Rethinking Bulgarian Transitions: Literary, Anthropological, and Political Discourses of Memory

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The contributors in this panel will use an interdisciplinary approach for reassessing the Bulgarian transition from communism to democracy. From the standpoints of theater history, anthropology and political studies, the papers will investigate the uses and misuses of the cultural memory of Bulgarian society. The authors will reveal how within the past 36 years of transition, memory does not become a point of consensus, but a point for revising discourses of history through distortion, manipulation, or hybridization, leading to reversed direction of democratic transformation and adjustments to global anxieties.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• William F Zieske, Zieske Law and Fine Arts Legal

Papers

• Looking Back Forward: Existentialist Readings of (Post)modern Bulgarian Drama - Vessela S. Warner, U of Alabama at Birmingham

• Post-Democracy and Democratic Backsliding: Political Dynamics and Discourses in Bulgarian Politics - Emilia Alexandrova Zankina, Temple U; Anna Krasteva, New Bulgarian U (Bulgaria)

• Migrant Folklore on the Internet and Social Media: Anthropological Interpretation - Dilyana P. Ivanova Zieske, The Field Museum

Discussant

• Yana Hashamova, Ohio State U