Scholars have long noted the prominence of suffering in nationalist discourses, yet little has been written on the history of nationalist emotions and their importance to nation-building projects. Bosnia presents ideal grounds for an exploration of such issues. During the 19th century, growing numbers of Serbian and Croatian activists discovered in Ottoman Bosnia a major unifying concern: the ongoing suffering of Christians under Turkish rule—and later under Austrian rule as well. This talk explores the rising nationalist concern with collective suffering that was a way of outlining forms of patriotic subjectivity, a new way of becoming and being national.
Dr. Edin Hajdarpasic is an assistant professor of history at Loyola University Chicago. His research expertise are in the history of the Balkans, nationalism theory and identity, modern European history, and the history of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Dr. Hajdarpasic's most recent publication, "Whose Bosnia? Imagination and Nation-Formation in the Modern Balkans," examines the politics of nation-formation in Bosnia-Herzegovina over the course of the long nineteenth century, a crucial period that witnessed the rise of several converging and competing national movements in the Ottoman and Habsburg Balkan provinces.
This event is co-sponsored by the Seminar in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.
