This course is an interdisciplinary Balkans (Southeast Europe) Studies course. Starting with the “shot heard around the world” – the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, marking the start of World War One – the course tracks the collapse of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires and the rise of Yugoslavia (first as a Kingdom and later as a Socialist Federal Republic). With these as a foundation, this course focuses primarily on the collapse of Yugoslavia and the 1990s ethno-religious wars that continue to define current political, social, and economic issues, and which partly inspired Samuel Huntington’s (in)famous article “The Clash of Civilizations”. Course discussions build off of numerous guest lectures by war veterans, academics, politicians, activists and religious leaders of all ethnicities and religions (Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Kosovar Albanians, among others), and representatives from the EU, UN, and others. Assignments draw upon personal narratives, films, documentaries, podcasts, and other online resources.
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