This course examines the patterns of political, social, and cultural developments in the formation and development of modern statecraft in the Balkans. This course will specifically examine developments in Greece, Serbia and Turkey, with additional attention, when relevant, to Bulgaria, Northern Macedonia, and Cyprus. The Balkan Peninsula (or Southeastern Europe) is the one remaining geographic region that still remains partially outside the European Union. It is an area that has largely been peripheral to modern European development, yet has paradoxically served as a catalyst for that development over the past two centuries. Historically situated as it is at the proverbial crossroads of three great civilizations – the Byzantine/Ottoman, the Austrian, the Russian – the Balkans has experienced an inordinate degree of political, social, and cultural upheaval, making it one of the most unstable regions of Europe. Debates on nation-building and democratic transitions are ever present in academic arguments and current events before being subsumed within larger studies of European Union integration.
Specifically, we will investigate the conditions of political development of ethnic communities breaking away from the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, the rise of national identity, the role of historical memory, and path dependent legacies that continue to influence contemporary political issues today in both the region and in relation with the European Union. More modern topics will examine Greece’s transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, the political and economic conditions that contributed to the fragmentation of Yugoslavia in the 1980s and subsequent disintegration in the 1990s, Greece’s relationship with the European Union, the future of Serbian and Turkish EU membership, an assessment of democratic development of former Communist states, conflict resolution over disputed territories of Northern Cyprus, and Kosovo, and increasing authoritarianism in Turkey. (Lecturer: Michael Rossi)