MA program

The first one, Embodiment and Power, is an introductory course that enables students to approach the question of the relationship between subject and power through the insights of critical theories.
The course will introduce students to classics studies on power, bodies and sexuality, such as Michel Foucault’s The Will to Knowledge or Judith Butler’s Bodies that Matter, and will explore the feminist, anti-racist, decolonial and affective critique of the modern subject of political tradition. The course will focus also on the complex biopolitical strategies mobilized in the construction of the unified community’s body politic and on politics of resistance, setting the focus on socialist Yugoslavia, post-Yugoslav and Balkans as case studies.

The second course, Feminist and Queer Critiques and Politics, aims to provide examples of the contribution that feminist and queer critical theories give to the understanding and resolution of political, juridical, and social conflicts in contemporary world based on sex, gender, sexuality, colonization, racialization, disablement, class and their intersections. Through a series of lectures and discussion seminars, the course will enable students to learn about the history and main theoretical models of feminism, queer theories, and trans theories. It will also delve into feminist and LGBT+ practices of resistance and community building in the history of the Balkans through the studies of books such as “I am Jugoslovenka!”. Feminist performance politics during and after Yugoslav Socialism by Jasmina Tumbas.

Finally, the third course, Affects, Communities and Identities, brings forward recent theoretical elaborations and critical methodologies in the social sciences and the humanities. The aim of the course is to enable students to gain in-depth knowledge of complex contemporary cultural, social and political phenomena related to the analysis of affects/emotions in their constitutive intersection with the production of identities and representations though hegemonic geopolitical and historical power negotiations manifested in what has been conceptualized and defined as the area of the “Balkans”. Key studies, such as Affective Societies by Jan Slaby and Christian Scheve von, and case studies, such as Decolonizing the refugee crisis. Palimpsestous writing, being-in-waiting, and spaces of refuge on the Greek island of Leros by Eirini Avramopoulou will be discussed.

The first one, titled Landscapes of Memory: theory and practice, is an introductory course aiming to familiarize students with theoretical foundations of the memory studies field while promoting an interdisciplinary framework of analysis. Therefore, the course provides an overview of essential theoretical and methodological readings that illuminate the pivotal position of memory in the shaping and reshaping of contemporary societies. The course will be taught adopting an interdisciplinary methodology that encompasses memory studies, history and political science. Encouraging student participation and promoting a critical reading of available texts and sources, the course explores the relation between memory and power, the role of memory in the construction of national narratives, and the plurality/ies of memory/ies within societies and across borders. The bibliography includes, among other texts, key theoretical readings, such as Maurice Halbwachs’, On Collective Memory, Peter Burke’s, “History as Social Memory”, and Pierre Nora’s “Between Memory and History”, allowing students to follow the evolution and the main debates that have shaped the field of memory studies.

The second course, with the title Entangled Memories:borders, minorities, mobilities, aims to discuss shared geographies, shifting borderlines, and contesting nationalisms, while exploring transnational links and moments of transition. Therefore, the course illustrates theoretical debates on transnational history and memory, the limitations of national-driven narratives, and the spatial reframing of memory studies. Regional and transnational approaches to memory will be examined through the analysis of several case studies along the following two axes: A) Empires, Borders and Nations: Cities of Memory and B) Human Mobility: people on the move. By the end of the course students will be able to relate specific case-studies within the broader context of the relation between the national and the transnational level of analysis. Students will engage with fundamental texts, such as Maria Todorova’s Imagining the Balkans, that will allow them to conceive the Balkans as a space of interconnected memories, while developing an in-depth understanding of shared memories across the region.

Finally, the third course, Memory Wars, Memory Activism and Mnemonic Practices navigates through the interplay between dominant hegemonic state sponsored memories, and counter alternative mnemonic demands, as often established from below. In this context, it explores the ways politics of memory are related to the legacies of conflicts and difficult pasts.By the end of the course students will be able to discern the plurality of memory/ies, to develop a critical approach to popular notions such as “coming to terms with the past”, and relate theoretical concepts discussed in the introductory course to the importance of memory in the construction of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic narratives. Following the overall provisions of the program, students in Athens will have the opportunity to apply for internships at the following institutions that deal with diverse aspects of contested memories across the Balkans: Greek State Archives (GAK); Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI); Hellenic League for Human Rights (HLHR). Among the main readings, Orli Fridman’s work on Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict, and Maria Todorova’s Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory.

The introductory course Limits of Liberalism will acquaint students with basic political philosophy literature regarding the critique of liberalism. Students will be familiarized with different angles of criticism of the various ideas and doctrines that have accumulated over the last three centuries under the label ‘liberalism’. Thus, students will be invited to reflect on the thesis that the illiberal deviation in democracy today is not an accident, but has a long history and an (un)certain future. The teaching approach will be partly intellectual history and partly analytical, tackling peripherally illiberal “case studies” from the Balkan countries. The bibliography includes the writings of renowned authors from the field of political philosophy, such as Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Étienne Balibar, Chantal Mouffe, Charles Taylor, and many other classic and contemporary scholars.

The course The Balkans and Otherness focuses on the identity formation of the Balkan nations which is shaped by the phantasies of totality, wholeness, and authenticity. Students will be familiarized with critical work which aims to critique and deconstruction such illusory practices, which by excluding Difference and Otherness, inevitably lead to violence. The activity of translation, fusion, and creolization which transforms culture from a fixed unit of identity into an ongoing process will be addressed. The structure of materials and teaching in this course will be inspired by a multidirectional interpretation, and a concept of reading history where memories and cultures are developed diagonally, via borrowing, adoption, and enrichment that juxtapose and echo other memories and histories. Students will be acquainted with texts of prominent authors from the fields of philosophy and psychoanalysis such as Slavoj Žižek, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques-Alain Miller, as well as specialists from the field of Balkan studies, such as Maria Todorova.

The third course Post-socialist transition – why does it go illiberal? analyses the transition to capitalism and the emergence of illiberal ideologies in the post-socialist Balkans and East European countries, using the methodologies of world-systems analysis and dependency theory. The course interprets illiberal ideologies as a conservative response of these countries to the global economic crisis and austerity measures imposed by international financial institutions, putting them in a deteriorating position in the international division of labor. Using illiberal ideologies, these countries are trying to build a more favorable position in the international division of labor, relying on certain countries of the old core of the capitalist system and the new global economic powers, while acting antagonistically towards neighboring countries. The literature of the course introduces students to classical authors of the world-systems analysis approach, such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, and Samir Amin as well as a host of contemporary scholars engaging with problematics of illiberal ideologies by focusing on the case-study analysis of specific countries.