CALL FOR PAPERS

Council for Bulgarian Studies Abroad, Bulgarian Academy of Science and Bulgarian Studies Association, USA invite your participation:

“Beyond the Borders”
The 10th. Joint Conference of Bulgarian and North American Scholars
Sofia, June 26-30, 2016
 
For more than forty years the tradition of Bulgarian-American academic dialogs has been carried on by the Council for Bulgarian Studies Abroad at the Bulgarian Academy of Science and the Bulgarian Studies Association. The first conference was in 1973 in Madison, WI, followed by conferences in Varna (1978), Boston (1982), Smoljan (1987), Pittsburgh (1994), Blagoevgrad (1999), Columbus, OH (2003), Varna (2008), and Eugene, OR (2012).

It is Sofia’s turn to host the 2016 Bulgarian-Northern American conference in the field of Bulgarian Studies. The topic of this conference, “Beyond the Borders”, invites various perceptions of “borders” (disciplinary, historical, cultural, national, etc.) and their interpretation as liminal spaces of distancing, interaction and transformation.

To participate, please submit an abstract (150-300 words) and a short CV by April 15, 2016 to Dr. Catherine Rudin carudin1@wsc.edu and/or Dr. Vessela Warner (warnerv@uab.edu, (for the U.S.), and Dr. Ana Luleva analuleva@iefem.bas.bg and/or Dr. Анисава Милтенова amiltenova@gmail.com (for Bulgaria)

Participation will be confirmed by April 30, 2016. All American participants will be provided with free room and board. The working language of the conference is English.

Conference committee:
Ana Luleva, Bulgarian Academy of Science
Anissava Miltenova, Bulgarian Academy of Science
Lora Taseva, Bulgarian Academy of Science
Catherine Rudin, Wayne State College
Vessela Warner, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Upcoming Conference in Balkan Studies at the University of Sofia

The Faculty of Slavic Studies at the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its program in Balkan Studies with a conference entitled Balkan Languages, Literatures and Cultures: Divergence and Convergence.  The conference will take place on 30-31 May 2014. The preliminary program features 119 papers in English, French, German, Russian and Bulgarian by scholars from Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Kosovo, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Turkey and the US. The papers address issues within the broad areas of linguistic structure and the lexicon, codification of the standard languages, language contact, etymology, onomastics and phraseology, ethnolinguistics, comparative literary studies, literature and society, ethnology, cultural history, identity and religion, political studies, the fine arts, music and folk dance.

Good luck to the organizers of this conference and to the program in Balkan Studies at the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia.

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.

Southeast European Studies in Bulgaria

CENTRES OF SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN STUDIES
(RESEARCH AND LEARNING)
Posted on behalf of Vasilka Aleksova, Chair
Department of General, Indo-European and Balkan Linguistics
Sofia University “St. Climent Oxridski”
At the time of writing there are in Bulgaria five universities at which one can get a degree in Southeast European Studies:

Sofia University “St. Climent Oxridski”

• A combined BA & MA degree in Balkan languages and cultures is offered since 1994 by the Faculty of Slavic Philologies. The program takes 10 semesters to accomplish and includes the in-depth study of the South Slavic languages, Greek, Romanian and Albanian as well as linguistics, literature and history of the Balkans. The program has an elective course in Balkan Romani dialects which is open not only to majors in Balkan languages and cultures. For a detailed program with numbers of contact hours per course click here. The Faculty of Slavic Philologies also has BA, MA and PhD programs in Bulgarian Philology and a BA program in Serbian and Croatian Philology with a concentration in Slovene. Other universities across the country also offer Slavic Studies in various combinations of the studied Slavic languages with a special attention to Bulgarian studies.
• Since 2006 the Faculty of History offers a BA in the past and present of Southeastern Europe. It is an eight-semester program with a focus on history and political science. Students must choose two out of the following three languages: Romanian, Modern Greek and Turkish. For a description of the program click here. The Faculty of History also has several MA programs with various Southeast European foci, for instance Christianity and Islam in the Balkans, Ethnicity and International Relations in Southeastern Europe (taught in English), Power, Authority and Culture in Southeastern Europe and The Southeast of Europe. The MA programs have durations from two to five semesters.
• The Faculty of Classical and New Philologies offers BA programs in Modern Greek Philology, Romanian Philology and Turkology, MA programs in Mediterranean and Balkan Anthropological Studies: Italy - Bulgaria and Ottoman Studies and BA, MA and PhD programs in Classical Philology.

Veliko Turnovo University “St.St. Cyril and Methodius”

• The Veliko Turnovo University has its own Educational and Cultural Centre “Balkans” which interacts with Southeast European academic units and provides resources to researchers and students in the area of Southeast European Studies. The Faculty of Philology has a BA program in Balkan studies in which students can choose between a concentration in the languages and cultures or the history of the Southeast European nations. This oldest university program in Southeast European studies in Bulgaria initially had a focus on history and was hosted by the Faculty of History. The Veliko Turnovo University also has MA programs in Southeast European studies.

Plovdiv University “Paisij Xilendarski”

• The five-year combined BA & MA in Balkan languages and cultures of the Faculty of Philology offers courses in Modern Greek, Serbian, Albanian and Romanian languages and literatures. The focus is on Modern Greek.

Southwestern University “Neofit Rilski”

• In 2008 the Faculty of Philology of the Southwestern University “Neofit Rilski” started admitting students to their new combined ten-semester BA & MA program which includes language courses with emphasis on Greek and electives Serbian, Romanian and Albanian, courses in Balkan literatures and folklore as well as political, social, economic and cultural history of the Southeast European nations.

PhD programs with a specialization in Southeast European studies are offered by the Faculty of Slavic Philologies of the Sofia University, by the Institute of Bulgarian language and the Institute of Balkan Studies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The latter are also the research centres of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences specializing in Southeast European Studies. They publish the journals Balkansko ezikoznanie / Linguistique balkanique and Études balkaniques. Occasional dissertations with topics in the area of Southeast European Studies have been defended in other institutes of the Bulgarian Academy of sciences (such as the Institute of History, the Institute of Folklore Studies and the Ethnographic Institute and Museum).