Balkan Perspectives of Europe

Between East and West
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-89515-4
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 421 g

Through the lens of the Balkan nations, this volume makes a valuable and significant contribution to the fields of European and Southeast European studies by reconsidering the East/West dichotomy – both in terms of the Orient–Occident divide and the Eastern–Western Europe binary.

Balkan Perspectives of Europe focuses on concepts of Europe as articulated in the Balkans from the nineteenth century to the present – an area that remains largely underexplored, despite extensive research on national identity and the construction of the Other. The authors address this scholarly gap through meticulous bibliographic research, drawing on both published and unpublished sources in Balkan languages. A key strength of the collection is its inclusion of contributors from the Balkans as well as from wider European and American academic contexts, enabling a nuanced and comprehensive examination of the subject through internal and external perspectives. The authors argue that, in asserting their cultural identification with Europe, Balkan nations have developed concepts of Europe that resonate with Occidental discourses and offer a counter-narrative to dominant Western conceptualizations of the Balkans.

Broadening access to these ideas, this book’s approach allows scholars, students, and general readers to deepen their understanding of the Balkan region and its perspectives on identity and otherness.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Naxidou, Eleonora

Konstantinova, Yura

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Balkan Occidental Discourse or Balkan Counter-Orientalism  Part 1: What Is Europe?  1. Diverse Perceptions of Europe in the Newly Founded Greek State 2. Meeting Europe During a War: Perceptions of the French by Varna Residents During the Crimean War (1853–6) 3. ‘Mixed Feelings’: Nineteenth-Century Balkan Intellectuals and the Tanzimat  4. The West, the East and the Balkans: Bulgarian Intellectuals of the Revival and the Image of Europe 5. Between Imperial Legacy and European Identity: The Alchemy of Greek Perceptions of Europe  Part 2: East vs West: The Two Sides of the Same Coin?  6. Images of Russia in the Greek World and Their European Horizon (Eighteenth Century) 7. Traces of American Protestant Missions in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Balkans: Local Perceptions of the USA 8. Modelling Emotions: Bulgarian Perceptions of Russia 9. Postwar Realignment: Yugoslavia Seeks to Join Europe 10. (Step-)Mother Russia – Projections and Mental Maps of Russia in Serbia  Part 3: Visual Encounters  11. Heritage and Civilizational Discourse: ‘Civilized Europe’ and ‘Antiquities’ in Mid-Nineteenth Century Romania 12. ‘Granma Europe’: Political Imaginary and Representations of Europe in Bulgarian Caricature at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 13. The Bulgarian Perception About Russia and the Fate of Russian Monuments in Bulgaria 14. Americans Appeared in the Balkans: How They Were Imagined in the Movies from the Region?

Über Autor(innen)

Eleonora Naxidou is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History of Southeastern Europe in the Department of History and Ethnology at Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. She is the author of the book Europeanness in the Context of Bulgarian ‘Balkanness’: Lyuben Karavelov, Federalism, and the Greeks (2021; in Greek), and co-editor of several scholarly volumes.

Yura Konstantinova is Professor at the Institute of Balkan Studies & Center of Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She has published extensively and been involved in numerous academic research projects on subjects including the history of modern Greece, Greek–Bulgarian relations, and international relations in Southeastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.