Predavanje Anite Buhin „Yugoslavia between the Balkans and the Mediterranean: reflections of popular culture“
U Centru za jugoistočnoeuropske studije (CSEES) Sveučilišta u Grazu Anita Buhin održat će predavanje o mediteranizaciji jugoslavenske popularne kulture (utorak, 2.5.2017, 13h).
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CSEES
UNI GRAZ
brownbag seminar
Location:
Resowi, SR 15.33, tract B, 3rd floor
Date:
Tuesday, 2 May, 2017 – 13:00 to 14:00
Speaker(s): Anita Buhin
Description:
This presentation is the result of my PhD research on the Mediterranization of Yugoslav popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s under Italian influences. While the mainstream geopolitical and cultural studies of socialist Yugoslavia are focused on the idea of the Balkans, or more rarely on the Central-European comparison with other socialist regimes, the Mediterranean is usually neglected, considered as a minor part of Yugoslav territory. In fact, these three cultural spaces (the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Central Europe) can be seen as contested in the Yugoslav area. The existence of several cultural spheres in socialist Yugoslavia was the result of affiliation to different powers throughout centuries, mixed with the more recent, late-19th and 20th century Pan-Slavism and Pan-Yugoslavism. However, these specific concepts derived from ethnologic understanding of the Balkan Peninsula, starting from the beginning of the 20th century in the works of prominent researchers like Jovan Cvijić or Milovan Gavazzi. In practice, different cultural, socio-geographical and political meanings could, and had been, ascribed to all of cultural spheres in different time period. I am arguing that during the 1950s and 1960s Mediterraneanism was appropriated as a symbol of civilised and modern cultural identity, while also serving to demonstrate the multiculturality and openness of Yugoslav regime. The motives of the Mediterranean could maybe best be found in the practices of popular culture. A common cultural discovery of the sea can be confirmed in the spread of the images through mass media, mainly television broadcasting, which contributed to the finite diffusion of the Mediteranean motifs throughout the whole country. Finally, it would be the Adriatic, summer holidays, popular music and travels to Trieste that would prevail in the (Yugonostalgic) popular memory.