Book Launch. The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia: (Post)Socialism and its Other

Please join us for a book launch and discussion of Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia: (Post)Socialism and Its Other (Palgrave, 2017), edited by Dijana Jelača, Maša Kolanović and Danijela Lugarić. The book offers a thought-provoking rethinking of the standard binary division between socialist and capitalist systems through the case study of the former Yugoslavia. Two of the book’s editors, Dijana Jelača(Brooklyn College) and Maša Kolanović(University of Zagreb), will introduce the book and contextualize it theoretical, historical, and sociopolitical frameworks, as well as highlight some of the volume’s most illuminating insights. The volume’s contributors Ana Hofman(Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts in Ljubljana) and Mitja Velikonja (University of Ljubljana) will discuss their individual chapter contributions within the larger context of the volume. The discussion will be moderated by Aleksandar Bošković (Columbia University).

Ana Hofman is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts in Ljubljana. Her research interests lie in the intersection between memory and music and sound studies, with a focus on activism and the social meaning of resistance in the past and present.  She has published many articles and book chapters, including two monographs: Staging socialist femininity: Gender Politics and Folklore Performances in Serbia (2011) and Music, Politics, Affect: New Lives of Partisan Songs in Slovenia (2015) dealing with the sonic reatualizations of cultural memory on anti-fascism in post-Yugoslav context. She is currently a post-doctoral Fulbright Fellow at the Graduate Center of City University New York.

Dijana Jelača teaches in the Film Department at Brooklyn College. She holds a PhD in Communication and Film Studies from UMass Amherst. Her areas of inquiry include feminist film studies, trauma and memory studies, and South Slavic film cultures. She is the author of Dislocated Screen Memory: Narrating Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Cinema (Palgrave 2016), and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Gender (Routledge, 2017), The Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia (Palgrave, 2017) and The Future of (Post)Socialism(forthcoming). Her work has appeared in Camera Obscura, Feminist Media Studies, Jump Cut, Signs and elsewhere. Jelača is currently completing a textbook manuscript Film Feminisms(forthcoming, Routledge). She is also a Programming Co-Director of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival in New York City.

Maša Kolanović is Associate Professor of Contemporary Croatian Literature at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is the author of Underground Barbie (2008, 2012 in Croatian and German); Udarnik! Buntovnik? Potrošač…Popularna kultura i hrvatski roman od socijalizma do tranzicije (Worker! Rebel? Consumer… Popular Culture and Croatian Novel from Socialism to Transition, 2011, in Croatian), Jamerika: trip (2013, in Croatian), and the edited volume Komparativni postsocijalizam: slavenska iskustva (Comparative Postsocialism: Slavic Experiences, 2013, in Croatian) and Cultural Life of Capitalism in Yugoslavia: (Post)Socialim and its Other (co-edited with D. Jelača and D. Lugarić). Her field of interest is Croatian literature and popular culture in the Cold War and post-Cold War period, with a focus on Yugoslav socialism and the image of America in Eastern European cultures. Her participation in the event is sponsored by the project ”Economic Foundations of Croatian Literature” at the Croatian Science Foundation.

Mitja Velikonja is a Professor for Cultural Studies and head of Center for Cultural and Religious Studies at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Main areas of his research include Central-European and Balkan political ideologies, subcultures and graffiti culture, collective memory and post-socialist nostalgia. His last monographs in English language are Rock’n’Retro – New Yugoslavism in Contemporary Slovenian Music (Sophia; 2013), Titostalgia – A Study of Nostalgia for Josip Broz (Peace Institute; 2008), Eurosis – A Critique of the New Eurocentrism(Peace Institute; 2005) and Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina (TAMU Press; 2003). He is a co-editor of Post-Yugoslavia – New Cultural and Political Perspectives (Palgrave; 2014), and co-editor of Yugoslavia from A Historical Perspective (HCHR; 2017). He is currently a visiting researcher at the Remarque Institute of the New York University.