The Balkan World: History, Culture, Politics

Catalog description

The Balkans is a region that is often marginalized, even though throughout modern history it has stood at the crossroads between East and West and has been the locus of the major developments of the 19th and 20th centuries - the site of Great Power competition, the first de-colonization movements, the rise of the modern nation-state, the outbreak of the First World War, Nazi occupation and resistance, genocides, the rise of emancipatory communist regimes that have challenged the hegemony of the Soviet Union, the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and a challenge for democratization and western-based military intervention. Today the Balkans are a region where the European Union, Russia and the China vie for control. This course draws on a range of primary and secondary, literary, historical and policy sources as well as a range of scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore the significance of the Balkans to global affairs in historical and contemporary contexts.