Yugoslavia in the 20. century - Detailseite

Next year, 2018, will mark the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the (first) Yugoslav state. This seminar will analyze the complex and often contradictory history of the Yugoslav state projects of the 20^th century: the first a monarchy between 1918 and 1941; the second a socialist one-party regime between 1944/45 and 1990/91.

The course will explore central themes in the development of both state and society in the Yugoslav geographical space within a framework that focuses on the entanglements of local developments with global and European events and their respective temporal “Zeitgeist”. Often, the histories of Yugoslavia formulate accounts that, explicitly or implicitly, lead toward state dissolution and break-down. This seminar seeks to problematize this approach and to ask whether there are possible alternatives to the narratives of inevitable failure.