina Nikova.
She has  researched in Balkan comparative modern history. She has been a
W. Wilson, Fulbright and National Humanities Center Fellow. She has
lectured in a number of American, European and Japanese universities and
published in the fields of Balkan economic history and international and
ethnic relations. She is the author of "The Balkans and the European
Community" and "Balkan Modernization in the Second Half of the 20th c."

OPTIONAL COURSES

Bulgarian Language and Culture

Bulgaria and the Balkans in the Global East-West Confrontation of the
Cold War Years
  The course covers the basic trends in the international relations on
the Balkans' area during the Cold War years (1945-1990). The diplomatic,
strategic, and ideological conflicts between the two superpowers will
form the framework for surveying the local and regional aspects of the
global confrontation. The course will discuss the historical background
and the regional implications of the Soviet-American antagonism; the
structure of international relations in the area as one of the forefronts
of the NATO v. the Warsaw Pact system; the dynamics of the Cold War and
its influence over the diplomacy in the region; the management of
domestic, political, economic and ethnic conflicts from the viewpoint of
international diplomacy. The local and regional aspects of the major Cold
War crises (i.e. Hungary and Suez in 1956, the Cuban missiles crisis in
1962, the Prague Spring and its aftermath in 1968, etc.) will be
analyzed on the bases of newly declassified documents from the region a
nd the new historiography.
The course will be taught by Dr. Kostadin Grozev who has researched in
20th century US political and diplomatic history, in international
relations, and history of the Cold War. He has been Visiting Research
Fellow at Oxford University, a Fellow of the Open Society Archive and the
Central European University in Budapest, Senior Fulbright Scholar and
Lecturer at Wesleyan University, USA, British Academy Fellow at the
University of Hull, UK. He has also presented occasional lectures at Harvard
University and University of Texas in Austin, the Woodrow Wilson Center
in Washington, USA.

Bulgaria in the Eastern bloc countries in the second half of the 20th
c.
In World War II Bulgaria was an ally of Germany. After its defeat it
became an integral part of the Soviet sphere of influence and remained in
it until November 10, 1989. While having to follow the Soviet model of
state socialism it had to solve a number of political, social, economic
and ethnic problems. Special attention will be paid in the course to
the changing pattern of dealing with problems deriving from the ethnic
structure of the population. The role of the external factor for the
gradual changes of the nineteen eighties and the abrupt ones after 1989
will be explored. The students will be acquainted with the ongoing
argument on solving the ethnic problem in the country.
The course will be taught by Assoc. Prof. Iskra Baeva and Assoc. Prof.
Evguenia Kalinova. Their research is focused on the Post World War II
history of Eastern Europe. They have published individual and joint
monographs and articles on the history of changes in Eastern Europe.

THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
Is the oldest Department of Sofia University with 1300 students and
around 100 professors. It teaches students in four main fields - history,
archaeology, ethnology and archival studies. In recent years it
partakes in a number of international programmes.

ACCOMMODATION AND COST OF LIVING
The fee for the course is 3000 $ payable either in September or in two
installments in September and January. It covers the tuition fees
/field trips included/.
Modest accommodation is provided by the University. The rent is quite
reasonable - 30-40$ a month /utilities included/ for a shared room. The
daily allowance for food is around 4-6 $. A monthly card for the
transport in Sofia is around 15$. The cost of the books is still around half
of the European prices.
The term in Bulgaria starts October 1 and ends July 1st.

   APPLICATIONS
Applicants will normally hold a good honours degree, but those with
other qualifications will also be considered. For further information
contact:
Professor Ivan Ilchev,
Chair of History of the Balkans
Department of History
Sofia University "St. Kl. Ohridski"
15 Tsar Osvoboditel Bld
1000 Sofia
Bulgaria

Tel: + 359 2 9308 223
Fax: + 359 2 463022
E-mail: [email protected]

Applications for year 2002-2003 will be considered up to July 1st 2002