Crossing Borders/Border Crossings: Im/Mobility in the Post-Ottoman Balkans

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel deals with multiple manifestations of im/mobility in the post-Ottoman Balkans after the Great War, following the trajectories of divided families and missing children, refugee and squatter populations, émigré authors and translators, and genocide survivors turned writers—all trying to make sense of a changing world by constantly crossing borders, be they physical, political, legal, intellectual, or emotional. The presenters themselves, employing interdisciplinary methodologies, engage in scholarly border crossings by tackling questions of uncertainty, displacement, place-making, im/mobility, and the travel of texts, meanings, and experiences.

Theodora Dragostinova explores the repatriation of children in the post-1918 Balkans to highlight uncertainty as the underlying postwar condition. Miloš Jovanović discusses refugee and squatter neighborhoods in interwar Belgrade and Sofia to make a case for the study of how displaced people settle. Milena Methodieva analyzes the migration of texts and ideas showcasing Finland as a model of social development in Bulgaria, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s. Ayse Parla foregrounds walking as a means of survival and a reminder of death after the Armenian Genocide, analyzing Hagop Mıntzuri’s Istanbul Memories (1897-1940).

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Peter Isaac Holquist, U of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Uncertainties of Border-Making and Family-Making: The Repatriation of Minors after the Great War - Theodora Dragostinova, Ohio State U

• Making Place, Making Self: Refugee and Squatter Neighborhoods in Belgrade and Sofia, 1919-1945 - Milos Jovanovic, UCLA

• Migrating Texts, Utopian Visions: Searching for Guidance in Uncertain Times (1920s-1930s) - Milena Methodieva, U of Toronto (Canada)

• Hostage Writing and Walking as Im/mobility in Hagop Mıntzuri’s 'Istanbul Memories (1897-1940)' - Ayse Parla, Boston U

Discussant

• Pamela Lynn Ballinger, U of Michigan