During two terrifying days and nights in early September 1941, the lives of nearly two thousand men, women, and children were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today’s border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. In his prize-winning book, Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community (Cornell University Press, 2016), Max Bergholz tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent of this once peaceful multiethnic community into extreme violence.
Max Bergholz is Associate Professor of History at Concordia University in Montreal. His interests include microhistorical approaches to the history of modern Europe, the dynamics of local nationalism, intercommunal violence, and historical memory. His scholarly articles have been published in journals such as American Historical Review, and his book has won numerous awards, including the 2017 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize from the American Historical Association.
Co-sponsored by the Russian, East European, and Eurasian History seminar, OSU Department of History.
