to be held Friday, 7 April 2000
at Lasry House (corner of Woodland and Hawthorne streets)

The title of the conference is a phrase by the Belgrade philosopher and antiwar activist Radomir Kostantinovic. His essay introduced the book Another Serbia, a collection by the antiwar "Belgrade Circle" which seeks to describe and analyze the political, social, cultural and historical conditions that made aggressive nationalism and war against civilians possible. This conference explores the experience of everyday life in the regimes under which war and state-sponsored mass murder was carried out in the former Yugoslavia. It is meant to introduce the audience to the self-examination being carried out by some scholars in both Serbia and North America, which interrogates ethnic nationalism in power, its values and methods, and its causes and consequences. We are motivated by the need to understand nationalist mobilization and the acceptance of crimes against humanity as an element of state policy. We need to move beyond viewing the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia as ethnic or religious conflicts, the way they are commonly presented—and to explore them as conflicts between nationalist rural nostalgia and cosmopolitan urban culture, between the ethic of modernity and the frustration of displacement. The presentations here are meant to contribute to a new understanding of` connections between culture, authoritarianism and state-sanctioned violence.

Conference Program

10:00 – 10:10 AM
Welcome: Shelly Tenenbaum (Clark University), Eric Gordy (Clark University)

10:10 AM – 12:00 PM
Panel I. Authoritarianism in Everyday Life

• Andjelka Milic (University of Belgrade): War, Families and Generations
• Jasminka Udovicki (Massachusetts College of Art): All Sides, Hot and Bothered
• Ana Devic (Brown University): Nationalism and Powerlessness of Everyday Life: A Sociology of Discontents in Yugoslavia Before the Breakup
• Joel M. Halpern (University of Massachusetts): Politics and Images: Heroism and Illusion
• Chair: Regina Robo (Clark University)

  12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
  Break for lunch

  2:00 – 4:00 PM Panel II. Culture and Violence

  • Sreten Vujovic (University of Belgrade): Material Conditions and Urban Life
  • Eric Gordy (Clark University): Yugo-Rock, Turbo-Folk and Social Division
  • Marko Zivkovic (University of Chicago): Who Are the Riders of the Cultural Apocalypse?
  • Chair: Naama Haviv (Clark University)
  4:00 PM
  Reception

  Sponsored by the Seymour M. Logan Faculty Fellowship, Department of Sociology, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Communication and Culture, Peace Studies, Higgins School of the Humanities, Women’s Studies, Government and International Relations, Center for Holocaust Studies, Office of the Dean of the College

  Parking: There is usually ample parking available on the surrounding streets. There will also be spaces available for conference attendees at the parking lot of St. Peter’s Church on Main Street and at the former gas station on the corner of Main and Crystal.

  For further information phone or e-mail Eric Gordy at the number/address below.