We are deeply indebted to our colleagues and comrades who organized individual sessions: Olja Alvir (U of Vienna), Jelena Batinić (Stanford), Katie Coyne (UC Berkeley), Gordana Crnković (U of Washington), Justyna Gluba (Kazimierz Wielki University), Zachary Hicks (UC Berkeley), Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College), Olivia Jenkins (U of Chicago), Yueling Ji (National University of Singapore), Blaze Joel (UT Austin), Iva Kosmos (U of Zagreb), Landry Krebs (UC Berkeley), Vladimir Kulić (Iowa State U), Dominick Lawton (Stanford), Jovana Lazić (Stanford), Olena Lyubchenko (York), Natalija Majsova (U of Ljubljana), Ana Milic (McGill), Gregor Moder (U of Ljubljana), Ainsley Morse (UC San Diego), Alex Pekov (Columbia), Julija Pešić (U of Toronto), Djordje Popović (UC Berkeley), Milica Popović (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Romana Pozniak (IEF Zagreb), Katja Praznik (SUNY Buffalo), Nikola Radić (U of Zurich), Helena Ratté (U of Chicago), Kaitlyn Sorenson (SUNY Binghampton), Zvonimir Stopić (Capital Normal University), Srđan Tunić (Temple), Grega Ulen (Tsinghua), Sylvie Vidan (UCLA), Bojana Videkanić (U of Waterloo), and Daniel Weiss (U of Virginia).
NYS sessions are organized into 9 thematically linked streams and are listed below (along with participants and their presentations):
Yugoslav Political Thought (3 sessions)
Yugoslav Film (4 sessions)
Yugoslav Letters (4 sessions)
Yugoslav Chronotopes (4 sessions)
Yugoslavia after Empire (4 sessions)
Revolutionary Constellations (3 sessions; joint stream with Black Sheep Society)
Yugoslav Art (4 sessions)
Yugoslav Counterpublics (4 sessions)
Comparative Socialisms (3 sessions; joint stream with Black Sheep Society)
STREAM 1: YUGOSLAV POLITICAL THOUGHT
Women, Labor, and Social Reproduction in (Ex-)Yugoslavia Panel organizers: Olivia Jenkins (U of Chicago) & Helena Ratté (U of Chicago)
Ana Hofman (ZRC-SAZU): “Eight Hours of Culture: Women, Emancipation, and Aesthetic Education at the Workplace”
Olivia Jenkins (U of Chicago): “Producing Socialist Housewives: Domestic Education in Early Socialist Yugoslavia”
Helena Ratté (U of Chicago): “‘What to put in the report’: Organizational Narratives of Women’s Empowerment in Bosnia and Herzegovina”
Romana Pozniak (IEF Zagreb): “Feminized Care and the Politics of Humanitarian Governance: Social Reproduction and Displacement in Croatia”
Discussant: Jelena Batinić (Stanford) Chair: Landry Krebs (UC Berkeley) Back to Class! Revisiting the Social Structure of Yugoslav Socialism Panel organizer: Grega Ulen (Tsinghua)
Mladen Zobec (IOS Regensburg): “‘Privatnici’ and the Question of Yugoslav Labour beyond the Factory: Private Sector Actors in Yugoslav Socialism”
Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek (CEU): “Scaling Down in the 1980s: ‘Mala privreda’ and the Future of the Yugoslav Retail Sector”
Grega Ulen (Tsinghua): “Classes or Strata? Dilemmas of Class Analysis in Socialist Yugoslavia”
Predrag Rajsic (U of Waterloo): “The Structure of Production and the Limits of Sustainability: Evidence from the Yugoslav Economy”
Discussant: Katja Praznik (SUNY Buffalo) Chair: Margaret Beissinger (Princeton) Yugoslav Philosophy Panel organizers: Gregor Moder (U of Ljubljana), Katie Coyne (UC Berkeley), & Djordje Popović (UC Berkeley)
Gregor Moder (U of Ljubljana): “Reading Hegel in Yugoslavia”
Katie Coyne (UC Berkeley): “Self-Identity and Teleology in Kangrga”
Bara Kolenc (U of Ljubljana): “Yugoslav Self-Management as a Marxist Idea and Political-Economic Practice”
Spencer Adams (LMU Munich): “Workers' Control and the Yugoslav Influence on Callenbach's Ecotopia”
Discussant: Djordje Popović (UC Berkeley) Chair: Eliza Rose (UNC Chapel Hill)
STREAM 2: YUGOSLAV FILM
Between Yugoslav and Croatian Cinema Panel organizer: Justyna Gluba (Kazimierz Wielki University)
Boris Petrović (Sorbonne): “Image of the people in the Veljko Bulajić's film Boom Town”
Sonja Leboš (UIII Zagreb): “How socialism was built: cinematic representations of one socialist city”
Justyna Gluba (Kazimierz Wielki): “From Zagreb to the World: Jadran Film as the ‘Yugoslav Hollywood’”
Discussants: Alice Lovejoy (U of Minnesota) & Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College) Chair: Maša Kolanović (U of Zagreb)
Reframing Yugoslav Cinematic Landscape(s) Panel organizer: Nikola Radić (U of Zurich)
Mariana Hebling (Stanford): “Thought as Found Footage: Dušan Makavejev’s Innocence Unprotected and Gorilla Bathes at Noon”
Filip Šestan (UC Berkeley): “Landscape Montage, the Romantic Imaginary, and the Autonomy of Art in Ivica Matić’s Woman with a Landscape”
Nikola Radić (U of Zurich): “Landscape De-Ossification in Ivan Salatić's We Are the Sons of Your Rocks (2018)”
Zdenko Mandušić (U of Toronto): “Lazar Stojanović’s Anti-Nationalist Documentary Portraits and the Legacy of the Yugoslav Black Wave”
Discussant: Nace Zavrl (Harvard) Chair: Clea Wanner (U of Basel)
Critical New Approaches to Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema, Part I Roundtable organizer: Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College)
Aida Vidan (Tufts)
Nikola Radić (U of Zurich)
Amir Husak (New School)
Sima Kokotović (U of Pennsylvania)
Pavle Levi (Stanford)
Chair: Justyna Gluba (Kazimierz Wielki University)
Critical New Approaches to Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema, Part II Roundtable organizer: Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College)
antje postema (UC Berkeley)
Adnan Džumhur (UNC Chapel Hill)
Zdenko Mandušić (U of Toronto)
Nace Zavrl (Harvard)
Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College)
Chair: Filip Šestan (UC Berkeley)
STREAM 3: YUGOSLAV LETTERs
Transnational Exchanges: Yugoslavia's Cultural Position in between Blocs Panel organizer: Sylvie Vidan (UCLA)
Sylvie Vidan (UCLA): “Writing in the Margins: Sergio Pitol’s Yugoslav-Mexican Novel”
Dejan Vasić (Stanford): “The Archival Lost: Art Criticism, Internationalism, and Post-Yugoslav Space”
Aleksandar Momčilović (Columbia): “Situating Alignments: Yugoslav Literary Scholarship in Transnational Perspective”
Boris Postnikov (SNV Zagreb): “Thomas Bernhard and the Post-Yugoslav Literary Field”
Discussant: Gordana Crnković (U of Washington) Chair: Mariana Hebling (Stanford)
Yugoslav Literature in the Classroom and Beyond Lightning round organizers: Gordana Crnković (U of Washington), Dominick Lawton (Stanford) & Djordje Popović (UC Berkeley)
Gordana Crnković (U of Washington): “Yugoslav Literature as World Literature”
Boris Postnikov (SNV Zagreb): “(Post-)Yugoslav Literature Between World Literature and National Literatures”
Memory, Mediation, and Metamodern Sensibilities in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space Panel organizer: Natalija Majsova (U of Ljubljana)
Jennifer Erickson (Ball State U): “Spatializing Affect: Public Space and Structures of Feeling in Sarajevo”
Katie Kasperian (U of Michigan): “Mediating Memory Towards Non-Violent Aims: How Memory is Constructed Through/In Yugoslav Documentary”
Natalija Majsova (U of Ljubljana): “Creativity, Computer Culture, and Computer Science from the Perspective of Pioneering Women Computer Scientists in the (Post-)Yugoslav Space”
Jernej Kaluža (U of Ljubljana): “Modern, Postmodern, and Metamodern Structures of Feeling: Big-Data Analysis of Memories on Yugoslavia in the 21st Century”
Discussant: Mladen Zobec (IOS Regensburg) Chair: Ana Marija Spasojević (JLU Giessen)
Vukovar, Memory, Spatial Politics Panel organizer: Blaze Joel (UT Austin)
Blaze Joel (UT Austin): “‘Football Victories Shape a Nation’s Identity as Much as Wars Do’: Soccer and Politics in Vukovar”
Lana Jurman (U of Vienna): “Towering Over the Past: Reconstruction of the Vukovar Water Tower and the Consolidation of National Victimhood”
Dragana Prvulović (U of Montréal): “‘I Love My Little Ghetto’: Serbs, Housing, and Post-War Spatial Politics in Vukovar, Croatia”
Daniel Rhea (Independent): “Death and Life on the Drina and Danube”
Discussant: Ivana Polić (Florida State U) Chair: Andrew Dombrowski (UC Berkeley)
STREAM 5: YUGOSLAVIA AFTER EMPIRE
Tense States: When Revolution Inherits Empire Panel organizer: Olja Alvir (U of Vienna)
Olja Alvir (U of Vienna): “Founding the Anti-State: Periphery and Power in Partisan Film”
Tamara Cvetković (CEU): “‘Everything goes back to the Ottoman Empire, doesn’t it? Sometimes I wonder: is it even dead?’ – on Lea Ypi’s novel Indignity”
Maja Jović (U of Westminster) & Milena Jokanović (U of Belgrade): “Tito’s Residences as Anti-Colonial Cabinets of Wonders”
Adrian Pelc (U of Vienna): “A Self-Published Theory of Everything: Miroslav Feller’s Theory of Life, Consciousness, and Cognition”
Discussant: Slaven Crnić (U of Rijeka) Chair: Slaven Crnić (U of Rijeka)
The Entangled Histories of Socialism and Nationalism in the 20th Century Macedonian Question Panel organizer: Jovana Lazić (Stanford)
Doruntine Aliu (NYU): “Imagining Again, Otherwise: The Eastern Question and Balkan Federation in the Second International”
Jovana Lazić (Stanford): “Between Humanity and Nation: Balkan Socialist Responses to War, 1912-1919”
Tasos Kostopoulos (IMS-FORTH Crete): “From Relocation to Assimilation: State Policy Planning on Greece’s Internal Macedonian Question throughout the Cold War (1945-1990)”
Keith Brown (Arizona State U): “Devout, Devoted and Devoured: The Logic of Betrayal in Macedonia's Socialist History”
Discussant: Veljko Vujacic (Oberlin) Chair: Victor Friedman (U of Chicago)
The Subliminal Porte: Sephardi Jews and the Ottoman Resonances Panel organizer: Alex Pekov (Columbia)
Alex Pekov (Columbia): “‘Our Turkish Spirit’: Sephardi-Ottoman Entanglements in Hajim Davičo, Žak Konfino, and Elias Canetti”
Russell Scott Valentino (Indiana U Bloomington): “From Sublime to Serene: Sephardic Jews in the Adriatic Translation Zone”
Kevin Kenjar (U of Rijeka) “A Sephardic Vision of Zion from the Ottoman-Habsburg Borderlands”
Makena Mezistrano (Stanford): “A Sephardi Historian in the Balkans: Salomon Rosanes and the Birth of Ottoman Jewish Historiography”
Discussant: Yaron Ayalon (Fairfield U) Chair: Ben Hooyman (Columbia)
Hubs and Networks across Borders in Southeast Europe Roundtable organizer: Daniel Weiss (U of Virginia)
Ehlimana Memišević (U of Sarajevo)
Olivia Pape (UC Irvine)
Sandra Davidovic (CUNY)
Filip Galić (Cornell)
Emma Niewald (UT Austin)
Chair: Daniel Weiss (U f Virginia)
STREAM 6: REVOLUTIONARY CONSTELLATIONS (joint stream w/ Black Sheep Society)
Book discussion: Curating Socialism: A Handbook of International Art Exhibitions, 1947–1989 Roundtable organizer: Bojana Videkanić (U of Waterloo)
Christina Kiaer (Northwestern)
Sven Spieker (UC Santa Barbara)
Bojana Videkanić (U of Waterloo)
Vladimir Kulić (Iowa State U)
Ana Miljački (MIT)
Chair: Alice Lovejoy (U of Minnesota)
Political Stakes of Translating Revolution Lightning round organizers: Zachary Hicks (UC Berkeley) & Olena Lyubchenko (York)
Olena Lyubchenko (York) and Zachary Hicks (UC Berkeley): “Translating the October Revolution and the Factory Committees: Worker Self Activity”
Ros Herling (UC Berkeley): “Translating Early Soviet Revolutionary History”
Rafael Khachaturian (U of Pennsylvania): “Translating Early Soviet Legal Theory”
Leah Feldman (U of Chicago): “Translating and Editing the Anti-colonial”
Elisa Purschke (Princeton) and Amirkhan Saifullin (U of Zurich): “Translating Georgy Safarov's Anti-Colonial Works”
Igor Shoikhedbrod (St. Francis Xavier)
Chair: Sam Farmer (U of Michigan)
Confronting Capitalist Patriarchy: Socialist Feminism from Revolution to Social Reproduction Panel organizers: Katja Praznik (SUNY Buffalo) & Jelena Batinić (Stanford)
Anastasia Kalk (New School): “From Communes to Communalization: Soviet Feminist Theory of Family Abolition”
Olena Lyubchenko (York): “Reproduction or Distribution?: The Question of Soviet Distinction”
Katja Praznik (SUNY Buffalo): “Yugoslav Socialist Feminism and the Material Politics of Social Reproduction”
Jelena Batinić (Stanford): “Revisiting the AFŽ: Domestic Work, Institutional Groundwork, Legacy”
Absence and the Yugoslav Avant-Gardes Panel organizer: Kaitlyn Sorenson (SUNY Binghampton)
Marjana Krajač (Ohio State U): “Unknown Spaces of Feminist Modernism: Ana Maletić’s Early Dance Studios in 1930s Zagreb”
Aleksandar Bošković (Columbia): “Against Art: Goran Đorđević’s Invention of Copy and Turn to Anonymity”
Kaitlyn Sorenson (SUNY Binghampton): “OHO’s Exodus, and the Search for ‘An Avant-Garde Worthy of the Name’”
Ian MacMillen (Yake): “Laibach's Avant-Garde Rock and the Quiet Art of Remembrance in Yugoslavia”
Discussant: Nicoletta Rousseva (Indiana U Bloomington) Chair: Connor Smith (New School)
Culture between Capitalism and Imperialism, Part I Panel organizer: Bojana Videkanić (U of Waterloo)
Aleksa Nikolić (U of Novi Sad): “Young Bosnia and Negritude: Anti-imperialist Literary Forms and Practices in the (Semi-)Periphery of the World-System”
Aleksandra Perišić (FMK Belgrade): “Documenting Liberation: Yugoslav Photography and the Algerian War of Independence”
Bojana Videkanić (U of Waterloo): “Imperialism, Capitalism and History of Yugoslav Art”
Anamarija Batista (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna): “Cultural Strategies in the Post-Yugoslav Space: Production of Critical Voices and Dis-Continuities”
Discussant: Katja Perat (Iḷisaġvik College) Chair: Elias Kleinbock (Stanford)
Culture between Capitalism and Imperialism, Part II Panel organizer: Bojana Videkanić (U of Waterloo)
Owen Kohl (Grinnell College): “Domestic, Post-Yugoslav, Balkan, etc.: Proliferated Social Categories and Hip-Hop in the Aftermath”
Ana Miljački (MIT): “Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Architecture and Capitalist Transition”
Ana Martina Bakić (U of Zagreb): “Architecture in Transition: Croatia at the Crossroads of Socialism and Capitalism”
Brian Arnold (independent): “The photographic avant-garde in Yugoslavia: 1928-1936”
Discussant: Anamarija Batista (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) Chair: Sonja Leboš (UIII Zagreb)
Sonic Inscriptions of (Post-)Yugoslav Life Roundtable organizer: Landry Krebs (UC Berkeley)
Snežana Žabić (U of Illinois Chicago)
Landry Krebs (UC Berkeley)
Una Vulevic (Stanford)
Mat Muntz (UC Berkeley)
Andrew Dombrowski (Independent)
Chair: Ronelle Alexander (UC Berkeley)
STREAM 8: YUGOSLAV COUNTERPUBLICS
Desertion, Dissent, and Transition: Narratives on the Yugoslav Wars Across Media and Archives Panel organizer: Milica Popović (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Milica Popović (Austrian Academy of Sciences): “Discursive battles of war regimes: ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deserters in the media during the Yugoslav wars”
Goran Lazičić (U of Graz): “A late postcard from Bratislava: Radivoj Vukić, anti-war activism, and draft evasion in Vojvodina”
Theodore Jefferies (U of Toronto): “Transition reports: economies of war and post-war in 21st century Bosnian prose”
Clea Wanner (U of Basel): “To and from BH: Circulations and Artistic Appropriations of War-Era VHS in Contemporary Filmmaking”
Discussant: Sima Kokotović (U of Pennsylvania) Chair: Iva Kosmos (U of Zagreb)
Public Space and Activism in the Balkans Panel organizer: Srđan Tunić (Temple)
Ivana Polić (Florida State U): “‘United Against Fascism’: Youth, Antifascism and Communist Nostalgia in Contemporary Croatia”
Zala Pochat Križaj (King’s College London): “Legitimacy and reconciliation: enacting reconciliation in a context of distrust in political actors”
Alma Prelec (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama): “2026/1936: Murals and Spanish Civil War Commemoration in Rijeka”
Srđan Tunić (Temple): “Activist Aesthetics: Graffiti, Street Art, and Art in Public Space’s Political Potentials”
Discussant: Ana Hofman (ZRC-SAZU) Chair: Emma Niewald (UT Austin)
Book discussion: Realigning Humanitarianism in the Balkans: From Cold War Politics to Neoliberal Ethics, by Čarna Brković Roundtable organizer: Romana Pozniak (IEF Zagreb)
Čarna Brković (U of Mainz)
Tanja Petrović (ZRC-SAZU)
Siobhan Hearne (U of Manchester)
Lauren Woodard (Syracuse)
Chair: Romana Pozniak (IEF Zagreb)
Queeroslavia: Queer Memory, Literature, and Belonging in Post-Yugoslav Contexts Panel organizers: Ana Milic (McGill) and Natalija Majsova (U of Ljuljana)
Tijana Zderić (U of Toronto): “Queering the Nation: Literary Disidentification and Queer Subjectivity in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina”
Ana Milic (McGill): “Queer Refuge: Narrating Post-Yugoslav Queer Lives in Diaspora”
Brett Donohoe (Amherst): “The Ethics and Aesthetics of Cataloguing Queer Post-Yugoslav Literature”
Ana Marija Spasojević (JLU Giessen): “Queeroslavia: Queer Literary Counterspaces beyond Post-Yugoslav Nationhood”
Discussant: Natalija Majsova (U of Ljubljana) Chair: Jernej Kaluža (U of Ljubljana)
STREAM 9: COMPARATIVE SOCIALISMS (joint stream W/ Black Sheep Society)
Sino-Soviet Cultural Encounters Panel organizer: Yueling Ji (National University of Singapore)
Edward Tyerman (UC Berkeley): “A Chinese Classic on the Soviet Stage: How The Story of the Western Wing Became The Spilt Cup”
Chutong Liu (U of Oregon): “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai as a Case Study: On the Cultural Needs Behind the Aesthetic Exchange of Chinese and Soviet Ballet”
Yueling Ji (National University of Singapore): “OPOJAZ in Macau: Viktor Vinogradov and the Study of Style in Chinese”
Jinyi Chu (Yale): “Start-up, Socialist style: Small-Business Comedies in the 1980s Soviet Union and China”
Discussant: Roy Chan (U of Oregon) Chair: Roy Chan (U of Oregon)
China and Yugoslavia I: Cold War Struggles through Imaginings, Politics and Ideology Panel organizer: Zvonimir Stopić (Capital Normal University)
Yuguang Zhou (LMU Munich): “Mutual Mirroring: How China and Yugoslavia Learned from Each Other’s Socialist Revolution and Construction”
Luka Golež (U of Ljubljana): “International Debates on Socialist Culture: The Chinese Reception of Yugoslav ‘Revisionist Josip Vidmar’”
Renjie Xiong (U of Regensburg): “The Enemy Within and Without: The Anti-Rightist Campaign and Sino-Yugoslav Relations (1955–1958)”
Tao Xu (East China Normal University): “Beyond the Ideology: The Normalization of Relations between the Chinese Communist Party and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, 1976-1978”
Discussant: Ivica Bakota (Capital Normal University) Chair: Zvonimir Stopić (Capital Normal University)
China and Yugoslavia II: Partnership & Exchange through Socialism, People, Economy & Culture Panel organizer: Zvonimir Stopić (Capital Normal University)
Canying Ren (U of Belgrade): “Politics and Media: Political Legitimization and the Expectation–Reality Gap in Sino-Yugoslav Relations (1977–1979)”
Sanja Radović (Independent): “Summit Diplomacy: The Historic Visits of Tito and Hua Guofeng and China’s ‘Discovery’ of Yugoslavia (1977–1978)”
Ruixuan Hao (U of Belgrade): “A Study on PR China-SFR Yugoslavia Mixed Committee for Economic and Scientific-Technical Cooperation from 1978 to1989”
Ivica Bakota (Capital Normal University): “Hua Guofeng’s Interregnum: The Last Chance to Globalize Yugoslavia?”