BSTP Workshop: Is Nationalism Obsolete?

The Balkan Society for Theory and Practice will hold its second workshop on July 1-12th, 2019, in Prishtina, Kosovo. We welcome applications from all disciplines and encourage activists and artists to apply even if their work is not in the form of a traditional paper.

The goal of the workshop is to explore if nationalism is obsolete. Is it capable of meeting, or even addressing, the needs of our time? The workshop will juxtapose mainstream understandings of nationalism and its relation to conservative movements with revolutionary understandings and practices of nationalism. We will gather participants and lecturers from all over the globe and from a range of disciplines to discuss and rethinking our understanding of nationalism.

The workshop will be a collaborative space for sharing and workshopping research projects. Papers will be works in progress and open to development in response to feedback. Participants will be asked to share their papers before we gather in Prizren. This will ensure that each participant has had sufficient time to review the material. We will discuss two papers per day, reserving approximately 2 hours per paper. The daily workshop structure will consist of a 20-25-minute presentation of the key points discussed in the paper, followed by a general discussion, questions, and feedback from the group.

Considering that BSTP aims to provide a space for discussion and critical thinking for the wider public as well, we will hold public lectures, film screenings, panels, and art performances. In the previous workshop we had a variety of top scholars in the field present their work such as, Marina Gržinić, Tjaša Kancler, Piro Rexhepi, Paola Bacchetta, Sezgin Boynik, Nita Luci, Eli Krasniqi, Boris Buden, and Linda Gusia.  One of the outcomes of the 2018 BSTP workshop is a collaboration with Feminist Critique Journal. BSTP and Feminist Critique are working together on a special issue, “Breaking with Transition,” on post-colonial and decolonial theory in the Balkans.

The inaugural BSTP workshop was held in 2018 in Kino Lumbardhi, which is a cinema, civic space and an independent cultural institution in Prizren. In 2019, the workshop will be held in Kino Armata, which is a new public space in Prishtina for the promotion of alternative artistic expressions.

We invite submissions for the 2019 BSTP workshop by February 15th, 2019. We ask applicants to submit a CV or portfolio, a 250-word abstract of their project, and a 250-word personal statement indicating how their research relates to the workshop theme.

For more information about applications please visit: www.balkansocietytp.com