Yugoslav Internationalisms II: Book Discussion: Nonaligned Imagination: Yugoslavia, the Global South, and Literary Solidarities beyond Cold War Blocs, by Nataša Kovačević

Session Submission Type: Book Discussion Roundtable

Brief Description

This book discussion roundtable brings together scholars in east European and Eurasian literatures, films, and arts in conversation with the author. "Nonaligned Imagination" reconstructs the forgotten literary and intellectual history of the Non-Aligned Movement, which united postcolonial states in opposition to Cold War bipolarism, enabling literary translations and cultural exchanges between the Global East and South. Moving between national and global frameworks, Nataša Kovačević draws on extensive research in socialist nonaligned Yugoslavia’s archives and reads across narrative genres, from fiction, diaries, and travelogues to reportage and literary scholarship, to chart the development of alternative epistemologies, cultural networks, and literary aesthetics which respond to critical Cold War events, fostering intellectual engagement and affective solidarity with the decolonizing world. These materials encode the shared concerns of peripheral literatures and envision an egalitarian, polycentric “worlding” of literature, shedding light on both Yugoslav and renowned Asian, African, Latin American, and Caribbean writers’ heretofore unexplored roles in nonaligned cultural circuits. This book is in conversation with recent scholarship on East-South and South-South cultural exchanges and collaborations.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Arizona State U

Roundtable Speakers

• Sima Kokotovic, U of Pennsylvania

• Anca Parvulescu, Washington U in St. Louis

• Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Arizona State U

• Maria Masha Salazkina, Concordia U (Canada)

• Bojana Videkanic, U of Waterloo (Canada)