Imagining the Balkans: Past, Present, Future

“If the Balkans hadn’t existed, they would have been invented.” Twenty years ago, Maria Todorova, professor at the Urbana-Champaign campus, charted the making of the Balkans in the European imagination. In the wake of the Yugoslav Wars, her seminal work redefined the field uncovering the ways an entire region was demonized. Now, Todorova reflects on the book’s enduring importance, its controversial reception in Europe and the Balkans, and dissects the current bearings of Balkanist discourses in western understandings of the ongoing refugee crisis, post- communist realities, and Greece’s financial conundrum.

Event sponsors: Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, Hellenic Studies Initiative, Department of History, and the School of Literatures, Cultural Studies, and Linguistics