Universität Wien

090041 PS Refugees in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (19th. -20th. centuries) (2016S)

7.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 9 - Altertumswissenschaften
Continuous assessment of course work

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 12 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes

MI wtl von 09.03.2016 bis 29.06.2016 16.00-17.30 Ort: Seminarraum d. Inst. f. Byzantinistik u. Neogräzistik, Postg. 7/1/3


Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Inhalt:
Despite the rising number of incoming refugees, the ongoing "migrant" or "refugee" crisisas it is labeled by the mainstream media, is anything but new for Europe. The current crisis is an exacerbation of the growing flows of immigration coming from outside the continent since the end of the Second World War, and with greater intensity after the 1980s. As by-products of long-term historical trends, the growing mobility of labor, decolonization and the rise of global inequalities, postwar mass population movements have drastically altered the demographic and cultural landscape of European societies. From the point of view of a longer historical perspective, forced population movements, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries, have time and again been the result of expulsion, pogroms, wars or civil wars. Mass refugee flows and migration movements have marked the long and painful decline of the "Old Regime" and the transition from the era of multiethnic empires to that of nation-states.
The lands which until 1800 belonged to the Ottoman Empire offer a privileged view onto this transition. From the Greek War of Independence (1821-1828) and the emergence of various Balkan nationalisms, until the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), and from the population exchange of 1923 to the refugees of the WW2, the 1948 Palestine War and the Greek Civil War, the war of Cyprus (1974) and the Yugoslav civil wars, the Balkans and the "Near East" offer a panorama of different forms of forced population transfers. Examining the cultural and political impact of refugees on European societies, this course will adopt a transnational and interdisciplinary approach.

Ziel:
How did the native populations receive the newcomers and how did this condition the ethnic, national and cultural European identities? In terms of a broader historical perspective, those population movements have not only shaped the internal and external borders of the continent, but also influenced new cultural geographies, constructions of identity and otherness, as well as colonial and postcolonial hierarchies of nations. Furthermore, juxtaposing the strategies of integration of refugees with the responses of different European societies (or different groups within society), we will trace the cultural and ideological roots of contemporary racism. Finally, by studying different legal and political responses to refugee and migration crises over time, from the late Ottoman Muhacirin Komisyonu to the Nankin passports, and from the Displaced Persons Camps of 1945 to today's "refugee reception centers", we will attempt to draw a genealogy of contemporary forms of refugee management.

Methoden:
In the first meeting, a detailed historical and theoretical literature overview and list of subjects will be distributed to participants. After the first four introductory sessions, the seminar will unfold with student presentations as well as with contributions of a number of invited scholars specializing in regional and refugee studies.

Assessment and permitted materials

Students will be evaluated on the basis of participation in the seminar, one oral presentation and one final essay.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Examination topics

Reading list

SUGGESTED READINGS:
M. Mazower, The Balkans : from the end of Byzantium to the present day, London, 2003.
S. Hanioglou, A brief history of the late Ottoman empire, Princeton, 2009.
Is. Blumi, Ottoman refugees, 1878 - 1939 : migration in a post-imperial world, London, 2013.
R. Gingeras, Sorrowful shores : violence, ethnicity, and the end of the Ottoman Empire, 1912 1923, Oxford 2009.
R. Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean : an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey, New York, 2004.
A. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia 18701990, Chicago. 1997.
Al. Betts and G. Loescher (eds), Refugees in International Relations, Oxford, 2010.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:31