The Land Where the East begins

Cleveland State University, CLASS and Department of Modern Languages are inviting you to a lecture with the title "The Land Where the East begins" by prof. dr. Božidar Jezernik of the University of Ljubljana, Monday, October 26th at 6PM in the Main Classroom 134 at the Cleveland State University

Božidar Jezernik

Božidar Jezernik (1951) is full professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana. He teaches Ethnology of the Balkans, and has conducted extensive field work in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. He was head of Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, in 1988-1992 and 1998-2003, and dean of Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, in 2003-7.

He has published monographs on Italian, German and Yugoslav concentration camps: Struggle for Survival (in Slovenian, Ljubljana, 1983 and 1997; in English, Ljubljana, 1999), Sex and Sexuality in extremis (in Slovenian, Ljubljana, 1993), Non cogito ergo sum (in Slovenian, Ljubljana, 1994).

His book on Balkan travel reports was published in Slovenian as Dežela, kjer je vse narobe (1998), its expanded and revised English version was published as Wild Europe (London, 2004); in Turkish translation as Vahşi Avrupa (Istanbul, 2006), in Polish translation as Dzika Europa (Cracow, 2007), and in Serbian translation (Divlja Evropa (Belgrade 2007). Italian translation (Europa selvaggia, 2009) is forthcoming.

He has edited proceedings of the international symposium Urban Symbolism and Rituals (in English, Ljubljana, 1997), and monographs on terrorism The Words of Terror (in Slovenian, Ljubljana, 2002) on the images of the Gypsies in contemporary and historical narratives ‘Why do with us live Gypsies and not Roma People’ (in Slovenian, Ljubljana, 2006), on readings of the other Ja i Drugoj v prostranstve teksta (in Russian, Perm', 2007), on the Balkans as the ‘other’ Europe and Its Other (in English, Ljubljana, 2007), on Slovenian bourgeoisie (in Slovenian, Ljubljana 2008), on imagining ‘the Turk’ (in English, in print), on cultural heritage in identity (in Slovenian, in print) and on museum presentations and manipulations (in Slovenian, in print).

Professor Jezernik has also authored many articles in different national and international periodics, such as Qualestoria, Etnološke sveske, Etnološki pregled, Traditiones, Etnolog, Časopis za zgodovino in narodopisje, Acta universitatis Lodziensis, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Slavonic and East European Review, Food and Foodways, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban History, Ethnologia Europeae, Current Anthropology, EtnoAnthropoZoom, Alimenta Populorum, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, Ethnologia Balkanica, Periferia, Museum Anthropology, and Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics.

The Land where the East Begins

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the Balkan Peninsula had no name. Only in 1808 did the German geographer August Zeune give it the name of Hämushalbinsel, which he subsequently changed to the Balkan Peninsula, following the usual practice of naming a region after a prominent mountain range. Zeune’s choice was rather arbitrary, however, as the Balkan Mountains, formerly called the Haemus (from haima, blood of Typhon), in what is now Bulgaria and known as Stara Planina (Old Mountain), constitute neither the most extensive nor the highest mountain system in the peninsula.

Moreover, it appears, the name itself was the result of a misunderstanding. The Turkish noun balkan, which denotes a rugged and thickly wooded mountain or mountain chain, was assumed to be the name of this specific range. During the nineteenth century, this tautological title was imposed on the area to meet the need for a short-hand label for the new states that emerged in the territory previously known as European Turkey or Turkey-in-Europe. Arguably, the choice was at least partly due to the fact that in the first half of the nineteenth century the mountain range became famous as the theatre of the Russo-Turkish wars and, till 1877, this natural bulwark formed the second and most important line of defence of the Well-Guarded City, as the Ottomans called their capital.

In the absence of any obvious border between the peninsula and the rest of Europe, authors have often disagreed about the exact extent of the Balkans, rendering the geography of the peninsula a very inexact science. For one thing, its area has not been stable and constant but has expanded and contracted in step with shifting political boundaries. For instance, in 1911 the Encyclopaedia Britannica defined the Balkans as encompassing ‘Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia-Slavonia, Dobrudja, Greece, Illyria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Novibazar, Servia and Turkey.’ During the twentieth century this definition underwent several changes. Eventually, the 1995 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Macropaedia included not only Romania and Vojvodina but also Moldova and Slovenia among the Balkan states but excluded Greece. The Balkans’ place in the topography of Western imagery was illustrated most precisely by a German author, who described it as a garden shed standing beside the noble West European villa and housing many people who were unable to get on with each other and quarrelled incessantly among themselves.

 

Lep pozdrav,

Luka Zibelnik.

l.zibelnik@csuohio.edu

216-255-4770).