77772 - Gender And Popular Culture In South East Europe

Learning outcomes

With this module students will become acquainted with the interdisciplinary field of Gender Studies and will familiarise them with the most important gender-related concepts, arguments and debates in the Southeast European context. Students are also expected to grasp the most commonly used qualitative methods for studying gender, thus developing critical reading, thinking, and writing skills and deepening their understanding of feminist political and cultural analysis.

Course contents

MODULE CONTENTS

Lesson 1: Defining the Terms – Southeast Europe through Popular Culture

Lesson 2: Defining the Terms – Studying Popular Culture; brief Introduction to Feminist Analysis of Culture

Lesson 3: Defining the Terms –Introduction to Feminist Traditions

Lesson 4: Urban Space-time and Ideology/Gender of the cities

Lesson 5: Gender and Modernity in Popular Culture

Lesson 6: Methodologies of Researching Culture and Women’s Activism in SEE

Lesson 7: Performing Popular Culture

Lesson 8: Women’s agency in films about the Balkans

Lesson 9: Festivals and geopolitics of the “Other” Europe

Lesson 10: Conclusions

Short discussion of students’ paper topics (5 minutes presentations of paper topic ideas, and discussion), theoretical background, methodology, main dilemmas. Wrapping-up the course and discussing the remaining open questions.

Discuss methodology of researching visual materials and/or popular culture.

Readings/Bibliography

COURSE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beasley, Chris. “Starters on the feminist menu: liberal, radical, and Marxist/socialist feminisms”. In: What is Feminism?: An Introduction to Feminist Theory. London: Sage, 1999. Pp. 51-65.

Buchanan. Donna A. “Oh, those Turks!” Music, Politics, and Interculturality in the Balkans and Beyond. In:

Balkan popular culture and the Ottoman ecumene: music, image and regional political discourse. Buchanan, Donna A. (ed.). Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow press, 2007. Pp. 3-53.

Cartwright, Lisa and Marita Sturken. “Viewers Make Meaning”. In: Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford University Press: 2001. Pp. 45-72.

de Haan, Franscisca. 2008. On Retrieving Women’s Cultural Heritage – Especially the History of Women’s

Movements in Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe. In: Saskia Wieringa (ed.). Travelling

Heritages. New Perspectives on Collecting, Preserving and Sharing Women’s History. Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers. Pp. 65-79.

Dittmer, Jason. “Popular Culture: Theories, Methods, and Intertexuality“. In: Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2010. Pp. 23-47.

Hermes, Joke. “A perfect fit: Feminist Media studies”. In: Rosemarie Buikema and Anneke Smelik. Women’s Studies and Culture: A Feminist Introduction. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995. Pp. 56-66.

Hofman, Ana. “Singing Exclusion”. In: Staging Socialist Femininity: Gender Politics and Folklore Performance in Serbia. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. 85-103.

Iordanova, Dina. “Narrating the Balkans”. In: Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media. British Film Institute: 2001. Pp. 55-70.

Lampe, John R. “Introduction“. Balkans into Southeastern Europe. A Century of War and Transition. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. 1-10.

Petrović, Tanja. 2014. Introduction: Europeanization and the Balkans. In: Tanja Petrović (ed.). Mirroring Europe: ideas of Europe and Europeazation in Balkan societies. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. Pp. 41-64.

Rihtman-Auguštin, Dunja. The Monument in the Main City Square: Constructing and Erasing Memory in Contemporary Croatia. In: Balkan Identities. Nation and Memory. Maria Todorova (ed.). C. Hurst and Co. Publishers, 2004. Pp. 180-197.

Vujnović, Marina. Interwar Yugoslavia, Gender, and History of Women’s Magazines. In: Forging the Bubikopf Nation: Journalism, Gender, and Modernity in Interwar Yugoslavia. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2009. Pp. 29-69.

Additional bibliography in Italian

Dei, Fabio. Cultura popolare in Italia: da Gramsci all’Unesco. Bologna: Il Mulino. 2018.

Matera, Vincenzo (Ed.). Storia dell’etnografia: Autori, teorie, pratiche. Roma: Carocci editore. 2020.

Sinischalchi, Valeria. Antropologia culturale: Un’introduzione. Carocci editore, 2012.

POSSIBLE PRESENTATIONS

Anđelić, Neven. 2015. “National Promotion and Eurovision: from Besieged Sarajevo to the Flodlights of Europe”. Contemporary Southeastern Europe, 2015, 2(1), 94-109.

Baker, Catherine. Introduction: what does race have to do with the Yugoslav región? In: Race and the Yugoslav region: Postsocialist, post-conflict, postcolonial?. Manchester University Press, 2018. Pp. 1-30.

Bielby, Denise D. Gender inequality in culture industries. In: The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender. Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner and Lisa McLaughlin (eds.). Routledge. 2015. Pp. 137-147.

Beasley, Chris. “More on the menu: postmodernist/poststructuralist influences”. In: What is Feminism?: An Introduction to Feminist Theory. London: Sage, 1999. Pp. 81-101.

Bonfiglioli, Chiara. Chapter 2: Being a Seamstress in Yugoslav Times: The Working Mother Gender Contract. In: Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Pp. 55-81.

Djajić Horváth, Aleksandra. "Of Female Chastity and Male Arms: The Balkan "ManWoman" in the Age of the World Picture." In: Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, 2 (2011): 358-81.

Hermes, Joke. Rediscovering feminist audience research. In: The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender. Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner and Lisa McLaughlin (eds.). Routledge. 2015. Pp. 61-71.

Horvatinčić, Sanja. 2013. Erased: On the Circularity of Misogyny on the Example of Female Representation in the Public Space of Zagreb. In: Back to the Square: Art, Activism and Urban research in post-socialism. Urban Festival 13. Zagreb: Kultura Nova. Pp. 90- 103.

Rose, Gillian. 2007. Content analysis: Counting what you (think you) see. In: Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage, 2007. Pp. 59-74.

Rose, Gillian. 2007. Discourse analysis I. 2007. In: Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage, 2007. Pp. 141-172.

Silverman, Carol. 2003. “The Gender of the Profession: Music, Dance, and Reputation among Balkan Muslim Rom Women”. In: Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean. Tullia Magrini (ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. 119-147.

Spahić, Aida, Fabio Giomi and Zlatan Delić. Part I: 1914-1941 Women through the Epochs. In: Women documented: Women and Public Life in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 20th Century. Aida Spahić et al. (eds.) Sarajevo: Sarajevo Open Center. 2014. Pp. 13-40.

Tomc, Gregor. We will rock YU: Popular Music in the Second Yugoslavia. In: Djurić, Dubravka and Miško Šuvaković (Eds). Impossible Histories: Historical Avant-gardes, Neo-avant-gardes, and Post-avant-gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918-1991. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. 442-465.

Teaching methods

Introductory lectures by the teacher, presentations, seminar (student course work and moderated group discussion), selected film footage, individual student presentations of the topic of their final research paper

Assessment methods

Students are expected to participate in class discussions (20% of the grade, evaluating comprehension of core concepts of the interdisciplinary field and expressive skills), make a presentation of one recommended reading and discuss their essay topic during the last lesson (combined: 30 % of the grade, evaluating preparation work, critical thinking and argumentation in relation to texts and key concepts), and write a final research paper of around 2000 words on a topic related to the course using a chosen theory/methodology discussed in class (50 % of the grade, evaluating academic writing skills, critical analysis and use of theories and concepts discussed in this module). The final paper will be submitted through the Compilatio check (all information provided during the first week of teaching). In this way, the originality check (for which students will be authorized to test and resubmit, if needed, before the final deadline) will be used as a teaching tool for academic writing and referencing skills.

Teaching tools

Introductory lectures, moderated group discussion, film excerpts, internet and PowerPoint visuals, electronic correspondence.

Office hours

See the website of Sanja Kajinic