Contemporary Authors

• Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914 Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 2015

1. Beyond mosque, church, and state : alternative narratives of the nation in the Balkans LCCN 2016022601 Type of material Book Main title Beyond mosque, church, and state : alternative narratives of the nation in the Balkans / edited by Theodora Dragostinova and Yana Hashamova. Published/Produced Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2016. Projected pub date 1608 Description pages cm ISBN 9789633861332 (hardbound : alkaline paper) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available. 2. Whose Bosnia? : nationalism and political imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914 LCCN 2015013325 Type of material Book Personal name Hajdarpasic, Edin, 1977- author. Main title Whose Bosnia? : nationalism and political imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914 / Edin Hajdarpasic. Published/Produced Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2015. Description xii, 271 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm ISBN 9780801453717 (cloth : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2016 016266 CALL NUMBER DR1725 .H35 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)

• Edin Hajdarpasic C.V. - http://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/history/pdfs/Hajdarpasic-CV13.pdf

  Edin HajdarpasicAssistant Professor of HistoryLoyola University Chicago1032 W. Sheridan Rd, Chicago, IL 60660ehajdarpasic@luc.eduEDUCATIONUniversity of Michigan, PhD (2008) and MA in History (2002)Exam fields (with distinction): Modern Balkans; Nationalism; Ottoman Empire; East Central EuropeNew College of Florida, BA in History (2000)PUBLICATIONSWhose Bosnia? Imagination and Nation-Formation in the Modern Balkans(book manuscript in progress).“Imperial Publics: Reform, Patriotism, and the Press in Ottoman and Habsburg Bosnia,” in Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Negotiating Religious and Ethno-National Identities in the Balkans, edited by Theodora Dragostinova and Yana Hashamova(forthcoming).“‘But my memory betrays me’: National Master-Narratives and the Ambiguities of History in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Conflict and Memory: Bridging Past and Future in [South East]Europe, edited by Wolfgang Petritsch and Vedran Dzihic(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010), 201-214.“Locations of Knowledge: AreaStudies, Nationalism, and ‘Theory’ in Balkan Studies since 1989,” Balkan Studies: Quo Vadis? (Vienna: Kakanien Revisited, 2009). “Kosovo’s Year Zero: From a Balkan Past to a European Future,” with Emil Kerenji, Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, Vol. 2, No. 6 (2009).“Out of the Ruins of the Ottoman Empire: Reflections on the Ottoman Legacy in Southeastern Europe,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 5 (2008), 715-734.“Museums, Multiculturalism, and the Remaking of Postwar Sarajevo,” in (Re)visualizing National History: Museums and National Identities in Europe in the New Millennium, ed. Robin Ostow (University of Toronto Press, 2008), 109-138.“The Phantom of Justice: The Hague Trials after Milosevic,” EurozineJournal(April 2006).Book review of Husnija Kamberović, Historijski mitovi na Balkanu, in Nationalities Papers33:2 (2005).Book introduction &interview with Jacqueline Stevens, “States without Nations,” Status Magazin6 (2005).Book review of Maya Schatzmiller, ed. Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolutionand Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic States, in Prilozi Instituta za istoriju u Sarajevu 33 (2004).FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS.Social Science Research Council Book Fellowship, 2011-12.American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship in East European Studies, 2010-11.Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Melvin Lack Fellowship, University of Michigan, 2007-08.Brookings Institution Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award, honorable mention, 2007. Institute for the Humanities Fellowship at the University of Michigan, 2006-07.German Marshall Fund Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2004-05.Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2003-04.Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, 2003-04.Fred Cuny Fellowship for Southeast European Studies, University of Michigan, 2001-02.Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanistic Studies, 2000.
  2RESEARCH AND TEACHING AREASModern Europe (social, cultural history)Balkans (state formation, communism, transition)Nationalism (theory, identity, violence) Empire (Ottoman, Habsburg, comparative history)TEACHINGLoyola University Chicago:History 102: Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions since the Seventeenth Century.History 291: Historical Methods Seminar.History 300: Modern Balkans, 1800-2000.History 300C: Habsburg Empire, 1740-1918.History300C: Empires, Nations, and Wars in Eastern Europe.History 491: Nineteenth-Century European Historiography.University of Michigan:REES 396: Survey of East Central Europe.History 195: Nationalism, writing-intensive seminar.History 318: Europe in the Era of Total War, 1890-1945.History 396: History Undergraduate Writing Seminar.Guest Lectures and Teaching Outreach:Lecture, “Islam in the Balkans,”Global Islam: History of Muslim Societies, University of Michigan, 2007.Organizer and courseinstructor of “Post-Ethnic Studies in Post-War Bosnia” mini-course (part of the među nama / entre nousprogram sponsored by the Open Society Fund),Sarajevo, 2004-2005.Guest lecturer, “Introduction to East European History,”Political Economy of East Central Europecourse, University of Michigan, 2003.Curriculum consultanton Eastern Europe, “Social Studies Curriculum Units” for high schools in the Detroit Metro area, University of Michigan Outreach Program, 2002, 2006.PUBLICPRESENTATIONSInvited Speaker or PanelistSeminar leader at the “Interpreting the Ottoman Past: Cultureand Politics in the Ottoman Balkans,” The Newberry Library Teachers’ Consortium, Chicago, October 2013. Speaker at the “Faculty Panel on the Graduate Student Experience,” Ninth Annual Loyola University Chicago History Graduate Student Conference, Chicago, November 2012. Speaker: “Genocide in the former Yugoslavia,” at the Genocide and Human Rightssummer institute, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center, July 2012.Speakerat the Kandersteg Seminar, New York University’s Remarque Institute, Switzerland, March 2012.Speaker: “Modern but Backward: Islam, Education, and Reform in Habsburg Bosnia,” From the Adriatic to the Sulu Sea: Islam and Identity in Southeast Europe and Southeast Asiaconference, University of Chicago, February 2012.Discussant at the “Hopeful Spaces of Critique: Post-Yugoslav Anthropology in the Coming Decade,” workshop, University of Chicago, April 2010.Discussantat the “Debating Identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina” panel, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies National Convention National Convention, Boston, November 2009.
  3Speaker: “Ottoman Legacies in the Balkans,” Islam at the Edges: Southeast Europe and Southeast Asiacolloquium, Northern Illinois University, March 2009.Discussant at the “Violence and the Ordinary” roundtable with Veena Das, Josh Cole, and Laura Brown, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, University of Michigan, April 2008.Discussant at the “European Tolerance, Muslim Intolerance, and the Cultural Politics of ‘Europe’” panel; Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friendconference, University of Michigan, October 2007.Speaker: “Multiculturalism and the Culture of Confessionalism: Remaking Museums in Post-War Sarajevo,” The Carolina Seminar on Comparative Islamic Studies, sponsored by the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, September 2005.Speaker: “Museums, Multiculturalism, and the Remaking of Post-war Sarajevo,” Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, March 2005.Conference Presentations“Turks Kill the Body, the Austrians Kill the Soul,” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Boston, November 2013(panel organizer).“The Spiritual is Political: Islam and Nationalism in Late Habsburg Bosnia, 1900-1914,” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Washington DC, November 2011 (panel organizer).“Constituent Parts: Accounting for Nationhood, History, and the ‘Unaccountedfor’ in Modern Bosnia,” Beyond Mosque, Church, and Stateworkshop at Ohio State University, October 2011.“Europe as a Question in Bosnian Muslim Politics,” Populismus und Euroskeptizismus in Südosteuropa seit 1989symposium, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, June 2011.“Locations of Knowledge: Placing the Balkans in a World History Perspective,” Encounters in the Mediterraneanworkshop at the University of California, Riverside, May 2010.“The Politics of Donation: Humanitarian and Artistic Interventions in Post-war Sarajevo,” Soyuz Postsocialist Studies International Symposium, Northwestern University, April 2010.“(B)ordering Practices in and around Bosnia-Herzegovina,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies National Convention, Boston, November 2009 (panel organizer).“Land Rights and National Wrongs: Peasant Demands and National Movements in Ottoman and Habsburg Bosnia,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies National Convention, Philadelphia, November 2008.“South Slav National Movements: New Frameworks for an Old Problem,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Junior Scholars’ Training Seminar, Washington DC, August 2008.“Justice, or the ‘Care of the Ruler for the Good of His Subjects:’ The Moral Economy of Subjecthood in Late Ottoman Bosnia,” American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies National Convention, New Orleans, November 2007 (panel organizer).“Out of the Ruins: Reflections on Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,” Thinking Through the Cultural Turn: Writing Histories in an Interdisciplinary and Transnational Ageinternational conference, organized by the University of Michigan and the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, September 2007.“‘Refugee Life is an Everyday Experience:’ Contemporary Art in Bosnia After the War,” the Interplay of Art and Globalization: Consequences for Museums conference, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, January 2007.LANGUAGESBosnian/Croatian/Serbian &English: native fluencyGerman, Russian: reading knowledgeOttoman and Modern Turkish, Latin: elementary
  4ACADEMIC SERVICELoyola University History Department Advisory Committee,2010-13LoyolaUniversity Academic Council (andCurriculum Committee), 2011-13Reviewer (peer reviews of articles and book review) for: Austrian History Yearbook;Nationalities Papers; Slovo; Prilozi Instituta za istoriju u Sarajevu.Interpreter, Building Lasting Peace in the Balkansdiplomatic symposium (interpreted Bosnian-Croatian-Serbianto English in bilingual panel sessions), Dayton, OH, November 2000.PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPSAmerican Historical Association; Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; Association for the Study of Nationalities; Bosnian-Herzegovinian American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Chicago Festival of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film; University of Chicago Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

• AHA Today - http://blog.historians.org/2012/08/aha-member-spotlight-edin-hajdarpasic/

  QUOTED: "In the most immediate sense, what made me study history was the war in Yugoslavia. I lived in Sarajevo until war broke out in Bosnia in 1992; after leaving the city I came to the United States about a year and a half later, eventually turning to modern Balkan history at the University of Michigan. My personal experience of displacement was obviously crucial in shaping my interest in Yugoslav pasts. But I also had a prior, deeper interest in history, in its strangeness."

  AHA Member Spotlight: Edin Hajdarpasic
  August 1, 2012 Permalink Short URL

  Nike Nivar
  @AHAhistorians
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  AHA members are involved in all fields of history, with wide-ranging specializations, interests, and areas of employment. To recognize our talented and eclectic membership,AHA Todayfeatures a regular “AHA Member Spotlight” series. The members featured in have been randomly selected and contacted by AHA staff, but if you would you like to nominate a colleague for the AHA Member Spotlight, please contact Nike Nivar.
  Edin Hajdarpasic Edin Hajdarpasic is assistant professor of eastern European history at Loyola University in Chicago; he has been an AHA member since 2006.
  Alma mater: University of Michigan
  Fields of interest: Balkan, eastern, and central European history; Ottoman and Habsburg Empires; nationalism
  When did you first develop an interest in history?
  In the most immediate sense, what made me study history was the war in Yugoslavia. I lived in Sarajevo until war broke out in Bosnia in 1992; after leaving the city I came to the United States about a year and a half later, eventually turning to modern Balkan history at the University of Michigan. My personal experience of displacement was obviously crucial in shaping my interest in Yugoslav pasts. But I also had a prior, deeper interest in history, in its strangeness. I don’t mean strange in the sense “how strange and different is the past,” though it may be that. Instead, I remember reading at a young age books about ancient Rome, about auspices and augury, and I remember thinking, how strange it is that I can glimpse and in some way understand the fascination with the voices and flights of birds. That was cool. I think experiences like that made me think about the present and the past, and that drew me to history as a subject.
  What projects are you working on currently?
  Last year I finished up my archival research in the former Yugoslavia for my book in progress, tentatively titled Whose Bosnia? Imagination and Nation-Formation in the Modern Balkans. It deals with the politics of nation-formation in Bosnia-Herzegovina over the course of the long 19th century, a crucial period that witnessed the rise of several converging and competing national movements in the Ottoman and Habsburg Balkan provinces. By analyzing how Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim activists discovered and fostered identification with their co-nationals in Bosnia, who appeared simultaneously as their “brothers” and their “enemies,” my study is a contribution to historiography of the modern Balkans (which has grown tremendously since the 1990s) and also an engagement with larger methodological questions about how the complex workings of nationalism can be more fruitfully studied.
  What is the last great book or article you have read?
  As usual, summer is a great time to explore a lot of different kinds of reading. For example, I just finished some scary fairy tales by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, and now I picked up London: A Social and Cultural History by Joseph Ward and Robert Bucholz (my Loyola colleague).
  I also read Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, and am reading a great work in progress on conflict and memory by my fellow Yugoslavist colleague Max Bergholz. Of course, summer is always a good time to revisit Bruno Schulz.
  What do you value most about the history profession?
  It’s hard to distill thoughts about one’s work into a sentence, but I’d say what I like the most about history is its potential to rethink its bounds as a “profession” and engage with other disciplines, practices, and publics. The recent exciting changes in the media of history—on the Internet, in video, on the stage, etc.—have made professional historians all the more aware of what Dipesh Chakrabarty called the “public life of history” beyond the academic institutions and scholarly organizations. Engaging with these public dimensions of our work and rethinking the social implications of our profession are vital parts of what makes history such a dynamic field.
  Other than history of course, what are you passionate about?
  Seas, alphabets, stamps, cats.
  Final thoughts
  As historians nowadays are busy exploring the digitization of so much historical material (periodicals, posters, archival records, books, etc.), it seems important to me to raise a point about the benefits of these processes for areas like the former Yugoslavia, where a lot of libraries and archives have experienced great material losses during and since the wars of the 1990s. Digitization won’t bring back all the destroyed records, but digitizing, compiling, and disseminating the existing holdings is very important for studying and teaching about politically divided areas where archival and even library access can be difficult. The digitization project by the Media Center in Sarajevo, for instance, placed online the contents of many Bosnian periodicals since the late 19th century (see the Infobiro website). Similar projects are underway in Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia. In addition to preserving very valuable resources, these kinds of services could also productively change our classroom practices, providing our students with interesting primary sources and more easily accessible materials for future research questions.

• Loyola University Chicago - http://www.luc.edu/history/people/facultydirectory/hajdarpasicedin.shtml

  HAJDARPASIC, Edin

  TITLE/S: Associate Professor
  OFFICE #: Crown Center 541
  PHONE: 773.508.2230
  E-MAIL: ehajdarpasic@luc.edu
  CV LINK: Edin Hajdarpasic
  About

  Edin Hajdarpasic (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2008; B.A., New College of Florida, 2000) is Assistant Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in Western Civilization; the modern Balkans; nineteenth-century Europe; and the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires.

  Professor Hajdarpasic has published extensively on Balkan history, conflict and memory, religious and ethnic relations, nationalism, and the Ottoman legacy in Southeastern Europe. His forthcoming volume Whose Bosnia? Imagination and Nation-Formation in the Modern Balkans examines the politics of nation-formation in Bosnia-Herzegovina over the course of the long nineteenth century, a crucial period that witnessed the rise of several converging and competing national movements in the Ottoman and Habsburg Balkan provinces. By analyzing how Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim activists discovered and fostered identification with their co-nationals in Bosnia, who appeared simultaneously as their “brothers” and their “enemies,” my study is a contribution to historiography of the modern Balkans and an engagement with larger methodological questions about the complex workings of nationalism.

  In addition to these fields of study, Hajdarpasic’s interests include film, museums, and other visual representations of the past; ethnography; and political theory. Hajdarpasic welcomes students interested in these areas and teaches courses focusing on these subjects.

  Hajdarpasic is the recipient for numerous fellowships and awards, including the SSRC (Social Science Research Council) Book Fellowship, the ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) Research Fellowship in East European Studies, the German Marshall Fund Dissertation Research Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanistic Studies. Prior to teaching at Loyola, Hajdarpasic served as an instructor at the University of Michigan. Hajdarpasic was recently featured in the Member Spotlight in AHA Today.

  Research Interests

  Balkan, Eastern and Central European history; Ottoman and Habsburg Empires; nationalism.

  Courses Taught

  HIST 102: Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions since the Seventeenth Century

  HIST 291: Historical Methods Seminar

  HIST 491: Nineteenth-Century Europe: Approaches and Historiography

  HIST 300: Modern Balkans, 1800-2000: History, Fiction, Film

  HIST 300C: The Ottoman Empire

  HIST 300C: The Habsburg Empire

  Selected Publications

  Whose Bosnia? Imagination and Nation-Formation in the Modern Balkans (forthcoming).

  “Imperial Publics: Reform, Patriotism, and the Press in Ottoman and Habsburg Bosnia,” in Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Negotiating Religious and Ethno-National Identities in the Balkans, edited by Theodora Dragostinova and Yana Hashamova (forthcoming).

  “‘But my memory betrays me’: National Master-Narratives and the Ambiguities of History in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Conflict and Memory: Bridging Past and Future in [South East] Europe, edited by Wolfgang Petritsch and Vedran Dzihic (Nomos, 2010), 201-214.

  “Locations of Knowledge: Area Studies, Nationalism, and ‘Theory’ in Balkan Studies since 1989,” Balkan Studies: Quo Vadis? (Vienna: Kakanien Revisited, 2009).

  “Kosovo’s Year Zero: From a Balkan Past to a European Future,” with Emil Kerenji, Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, Vol. 2, No. 6 (2009).

  “Museums, Multiculturalism, and the Remaking of Postwar Sarajevo,” in (Re)visualizing National History: Museums and National Identities in Europe in the New Millennium, ed. Robin Ostow (University of Toronto Press, 2008), 109-138.

  “Out of the Ruins of the Ottoman Empire: Reflections on the Ottoman Legacy in Southeastern Europe,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 5 (2008), 715-734.

QUOTED: "seeks a new paradigm–conceptually innovative and historical in its methodology–to obviate the vicissitudes of internecine nationalism in Bosnia."

Hajdarpasic, Edin. Whose Bosnia?: nationalism and political imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914
S. Bowman
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1526.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Full Text:
Hajdarpasic, Edin. Whose Bosnia?: nationalism and political imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914. Cornell, 2015. 271p index afp ISBN 9780801453717 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9781501701115 ebook, contact publisher for price

(cc) 53-4506

DR1725

2015-13325 CIP

The interminable "Bosnian Question" is, "whose Bosnia?" The population of this former northwestern province of the Ottoman Caliphate and later the Habsburg Monarchy comprising Bosnia and Herzegovina was Serb Orthodox, Croat Catholic, Muslim, Jew, and Roma; the latter three minorities, with the Serbians, were numerically superior. With the emergence of independent Serbia and Croatia (both speaking the same language), each attempted to "liberate" their Bosnian coreligionists and nationalize them. Under Tito's multiculturalist tolerance, Bosnia, according to Slavoj Zizek, was the most successful, yet after the dissolution of the Yugoslav confederacy and the violence of the Bosnian War (1992-95), independent Bosnia was partitioned among the three major groups of Croats, Serbs, and Bosniac Muslims. As a former Bosnian now living in the US, the author (history, Loyola Univ., Chicago) seeks a new paradigm--conceptually innovative and historical in its methodology--to obviate the vicissitudes of internecine nationalism in Bosnia. He researches "the people"--suffering, activism, youth, and imperial rivalry--to produce a new narrative to resolve the legacies that tore his country apart. This approach, he suggests, may assist in resolving questions of researchers in nationalism in the wider Balkans that suffer the same experiences. Heavily annotated. Summing Up: ** Recommended. Most levels/libraries.--S. Bowman, University of Cincinnati

Bowman, S.

Bowman, S. "Hajdarpasic, Edin. Whose Bosnia?: nationalism and political imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1526. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942917&it=r&asid=48017f1256ad0c201ab939ffefcf569e. Accessed 9 Apr. 2017.

• H-Net
  https://networks.h-net.org/node/21311/reviews/150004/hromadzic-hajdarpasic-whose-bosnia-nationalism-and-political
  Word count: 1146

  QUOTED: "Whose Bosnia? by Edin Hajdarpasic is one of the most important recent contributions to the scholarship of the Balkan region, especially Bosnia. This painstakingly researched and carefully designed study combines historical (archival), anthropological, and literary methods and approaches to grasp and interpret the 'often overlooked historical terrain' of Bosnia’s political and social life during the formative 1840-1914 period."
  "an account that is not afraid to ask difficult questions; approach them studiously, seriously, and in an interdisciplinary fashion; and answer them in a way that is supported by vast amount of evidence, grace, and honesty."

  Hromadzic on Hajdarpasic, 'Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914'

  Author:
  Edin Hajdarpasic
  Reviewer:
  Azra Hromadzic

  Edin Hajdarpasic. Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. xii + 271 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-5371-7.

  Reviewed by Azra Hromadzic (Syracuse University)
  Published on H-SAE (October, 2016)
  Commissioned by Michael B. Munnik

  Whose Bosnia? by Edin Hajdarpasic is one of the most important recent contributions to the scholarship of the Balkan region, especially Bosnia. This painstakingly researched and carefully designed study combines historical (archival), anthropological, and literary methods and approaches to grasp and interpret the “often overlooked historical terrain” of Bosnia’s political and social life during the formative 1840-1914 period (p. 3). This period is crucial because it is during this time that imperial and national forces and visions of the region powerfully converged and diverged, producing a dynamic political and social field.

  The proliferation of nationalism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bosnia has been addressed in many studies before Hajdarpasic’s, but Whose Bosnia? is different. Instead of delivering concrete “truths” and finished conclusions, the author invites the reader “to pause” and “meet” the local and regional actors navigating this multifaceted political terrain. While the majority of analyses have captured some of these processes, Hajdarpasic’s account “goes beyond given templates of ethnos and demos and instead points to ‘the people’ as a site of praxis” (p. 19). Importantly, Hajdarpasic considers “the people” to be an impossible subject, and praxis, for him, is dynamic and contested. As a result, instead of packaging this period in a broad, nationalism-dominated, linear, and “finished” historical account, as is often the case, Hajdarpasic allows the reader to witness people’s and institutions’ multiple and often conflicting motivations, identifications, and aspirations. Consequently, individual actors become alive and multilayered. In this way, Hajdarpasic is able to both recognize and evaluate nationalism as a vital and resistant political force and depict it as an open-ended never able to complete sociopolitical process of people-making. Instead of seeing Bosnian history as a “chronicle of long-simmering ethnic tensions and conflict or as a story attesting to enduring solidarity and peaceful coexistence between Serbs, Croats and Muslims,” this book “reconsiders historical formations of these foundational categories and focuses on the recurring slippages between otherness and sameness, division and unity, in national projects revolving around Bosnia” (p. 15). Furthermore, Hajdarpasic insists that it is precisely this open-endedness and unfinished nature of nationalism that leads to “nation-compulsion”—the very resilience and importance of nationalism as a political force, which generates patriotic subjects (p. 2).

  The book is refreshing both methodologically and theoretically. The author’s methodology covers vast geopolitical space, and it includes multiple (sub)national and regional archives as well as rich and detailed archival descriptions of major (and not so major) actors and events. The book is also refreshing in its theoretical utilization of a “grounded theoretical approach to nationalist politics,” borrowed from anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz; Hajdarpasic quotes Lomnitz, who says the approach “works through a vast and dense set of facts ... to confront, and hopefully, to transgress, an order of confinement.”[1] This approach requires a turn to the “groundwork of South Slavic national activists—ethnographers, insurgents, teachers, academics, poets, politicians, and other actors ...—in order to closely read the archives that they produced and to analyze the issues that they struggled with as they claimed Bosnia for different causes” (p. 5). This combination of insightful theoretical investigations and meticulous empirical data collection allows the author to develop his own repertoire of new and converging analytical categories, including “suffering,” “voice,” “youth,” and my favorite, “(br)other.” These analytic interventions allow for the multiplicity of seemingly contradictory and slippery projects and emotions to coexist. Hajdarpasic does not leave these tensions unexplored, but rather takes a reader on a journey where historically rooted explanations make these tensions understandable, painting places as complex yet approachable, and people as complex humans invested with both passion and reason.

  In this way, by using, for example, “(br)other” as a subject of national history, an analytic strategy, and an interpretative device, Hajdarpasic is able to capture the position of a Muslim co-national who is both “brother” and “other” to his Serb and Croat co-nationalists in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Bosnia. As a result, “(br)other” is not “an independent term defining substance but an interpretative device for analyzing the claims of sameness and otherness,” which helps us understand the struggles over national belonging of Bosnian Muslims (p. 202). (Br)other therefore stands for both living antagonisms and intimacy between co-nationals. To show how the liminal figure of (br)other is applied to shape nationalist narratives, Hajdarpasic draws on multiple ethnographic and archival materials, which make these processes much more accessible to the reader. For example, he writes: “With Turkish rule gone from Bosnia after 1878, new interpretations tried to soften the tone of the earlier literature in an effort to incorporate Muslims into the South Slav community. The Croatian theologian Cherubin Šegvić, for example, argued in 1894 that Mažuranić’s epic is ‘not the bitter spill of hatred against Muhammedans, whom [Mažuranić] considered his born brothers, but rather a vivid image of ... cruel tyranny’ as a general phenomenon” (p. 80). Hajdarpasic offers numerous similar examples of these narrative reinterpretations, which show historically shaped processes of inclusion and exclusion of Bosnian Muslims from Serbian and Croatian nationhood.

  In conclusion, I and many of my colleagues, along with other scholars of the Balkans and beyond, have been waiting for an account like this for a long time—an account that is not afraid to ask difficult questions; approach them studiously, seriously, and in an interdisciplinary fashion; and answer them in a way that is supported by vast amount of evidence, grace, and honesty.

  Note

  [1]. Claudio Lomnitz, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), xix.

  Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=45645

  Citation: Azra Hromadzic. Review of Hajdarpasic, Edin, Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and Political Imagination in the Balkans, 1840-1914. H-SAE, H-Net Reviews. October, 2016.
  URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=45645

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