COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF IDEAS AND CULTURES
Doctoral Study (3rd level)
CULTURAL HISTORY
Historical Module
Programme Coordinator:
Prof. Oto Luthar, PhD
General elective courses
Remembering Socialism in Central and Southeastern Europe
Programme: Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures (3rd level)
Module: Cultural History
Course code: 35
Year of study: Brez letnika
Course principal: Prof. Tanja Petrović, PhD
ECTS: 6
Workload: lectures 60 hours, seminar 30 hours
Course type: general elective
Languages: Slovene
Learning and teaching methods: lectures, discussion classes
Objectives and competences
More than a decade and a half after the end of socialism, in post-communist societies we are
witnessing processes that attract the curiosity and attention of both their actors and outside
observers. This course approaches remembering socialism as a cultural and discursive practice that is
intrinsically connected to present-day reality and enables negotiation and justification of social
positions, strategies, and moral values in the period of post-communist transformations. The
emphasis is on personal experiences, interpretations and narrations of these memories, their
relation to prevailing collective and “official” interpretations, and their political relevance.
Prerequisites
None required.
Content (Syllabus outline)
1. Remembering socialism as a cultural and discursive practice:
 Why study memory?
 Why study post- socialism?
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Terminological issues: post-socialism, post- socialism, transition, transformation
Characteristics of approaches to post-communist societies
Forms of remembering socialism: web pages, museums, narratives, literature, film, etc.
Nostalgia for socialism: between justification and accusation:
 History of nostalgia
 Nostalgia as socially relevant phenomenon
 Functions and actors of nostalgia for socialism
 Forms of nostalgia for socialism
 Nostalgia for socialism and consumerism
Remembering socialism in the former Yugoslavia:
 Characteristics of Yugoslav socialism and post-Yugoslav post- socialism
 Remembering socialism between the national and supra-national
 Dialogue between “official” and private memories
Yugo-nostalgia as a social and cultural phenomenon:
 Functions and forms of Yugo-nostalgia
 Characteristics of Yugo-nostalgic discourses
 Forms of Yugo-nostalgia among former Yugoslavs
 Yugo-nostalgia and diaspora
Remembering socialism in the arts and other performative forms:
 Remembering socialism and cinematography
 Remembering socialism and literature
 Remembering socialism and other artistic forms
Remembering socialism and shaping collective identities:
 Remembering socialism and the working class
 Remembering socialism and former soldiers
 Remembering socialism and partisans
 Remembering socialism and women
 Remembering socialism and members of minority communities
Readings
 Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia, New York: Basic Books.
 Hann, Chris M. ur. 2002. Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia, Routledge.
 Forrester, Sibelan, Zaborowska, Magdalena in Gapova, Elena ur. 2004. Over the Wall/After the
Fall: Post-Communist Cultures Through an East-West Gaze, Indiana University Press.
 Berdahl, Daphne. 1999, Where the World Ended: Re-Unification and Identity in the German
Borderland, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
 Stewart, Kathleen. 1988. Nostalgia – A Polemic, Cultural Anthropology, 3/3.
 Nostalgia, Balcanis, 12-16, letnik 5, pomlad-zima 2004.
 Yuniverzum, Časopis za kritiko znanosti, 2006.
Assessment
 Active participation in discussion classes and an essay (5–8 pages) in which students analyse an
issue and support their arguments with excerpts from relevant reading.
 An oral exam in which the student must demonstrate a sufficient understanding of the overall
course content.
 Assessment:
o The written essay demonstrates students’ ability to concentrate on a particular issue, to
choose relevant reading, and to engage in analytical reasoning, argumentation, and
expression in writing.
o The oral exam assesses what students learned during lectures and their ability to understand,
articulate, and present relevant issues.
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National Memory in Historical Perspective
Programme: Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures (3rd level)
Module: Cultural History
Course code: 36
Year of study: Brez letnika
Course principal: Prof. Oto Luthar, PhD
ECTS: 6
Workload: lectures 60 hours, seminar 30 hours
Course type: general elective
Languages: Slovene
Learning and teaching methods: lectures, discussion classes
Objectives and competences
This course focuses on processes of collective memory formation from antiquity to the present. The
students learn about important authors and texts as well as crucial historical processes that
significantly influenced the protocols of collective remembering. The course deals with the processes
that marked the beginning of modern remembering of nations and national communities. It answers
when, why, and under which circumstances the memories of peoples are transformed into the
memories of nations.
Prerequisites
None required.
Content (Syllabus outline)
1. From people’s memory to nation’s memory:
 Formation of national communities
 Formation of national memory
2. From the polis to the modern nation-state:
 Formation of the idea of consent of the governed
 Division into secular and church government
 Differences between republican and monarchist principles of governance
 Formation of the idea of the modern state
3. Nineteenth-century modernization and formation of the nation:
 Applicability of political concepts in everyday life
 The role of the individual in political decision making
 From an anonymous actor to citizen
 Principles of political decision making
Readings
 Beck, Paul, Mast, Edward, Tapper, Perry. 1997. The History of eastern Europe for Beginners,
New York: Writers and readers Publishing: 1-12, 29-53, 61 – 76.
 Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalism Reframed. Nationhood and the national question in the
New Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1-10, 13-22.
 Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca – New York: Cornell University Press:1-7,
53-62, 88-109.
 Johnson, R., Lonie. 1996. Central Europe. Enemies, Neighbours, Friends, Oxford – New York:
Oxford University Press: 27-148.
 Fenske, Hans, Martens, Dieter, Reinhrad, Wolfgang, Rosen, Klaus. 1987. Geschichte der
politischen Ideen, Frankfurt/M: Fischer.
 Anderson, Perry. 1992. Rodovnik absolutistične države, Ljubljana: Studia humanitatis.
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Mc Clelland, J.S. 1996. History of Western Political Though, London: Rotledge.
Assessment
 Active participation in discussion classes and an essay (5–8 pages) in which students analyse an
issue and support their arguments with excerpts from relevant reading.
 An oral exam in which the student must demonstrate a sufficient understanding of the overall
course content.
 Assessment:
o The written essay demonstrates students’ ability to concentrate on a particular issue, to
choose relevant reading, and to engage in analytical reasoning, argumentation, and
expression in writing.
o The oral exam assesses what students learned during lectures and their ability to understand,
articulate, and present relevant issues.
Memory and History
Programme: Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures (3rd level)
Module: Cultural History
Course code: 50
Year of Study: Without
Course holder: Prof. Oto Luthar, PhD
ECTS: 6
Workload: lectures 60 hours, seminar 30 hours
Course type: general elective
Languages: Slovene, English
Learning and teaching methods: lectures, seminars, excursions, field work
Goals and competences
The series of lectures and seminars will focus on understanding the relationship between memory
and history. The introductory part will be dedicated to presenting the three generations of founders
and followers of memory studies. By setting clear distinctions between individual and collective
memory, the students will have the opportunity to learn about the reasons, circumstances, and
techniques of (trans)forming individual and collective memory. Familiarizing themselves with the
different dimensions and types of memorial landscapes, the students will deepen their
understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the structured or closed and narrative or
open interview through a variety of thematic assignments. Moreover, drawing on concrete examples
and excursions, they will learn to read and analyze the speech of different types of memorial
landscapes in Central and Southeastern Europe. The course program will be implemented in
collaboration with Austrian, Serbian, and Hungarian lecturers. As authorities on the memorial
landscape of the First World War in western Serbia or experts on concentration camps (Mauthausen,
Hartheim) and the Memento Park in Budapest, respectively, they will illuminate the difference
between primary and secondary material sources through a series of objects, buildings and
monuments, etc., and acquaint the students with the basic techniques of different politics of the
past.
Entry requirements:
None.
Content (Syllabus outline)
 Ratio between individual and collective memory through confronting the theoretical principles
of Maurice Halbwachs, Andreas Huyssen and Aleida Assmann.
 Definition of memorial landscape and presentation of problems concerning the definition of
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basic notions (revisionism, negationism, etc.).
Trial work with informants.
Comparison of political interventions in historiography from the mid-20th century onward and
confrontation of socialist/communist, and revisionist/negationist ways of reinterpreting
watershed events in the European and Slovenian/Yugoslav past.
Analyses of the post-1991 (trans)formation of memorial landscape in Slovenia.
Readings:
 Assmann, Aleida (2013) Das neue Unbehagen an der Erinnerungskultur. Eine Intervention,
C.H.Beck Verlag, Munich;
 Pim de Boer; Duchhardt, Heinz; Kreis, Georg; Schmale, Wolfagng (eds.), (2012), Europaeische
Erinnerungsorte (three volumes), Oldenburg Verlag, Munich;
 Clendinnen, Inga (1999), Reading the Holocaust, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge;
 LaCapra, Dominick (2001), Writing History, Writing Trauma, John Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore;
 Halbwachs, Maurice (2001), Kolektivni spomin, SH Ljubljana;
 Huyssen, Andreas (2003), Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Stanford
University Press, Stanford;
 Luthar, Breda; Luthar, Oto (2003) “Kolonizacija Spomina. Politika in tekstualnost domobranskih
spomenikov po letu 1991”, Zbornik Janka Pleterskega, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana;
 Luthar, Oto (2014), “Preimenovanje in izključevanje kot sestavni del postkomunistične kultura
spomina v Sloveniji”, Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino, no. 2, 2014, Ljubljana.
Assessment method:
Assessment shall be the sum of:
 field work,
 participation in excursions,
 participation in seminars,
 quality of agreed chapter in PhD dissertation.
Cultural history of violence
Programme: Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures (3rd level)
Module: Cultural History
Course code: 51
Year of Study: Without
Course holder: Assoc. Prof. Petra Svoljšak, PhD
ECTS: 6
Workload: lectures 60 hours, seminar 30 hours
Course type: general elective
Languages: Slovene, English
Learning and teaching methods: lectures, seminar
Objectives and competences:
The course offers an introduction to different definitions of war, military law and systematic breach
of military law, systems of occupational politics that enabled systematic violence against civilians,
individually and collectively. Students will approach the roles of stereotypes, one of collective
memory’s basic phenomena as implemented in narratives, rituals and art, and the galvaniser of the
violent relationship between the army/soldiers and opponents, predominantly civilians. The 20th
century wars shifted in focus relegating violence from the battlefield to the civil sphere. The world
wars intensified violence against civilians to unprecedented dimensions.
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Prerequisites:
None.
Content (Syllabus outline)
The lectures, excursions, visits to museums and other types of thematisation of the topic will give the
students an opportunity to understand the violence triggered by the 20th world wars. The world
wars are the reason why the 20th century is often referred to as the Century of Wars, wars being the
most visible marker despite the great discoveries and innovations. The world wars of the 20th
century, along the many “local” wars, established violence, predominantly against civilians, as one of
the basic postulates of war. The violence shifted from the sphere of the battle into civilian sphere,
making civilians the prime opponents. Mass violence against civilians first emerged during the Great
War, increased during the Second World War and has not subsided since. Although humanity had
lived through the Hundred Years’ War and that the beginning of the 17th century was marked by the
Thirty Years’ War that devastated much of Central Europe, the war violence brought about during
the world wars is unprecedented.
In the introduction, other forms of violence will be discussed, primarily the violence related to the
European colonial past – colonisation of Australia, African and the Americas. We will focus on
questions of collective violence exerted by one group against another, and try to understand violence
as constitutive part of social dynamics. In certain cases we will focus on questions of responsibility,
i.e. individual violence, e.g. commanders and totalitarian leaders of the 20th century. The main focus,
however, will be on the Great War as the corollary of the Balkan Wars and the reason for the Second
World War.
Readings:
 Chickering Roger and Förster Stig (ed.). 2007. The shadows of total war: Europe, East Asia, and
the United States, 1919 – 1939. Washington: German historical institute; Cambridge: Cambridge
university press.
 Fussell, Paul. 2013. Velika vojna in moderni spomin. Ljubljana: Studia humanitatis.
 Higonnet Margaret Randolph (ed.). 1987. Behind the Lines: Gender and the two World Wars.
New Haven, London: Yale University Press.
 Hobsbawm, Eric. 2004. Age of extremes: the short twentieth century: 1914-1991. London:
Abacus.
 Hobsbawm, Eric. 2009. Nations and nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality.
Cambridge [etc.]: Cambridge University Press.
 Hobsbawm, Eric. 2004. Zanimivi časi: moje doživetje 20. stoletja. Ljubljana: Sophia.
 Horn, John, Kramer Allan. 2001. German atrocities, 1914: a history of denial. New Haven;
London: Yale University Press.
 Mazower, Mark. 2002. Temna celina: dvajseto stoletje v Evropi. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga.
 Smith Helmut Walser, Booth William James [et al. ] (eds.). 2002. The Holocaust and other
genocides: history, representation, ethics. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
 Svoljšak, Petra. 2003. Soča, sveta reka: italijanska zasedba slovenskega ozemlja (1915-1917).
Ljubljana: Nova revija.
 Winter, Jay. 1998. The Experience of World War I. London: Macmillan.
Assessment:
The student must pass a written exam covering the entire course in order to test competence
acquired in classes and to demonstrate comprehension and articulation of study material.
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Media, memory and history
Programme: Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures (3rd level)
Module: Cultural History
Course code: 52
Year of Study: Without
Course holder: Assoc. Prof. Petra Svoljšak, PhD
Lecturer: Martin Pogačar, PhD
ECTS: 6
Workload: lectures 60 hours, seminar 30 hours
Course type: general elective
Languages: Slovene, English
Learning and teaching methods: lectures, discussion classes
Objectives and competences:
The course covers topics of memory and history in through technologies of mediating the past in
media environments. It focuses on individual and collective memory practices in the time of
ubiquitous connectivity (with emphasis on South-eastern Europe). It offers a historical background to
the emergence, development and domination of different media technologies and their influence on
development of society and culture.
The course offers an introduction to media studies, media archaeology, history of technology and
equips the student with skills and competences to detect and reflect upon different sources in the
interpretation of the past. Through the analysis of technological aspects and audiovisual and textual
content, the course presents an analytical framework for researching and understanding wider
historical, social and cultural aspects of being in mediated society.
Prerequisites:
None.
Content (Syllabus outline)
1. Media and technology: from speech to pixel
 Speech, writing and print
 Media images
 Mass and electronic media
 Digital media and the third orality
2. Representation of the past in visual media in 20th and 21st centuries
 Print, photography and cinema
 Radio and television
 Internet and mobile devices
3. Newness of new media in historical perspective
 The “new” paradigm
 Liberating potential of the new
 Utopia and new media
4. Media archaeology: between material and code
 Media archaeology
 Digital archives
 Narratives and popcultural references
Readings:
 danah boyd, It's Complicated, The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Yale University Press, 2014.
 Peter Burke Asa Briggs, Social History of the Media, Polity Press, 2010.
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Nick Couldry, Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice, Polity Press, 2012.
Jose van Dijck, Culture of Connectivity, A Critical History of Social Media, Oxford University
Press, 2013.
Jose van Dijck, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age, Stanford University Press, 2007.
Wolfgang Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive, University of Minnessota Press, 2012.
Stig Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture and Society, Routledge, 2013.
Paul Hodkinson, Media, Culture and Society, Sage Publications, 2001.
Erkki Huhtamo in Jussi Parikka, Media Archaeology, Approaches, Applications and Implications,
University of California Press, 2011.
Henry Jenkins (ed.), Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide. New York
University Press, 2006.
T.V. Reed, Digitized Lives: Culture, Power, and Social Change in the Internet Era, Sage
Publications, 2014.
Colin Sparks (with Anna Reading), Communism, Capitalism and the Mass Media, Sage, 1998.
Assessment:
Active participation in discussion classes and a short written paper (3500 words) in which the student
analyses a particular problem supported by relevant literature. The student must pass a written
exam covering the entire course.
 Paper: the student demonstrates conversance with particular topic, competent selection of
literature, skilful argument building and appropriate language skills.
 Written exam: to test competence acquired in classes and to demonstrate comprehension and
articulation of study material.
History, Identity and Popular Culture
Programme: Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures (3rd level)
Module: Cultural History
Course code: 53
Year of Study: Without
Course holder: Assist. Prof. Ana Hofman, PhD
ECTS: 6
Workload: lectures 60 hours, seminar 30 hours
Course type: general elective
Languages: Slovene, English
Learning and teaching methods: lectures, discussion classes
Objectives and competences:
Why is popular culture often dismissed as trivia, condemned as propaganda and a tool of mass
deception? In which ways popular culture contributes to the rethinking the dominant approaches in
historiography and history-memory relation? As a field that has, since its inception, been centrally
concerned with the relationship between culture and power, popular culture studies module offers
unique perspectives to contemporary life. This course provides students with a sustained opportunity
for critical reflection on the current cultural, economic and political trajectories. In this course,
students get acquainted with the dominant approaches to popular culture studies and various
methods that investigate both popular culture in relation to history and identity. The overall
objective is to explore how popular culture, in all its various forms, not only reflects the world around
us but also how it influences the way we perceive the world. To better understand how
contemporary culture shapes our lives, the course examines a wide range of subjects (film, television,
music, advertising, the internet and geography) by using a wide range of critical approaches (such as
genre theory, gender studies, semiotics, and political economy).
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Students will:
1) understand the role of popular culture and the way it reflects and influences culture and society;
2) examine the social and cultural contexts of popular culture products and practices; 3) explore the
connection between popular culture and social values.
The course will provide an intense and rewarding pedagogical experience for postgraduate students,
who will have the opportunity to learn from lectures delivered by established scholars but also by
leading scholars work in the field of popular culture from around the world as invited speakers. This
is a highly participatory module that requires that students come to class having read and engaged
with the assigned articles. This module will help them to develop critical reading skills that can be
applied to both scholarly and popular texts.
Prerequisites:
None required.
Content (Syllabus outline):
1) What is popular culture, and why do we study it?
2) Cultural and critical theory
 Raymond Williams: “The analyses of culture”
 Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel: Popular arts
3) Theorising popular culture
 Marxism
 The Frankfurt schoo
 Postmodernism
 Introduction to Semiotics
 Feminist theory
 Post-Marxism and Cultural studies
4) Popular culture, subjectivity and identity
 Race and ethnicity
 Gender and sexuality
 Sexuality and the body
5) Popular culture, hegemony and cultural imperialism
 Subcultures and countercultures
6) Genre theory
 Literature
 Music
 TV
7) Popular culture in socialist Central and Southeastern Europe
8) Popular culture in postsocialist societies (focus on former Yugoslavia)
Selected readings:
 Adorno, Theodor. 1991. The culture industry. London: Routledge.
 Appadurai, Arjun, 2007, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy" in Media
and Cultural Studies: Key Works, Meenakshi Durham and Douglas Kellner eds. Malden Mass:
Blackwell, 584-603.
 Bennett, Andy, 2005, Culture and everyday life, London: SAGE, 2005.
 Berger, A.A. 1992, Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts, Newbury Park: Sage.
 Bourdieu, P. 1993, The Field of Cultural Production, Cambridge: Polity P.
 Day, Gary ed., 1990. Readings in Popular Culture: Trivial Pursuits? London: Macmillan.
 Featherstone, M. (1991), Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage.
 Fiske, John, 1989, Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
 Gay du, P. (1997)
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Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Walkman, London: Sage.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973: “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," in The
Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.
Hall, Stuart 1980: "Encoding, Decoding" in: Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural
Studies, 1972-79, London: Hutchinson.
Lash, Scott and Celia Lury. 2007. Global culture industry: the mediation of things. Scott Lash &
Cambridge: Polity.
O'Brien Susie and Imre Szeman. 2004. Popular Culture: A User's Guide: Scarborough ON:
Thompson Nelson.
McRobbie, A. 1991. Feminism and Youth Culture, London: Macmillan.
McRobbie, A. 1994. Postmodernism and Popular Culture, London: Routledge.
Perica, Vjekoslav and Mitja Velikonja, 2012. Nebeska Jugoslavija: interakcije političkih mitologija
i pop-kulture, Beograd: Biblioteka XX vek.
Storey, John. 2006. "What is Popular Culture?", Chapter 1 of Cultural Theory and Popular
Culture.
Strinati, D. 1995. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, London: Routledge.
Senjković, Reana. 2008. Izgubljeno u prijenosu: pop iskustvo soc. culture, Zagreb: Institut za
etnologiju i folkloristiku.
William, Irwin and Jorge J. E. Gracia, eds. 2007. Philosophy and the interpretation of pop culture.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Assessment:
Active participation in discussion classes is required, and a short written paper (6000-8000 words) in
which the student analyses a particular problem and demonstrates conversance with relevant
literature.
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