The Balkans in an European Context: New Challenges for Multilingualism in Europe

Conference date: 11-Apr-2010 - 15-Apr-2010
Conference venue: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Call Deadline: 31-Oct-2009
Organizing Institution: Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb, Croatia

Organized jointly by Languages in a Network of European Excellence (LINEE) and the integrated project DYLAN of the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme for Research and Development. With an increased awareness of international globalisation and European integration, the existing mainstream conceptualizations of multilingualism and linguistic diversity have been increasingly questioned, in particular within the humanities and the social sciences. In a EU context of socio-political transition it is therefore a challenge to take stock of the existing disciplinary knowledge, and to reassess it against the background of the ongoing integration process which goes along with the transformation of traditional linguistic and cultural patterns. Read more at http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-3290.html.

POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

A POSITION AS POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (SKO/post code 1352) IN LANGUAGE-BASED AREA STUDIES (RUSSIA, THE BALKANS, CENTRAL EUROPE)

Available at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo. About the Department http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english

The successful applicant is expected to investigate a problem within the research area of language-based area studies in Russia, the Balkans, or Central Europe. The project description must include a discussion of the choice of method (e.g. discourse analysis). Research projects based on material in Slavic languages are given preference.

Applicants must hold either a Norwegian doctoral degree or an equivalent degree in an academic area that is relevant to the proposed project.

The post-doctoral research fellowship is for a period of 4 years, with a 25% duty component devoted to teaching and acquiring basic pedagogical competency.

Applicants must submit a project proposal of a maximum of 10 pages, including a schedule of activities. It is expected that the project will be completed within the 4-year period. Doctoral dissertation must be submitted for evaluation by the closing date.

The main purpose of post-doctoral research fellowships is to qualify researchers for work in senior academic positions within their disciplines. We are looking for strongly motivated and competent candidates, with high academic qualifications in the relevant area of research.

The successful applicant will be expected to become involved with existing research groups at the Faculty of Humanities and to contribute to the further development of the scholarly community.

Short-listed applicants will be called in to an interview at the University of Oslo. They may also be asked to give a lecture for graduate students on a topic chosen by the evaluation committee.

Guidelines for appointments to post-doctoral research fellowships at the University of Oslo may be obtained at http://www.uio.no/admhb/reglhb/personal/tilsettingvitenskapelig/guidelinespostdoctor.xml

The University of Oslo has a goal of recruiting more women in academic positions. Women are encouraged to apply. The University of Oslo also has a goal of recruiting more foreigners to Norway in academic positions. Immigrants are encouraged to apply.

The University of Oslo has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results a.o.


For further information, contact:
Administrative Head of Department Jan-Børge Tjäder +47
2285 68 94, j.b.tjader@ilos.uio.no
or
Research Director Antin Rydning, +47 22 85 68 32, https://webmail.ucalgary.ca/src/compose.php?send_to=a.f.rydning%40ilos.uio.no.

Government wage scale: 57-62 (NOK 438 700 to NOK 481 000)

Closing date for applications: October 8, 2009

Ref.no: 2009/12673

Applicants should submit four copies of:

- Project proposal (max. 10 pages)

- A list of published and unpublished works

- Curriculum vitae (with full information about education, former positions, pedagogical and administrative experience), including one set of certified copies of certificates

- Names and contact information of two references

- Three paper copies or one electronic version of the doctoral dissertation together with three scientific articles (published or submitted for publication) that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee


Please mark applications with ref.no. 2009/12673 and send via email to stillinger@hf.uio.no/https://webmail.ucalgary.ca/src/compose.php?send_to=jobbsoknad%40hf.uio.no or ( The Faculty of Humanities, P.O.Box 1079 Blindern, 03l6 Oslo, Norway)

The Image of Russia in the Balkans

Posted on behalf of Jolanta Sujecka
Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies "Artes Liberales"
University of Warsaw
Chair of Komisja Bałkanistyki Historycznej i Kulturoznawczej przy MKS


The interdisciplinary Commission of Balkan Historical and Cultural Studies is affiliated with the International Committee of Slavists (ICS). Its international membership consists of an anthropologist, an historian of ideas, an historian of literature, linguists and an historian of culture. Our first research project is The Image of Russia in the Balkans. Semantics. Ideologems. Mythologems. Historical and Cultural Contacts and Connections.

The outcomes of our research will be published in a series of edited volumes. The first volume entitled The Semantics of Russia in the Balkans will be published in 2010 by the Warsaw University Press. It contains contributions in Polish and English by researchers from Poland (Jolanta Sujecka, Kazimierz Jurczak, Maciej Falski, Adam Kola), Greece (Aleksandra Ioannidou), Bulgaria (Nikolay Aretov), Macedonia (Valentina Mironska-Hristova), Albania (Rigels Halili) and Russia/Czech Republic (Marija Kuglerova). The second volume - The Image of Russia in the Balkans - will feature contributions by researchers from Albania, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Serbia and is scheduled to appear in English in 2013. In preparation of the second volume the Commission of Balkan Historical and Cultural Studies is planning a work session.

The Birch - Anniversary 1989 Issue

Call for Papers

The Birch, the first and only North American undergraduate journal for Eastern European and Eurasian studies, is calling for submissions for its Fall 2009 issue.

Undergraduates may submit any of the following:

• Creative writing
• Literary criticism
• Cultural and political essays
• Original photography and illustrations

This will be a special 1989 anniversary issue, so we encourage writers to submit exceptional pieces related to 1989. Non-1989 content is also welcome. Please encourage all undergraduates to submit pieces by the deadline, October 14, 2009. E-mail all submissions to the Editor in Chief, Rebekah Kim, at <thebirchjournal@gmail.com>.

Russia through the Eyes of East Europeans: The Birth and Death of Stereotypes

Call for papers

This interdisciplinary conference, organized by the International Higher Education Academy of Sciences (Russia), the Nevsky Institute of Language and Culture (Russia) and Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski in Olsztyn (Poland), will take place in St. Petersburg on 25-26 August 2010. Working languages of the conference are Russian and English.

If you wish to participate, send by 25 September 2009 the following information: first and last name, affiliation, position, degree, phone number, email address, country of residence, mailing address with postal code and title of the proposed paper to stereotipy2010@mail.ru. Contact person: Шайдуров Владимир Николаевич, phone (7-812) 230-38-08.

The Revolutions of 1989

The international conference Die Revolutionen von 1989, organized by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, will take place in Vienna on 1-3 October 2009.

Panel 3 (1 October 2009, 4:30-6:30 pm) contains presentations on Southeastern Europe by Vesna Pešić, a Serbian politician, one of the leaders of the opposition movement in Serbia (on Yugoslavia), Ulf Brunnbauer, a historian from the University of Regensburg (on Bulgaria) and Anneli Ute Gabanyi, a political scientist from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin (on Romania).

Ethnic Identity and Language Shift in the Belgrade Sephardic Community

Posted on hehalf of Biljana Sikimić
Institute for Balkan Studies, Belgrade

Ivana Vučina Simović, Jelena Filipović. Etnički identitet i zamena jezika u sefardskoj zajednici u Beogradu. Beograd: Zavod za udžbenike, 2009, 251 pp. ISBN 978-86-17-16234-2

This new theory-driven sociolinguistic monography by Ivana Vučina Simović (University of Kragujevac) and Jelena Filipović (University of Belgrade) studies language shift in the Belgrade Sephardic community on the basis of language data from seven consecutive generations. The Belgrade Sephardic community was exterminated in 1941 when Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany.


Chapter titles:

Jezik i društvo: sociolingvistika, istorijska (socio)lingvistika i sociologija jezika
Sefardski Jevreji i njihov jezik
Istorijski sociolingvistički uslovi koji utiču na zamenu jezika
Stavovi govornika jevrejsko-španskog jezika u procesu održavanja/zamene jezika
Brzina zamene jezika u sefardskoj zajednici u Beogradu
Zamena jezika u kontekstu kritičke analize jezika

Appendix: Sefardski Jevreji u Beogradu u 19. i 20. veku (archival documents, excerpts of the corpus compiled from answers to the questionnaire Moja porodica administered in 1979–1980, transcribed excerpts from prayer books and personal letters in Judeo-Spanish)

Slavic Language Classes Cut Due to Budget

From "The Harvard Crimson:"

...Due to increased budget cuts, Harvard’s formal Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian language courses have been removed from the curriculum...

"Paint Your Life Pink!"

Zala Volčič. Television in the Balkans: The Rise of Commercial Nationalism. In: Graeme Turner & Jinna Tay (eds.). Television Studies After TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era. Florence, Kentucky and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009, 115-123.

For more details see here.

Southeast European Travel Writing

Wendy Bracewell & Alex Drace-Francis (eds.). Balkan Departures: Travel Writing from Southeastern Europe. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2009.

Contributors: Maria Kostaridou, Alex Drace-Francis, Vladimir Gvozden, Dean Duda, Ludmilla Kostova and Wendy Bracewell

"... shifts attention to the voices and agency of travellers from the Balkans and the ways in which they have experienced and described the sometimes strange and exotic West... Most fascinating the multi-faceted trajectories of expectations, perceptions and imageries which reverse the standard hegemonic gaze from West to East." (Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers)



For more details see Google Books and Berghahn Books

Tenth International Congress of AIESEE (Paris, 23-27 September 2009)

The definitive program is now available at

http://aiesee.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=39&

Participate speakers from 19 countries:

• Albania (Myzafer Korkuti, Nertila Ljarja, Arta Seiti)
• Bosnia (Tomislav Išek)
• Bulgaria (Snejana Dimitrova, Alexandre Kostov, Maria Kotzabassi, Snezhanka Rakova-Marinkyova, Elena Tacheva, Vasilka Tăpkova-Zaimova, Galia Valtchinova)
• Croatia (Ljiljana Dobrovšak, Monica Genesin, Borislav Grgin, Castilia Manea-Grgin, Rebeka Mesarić Žabčič, Ivana Žebec)
• France (Hélène Antoniadis-Bibicou, Lisa Bénou, Bosko Bojovic, Guy Burgel, Hervé Georgelin, Jean-François Gossiaux, Olivier Picard, Cristina Rognoni, Maria Zoubouli)
• Cyprus (Areti Démosthénous)
• Germany (Vladimir Iliescu, Klaus Roth)
• Greece (Sia Anagnostopoulou, Théodoros Batrakoulis, Alexandros Dagkas, Vassia Karkayanni-Karabelia, Georges Kokkonis, Georgia Kourtessi-Philippakis, Papakosta Leftokhea, Amaryllis Logotheti, Ivi Mavromoustakou, Charis Meletiadis, Ileana Moroni, Kyrillos Nikolaou, Vassiliki Papoulia, Ioannis Skourtis, Théodore Spyros, Yiorgos Stathakis, Émilie Themopoulou, Nikos Vafeas)
• Italy (Francesco Altimari, Elisabetta Borromeo, Antonio d'Alessandri, Francesco Guida, Tatjana Krizman-Malev, Elton Prifti, Stevka Šmitran)
• Japan (Yoshihiro Endo, Shinichi Ishida, Ryoji Momose, Daisuke Nagashima, Ayako Oku, Nabuhiro Shiba)
• Macedonia (Vera Bitrakova-Grozdanova, Eleni Bužarovska, Taki Fiti, Ubavka Gajdova, Veselinka Labrovska, Marjan Marković, Vitomir Mitevski, Vlado Kambovski, Luan Starova, Jovan Takovski, Liljana Todorova, Zuzanna Topolinska)
• Montenegro (Radoslav Raspopovic)
• Poland (Irena Sawicka, Jolanta Sujecka)
• Romania (Carmen Cocea-Crişan, Alexandru Madgearu, Zamfira Mihail, Nicolae Răzvan Mitu, Valeriu Râpeanu, Răzvan Theodorescu)
• Russia (Grigory Arsh, Olga Belova, Andrey Edemskiy, Fatima Eloeva, Alexandra Evdokimova, Natalia Evseenko, Valentina Fedchenko, Natalia Golant, V. Y. Grossul, Lusine Gushchyan, Elena Guskova, Petr Iskenderov, Alvina Jougra, Maxim Kisilier, Ksenija Klimova, Elena Koudryavtseva, Alexei Lidov, Maksim Makartsev, Marina Martynova, Maria Morozova, Konstantin Nikiforov, Alexander Novik, Irina Oretskaia, Vladimir Petrukhin, Anna Plotnikova, Elena G. Rabinovitch, Alexander Rusakov, Elena Sartori, Irina Sedakova, Svetlana Sidneva, Oksana Tchoekha, Artem Ulunyan, Elena Uzeneva, Svetlana Zalgraykina, Natalya Zlydneva)
• Serbia (Cedomir Antić, Dušan T. Bataković, Vladimir P. Petrovic, Vojislav Pavlovic, Isak Shema)
• Switzerland (Stella Ghervas)
• Turkey (Melek Delilbaşi, Melek Firat, Hatice Oruc, Bariş Ünlü, Nuri Yesilyurt)
• USA (Victor Friedman)
  

Nation Building

Two recently published articles address issues of discursive nation building in Southeastern Europe:

Laura Ceia-Minjares. Balkan Exotic: The Francophone Birth and Rebirth of a Nation According to Panait Istrati and Marius Daniel Popesco. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 13/2, 2009, 191-199.

Ognyan Kovachev. A Romance of the Balkans: Literary Mystification and the Bulgarian Nation-imagining. Slavia, 78/1-2, 2009, 23-32.

To appear

We are looking forward to:

Xenakis, Sappho (2009) Resisting submission? The obstinacy of "Balkan" characteristics in Greece as dissidence against "The West". In: Cheliotis, Leonidas, (ed.) The banality of good: roots, rites and sites of resistance. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK.

17th Balkan & South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

Abstract Submission Deadline: November 23, 2009

The 17th Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore Conference will take place at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, USA, April 15-18, 2010. The conference will feature the Kenneth E. Naylor Memorial Lecture in South Slavic Linguistics on Friday April 16. This year's Naylor Lecturer will be Eric P. Hamp, Professor Emeritus from the University of Chicago. The conference will also be held concurrently with the Midwest Slavic Conference.

The conference organizers are now accepting proposals for papers that treat some aspect of Balkan and/or South Slavic linguistics, folklore, film studies, literature or culture. Abstracts should be maximum one page, including examples and bibliography if needed (12-point font, at least 1" margins). Abstracts should be anonymous.Abstracts should be submitted, in PDF format, by email to Andrea Sims. The paper title, author name(s), affiliation(s), and contact information should be given in the body of the email.

More information is available at http://bss17.osu.edu
Questions about the conference may be directed to Brian Joseph (joseph.1@osu.edu) or Andrea Sims (sims.120@osu.edu).

.yu is being phased out

I received a message from an address from the .rs domain. I had never seen it so I looked it up: it was from Serbia. Here is the whole story of the .yu domain: http://www.iana.org/reports/2007/rs-yu-report-11sep2007.html

So, we have now:

Bosnia and Herzegovina -> .ba
Croatia -> .hr
Montenegro -> .me
Macedonia -> .mk
Serbia -> .rs
Slovenia -> .si

Moldova -> .md

.yu (as well .su of Soviet Union) are being phased out.

ICANN has not assigned yet a domain to Kosova...

Africans in the South East European Collective Memory

Posted on hehalf of Biljana Sikimić
Institute for Balkan Studies, Belgrade

Interpretations: European Research Project for Poetics and Hermeneutics. Volume III: Црна Арапина како фигура на меморија (Black Arab as a Figure of Memory). 2009.

An interdiciplinary UNESCO-sponsored project of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Kata Kulavkova. More about the project, the previous and upcoming volumes can be learned at http://www.interpretations.mk/basic.asp

For a table of contents and English-language abstracts of the contributions click here. The project was noticed in the media. See for instance Politika Online.

The Institute of Linguistics "Iorgu Iordan - Alexandru Rosetti" is 60 years old!

The Institute of Linguistics "Iorgu Iordan - Alexandru Rosetti" of the Romanian Academy, amalgamated with the former Institute of Phonetics and Dialectology, is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The festivities include an assembly at the Aula of the Romanian Academy (28 September 2009, 10 am) followed by the opening of an exhibition at Casa Academiei (Str. 13 Septembrie 13). A volume will be published commemorating the research activities carried out by the Institute during its sixty years of existence.

A New Dissertation in South Slavic Linguistics

Adam Werle. Word, Phrase, and Clitic Prosody in Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian. CreateSpace, 2009.

Institution: University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Program: Department of Linguistics
Degree Date: 2009

Available at Amazon.com.
For an abstract see Linguist List.