Local Voices, New Perspectives: Rethinking the Yugoslav Wars Through Microhistory
Date and Time
Local Voices, New Perspectives: Rethinking the Yugoslav Wars Through Microhistory
This event explores how a microhistorical approach can deepen our understanding of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Moving beyond and interpreting ICTY records and elite political accounts differently, it foregrounds local voices and everyday experiences to illuminate the complex dynamics of conflict at the community level. By engaging with sources such as oral histories, local archives, and court records, the discussion will focus on how ordinary people understood and experienced the war, thereby complicating nationalist narratives of fixed victimhood and perpetration. The discussion will emphasize the value of looking at the war “from the ground up” to reveal how communities navigated violence, solidarity, and survival. In doing so, it highlights the potential of microhistory not only to challenge linear, top-down interpretations but also to complicate the historiography of the Yugoslav Wars by centering human experiences that nationalist discourses often erase.
Speakers
- Max Bergholz, Professor of History, Concordia University.
- Fedja Burić, Associate Professor of History, Bellarmine University.
- Sandra Grudić, Program Administrator, Educator Outreach, Davis Center.
- Marko Kljajić, Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Identity and Conflict. PhD, Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This event is jointly organized and co-sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.