hps.cesee book talk: Catherine Gibson,Luka Gabrijelčič & Vedran Duančić on Geography and Nationalist Visions of Interwar Yugoslavia, Friday, April 9, 17:00-19:00 Central European Time (CET) / 18:00-20:00 MSK/ 11:00-13:00 EST

The virtual platform HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) is proud to present its forthcoming book talk. Catherine Gibson (University of Tartu) and Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič (Ljubljana) will join Vedran Duančić (Zagreb) to comment on his recent book, Geography and Nationalist Visions of Interwar Yugoslavia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2020), in a discussion moderated by Jan Surman.

"Geography and Nationalist Visions of Interwar Yugoslavia "is the first historical work to examine the notion of national territories in Yugoslavia – a concept fundamental for the understanding of Yugoslav history. Exploring the intertwined histories of geography as an emerging discipline in the South Slavic lands and geographical works describing interwar Yugoslavia, the book focuses on the engagement of geographers in the on-going political conflict over the national question. Duančić shows that geographers were uniquely equipped to address the creation of the new country and the numerous problems it faced, as they provided accounts of Yugoslavia’s past, present, and even future, all of which were understood as inherently embedded in geography. By analyzing a large body of geographical narratives on the Yugoslav state, the book follows both the attempts to “naturalize” and present Yugoslavia as a sustainable political and cultural unit, as well as the attempts to challenge its existence by pointing to unresolvable, geographically conditioned tensions within it. The book approaches geographical discourse in Yugoslavia as part of a wider European scientific network, pointing to similarities and specifically Yugoslav characteristics."

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the link, please register here: http://tiny.cc/hpsceseeDuancic or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com.

Vedran Duančić is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Geography and Nationalist Visions of Interwar Yugoslavia is a reworked version of PhD dissertation defended at European University Institute in 2016.

Catherine Gibson is historian of the Russian Empire, currently research fellow at the University of Tartu. In 2019 she received PhD from European University Institute with dissertation on imperial geography in the 19th century.

Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič is a historian, essayist and translator, currently PhD candidate at the program in Comparative History of Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe at the Central European University, Budapest. He is an editor at Slovenian cultural quarterly Razpotja.