Title: Temporality and the Study of Nationalism in Eastern Europe
Lecturer: Maria Todorova (Gutgsell Professor of History and Center of Advanced Study, Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Chairperson: RUAN Qinghua (Associate Professor, Department of History, East China Normal University)
Date: 2:30 pm, May 25th, 2017 (Thursday)
Venue: Room 5103, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
This lecture focuses on the discourse of backwardness in a cultural milieu, which has been recognized as the dominant trope in East European historiography, namely nationalism. Through a survey of East European historiographies, it demonstrates how different notions of temporality are employed. Eastern Europe as a whole, and the particular problem of East European nationalism, have been constituted as historical objects of study very much on the pattern of anthropological objects, employing structural models of ‘timeless’ theory and method and bracketing out Time as a dimension of intercultural study. It also proposes a way to circumvent the trap of origins by introducing the idea of relative synchronicity within a longue durée framework, which allows us to describe a period in terms of linear consecutive developments but also as a dialogical process without overlooking important aspects of short-term historical analysis involving sequential development, transmission, and diffusion.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Maria Todorova is the Gutgsell Professor of History and Center of Advanced Study, Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She teaches and researches the history of Eastern Europe, in particular the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire in the modern period. A graduate of the University of Sofia, she has taught at the Universities of Sofia and Florida, and has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Rice, Maryland-College Park, California-Irvine, University of Graz, Bosphorus University, and the European University Institute. Her publications (monographs and edited volumes) include Remembering Communism: Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe (2014), Postcommunist Nostalgia (2010, 2012), Bones of Contention (2009, 2011), Remembering Communism: Genres of Representation (2010), Balkan Identities: Nation and Memory (2004), Imagining the Balkans (1997, 2009, translated in 13 languages), Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern (1993, 2006), English Travelers’ Accounts on the Balkans (1987), England, Russia, and the Tanzimat (1980, 1983), Historians on History (1988), Selected Sources for Balkan History (1977, 2006), and other edited volumes and collections of essays, as well as some 140 articles on social and cultural history, historical demography, and historiography. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, she has been a fellow at the Wilson Center, the National Humanities Center, the Institute for Human Sciences (Vienna), the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. She is doctor honoris causa of the University of Sofia and the European University Institute, Italy.