Stijn Vervaet

Associate Professor - Sentral-Europa og Balkan-studier

Norwegian version of this page

Email stijn.vervaet@ilos.uio.no

Phone +47 22856710

Room NT 1115

Username

Visiting address Niels Henrik Abels vei 36 Niels Treschows Hus

Postal address Postboks 1003 Blindern 0316 Oslo

Press photo Download business card

Academic interests

My research interests lie in contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian literature and culture, cultural history of the Balkans (19^th- 21^st centuries), comparative literature, cultural memory studies, and literary multilingualism.

My latest monograph Holocaust, War, and Transnational Memory: Testimony from Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Literature (Routledge 2018) examines the emergence and transformations of Holocaust memory in the socialist Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav eras. Building upon recent developments in memory studies, the book investigates hitherto marginalized as well as well-known (post-)Yugoslav Holocaust texts and explores the imaginative links they form with other (hi)stories of extreme violence.

I am also the author of a book on the construction of national identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian rule (Sarajevo and Zagreb: Synopsis 2013). In addition to publications related to the cultural and literary history of Habsburg Bosnia, I have published book chapters and journal articles on the representation of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s in (post-)Yugoslav fiction. Together with Vlad Beronja, I edited the volume Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture (De Gruyter 2016).

For more on my research and publications, see my profile on Academia.edu

Earlier projects

I led the research project Probing the Boundaries of the (Trans)National: Imperial Legacies, Transnational Literary Networks and Multilingualism in East Central Europe (2018-2022), funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Background

I hold a PhD in East European Languages and Cultures from Ghent University (2007). Before joining the University of Oslo and ILOS, I worked for one year as a Marie Curie (IEF) postdoctoral research fellow at Utrecht University and for six years as a postdoctoral fellow of the Flemish Research Council (FWO) at Ghent University.

Courses taught

BKS1001 – Bosnisk/kroatisk/serbisk språk 1

BKS1002 – Bosnisk/kroatisk/serbisk språk 2

BKS1102 – Bosnisk/kroatisk/serbisk språk 3

SEU1300 – Polen, Tsjekkia og Balkan: Litteratur og samfunn

SEU2504 – Film i Sentral-Europa og på Balkan: Historie, erindring og identitet

RUS2301 – Russisk litteratur 2: Distopi i russisk litteratur fra 1900-tallet

SLAV4000 – Kulturell erindring i Sentral-Europa og på Balkan: Den kontroversielle fortiden

EUS4010 – Borders, bodies and memories: Textual and cultural representation of contemporary migration in Europe

EUS4310 – Cognitive Poetics

Tags: Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Yugoslav literature, Balkans, Central Europe, Memory Studies, Comparative literature, Cultural history, Multilingualism

Vervaet, Stijn. Holocaust, War and Transnational Memory: Testimony from Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Literature. Routledge, 2018. ISBN 9781472478757, 176 pages.

Vervaet, Stijn. Centar i periferija u Austrougarskoj. Dinamika izgradnje nacionalnih identiteta u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1878. do 1918. godine na primjeru književnih tekstova. Sarajevo and Zagreb: Synopsis, 2013, 532 pages.

Beronja, Vlad & Stijn Vervaet (eds): Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, Series Media and Cultural Memory, 2016, 312 pages.

Vervaet, Stijn (2022). Linguistic Diversity in East-Central European Minority Literature: The Post-Imperial Borderlands of Petar Milošević. Zeitschrift für Slawistik. ISSN 0044-3506. 67(4), p. 628–654. doi: 10.1515/slaw-2022-0031. Full text in Research Archive
Vervaet, Stijn & Mandić, Marija (2022). Mapping Minority Multilingualism: Perspectives from Central and South-Eastern European Borderlands–Introduction to the Thematic Issue. Zeitschrift für Slawistik. ISSN 0044-3506. 67(4), p. 501–510. doi: 10.1515/slaw-2022-0025. Full text in Research Archive
Vervaet, Stijn (2022). Envisioning a Socialist Future. Albert Vajs and the Rebuilding of the Yugoslav Jewish Community. In Gerber, Jan; Graf, Philipp & Pollmann, Anna (Ed.), Geschichtsoptimismus und Katastrophenbewusstsein. Europa nach dem Holocaust. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISSN 9783525317365. p. 427–453. doi: 10.13109/9783666317361.427. Show summary
Taking as a starting point the life and work of the Yugoslav Jewish legal expert Albert Vajs [Weiss] (1905–1964), this paper focuses on three interconnected aspects of postwar Jewish life that together shed light on the ways in which Holocaust memory was articulated in the two first decades of socialist Yugoslavia. As president of the Jewish Federation, Vajs played a crucial role and often took the lead in well-organized efforts to rebuild the Yugoslav Jewish community and to integrate it into the socialist state, to commemorate the country’s victims of the Holocaust in public space, to document war crimes conducted on Yugoslavia’s territory, including the genocide of its Jewish population, and to prosecute Nazi war criminals and perpetrators of the Holocaust. These efforts were defined by the dynamics and tensions between the necessity to articulate Jewish concerns within the dominant socialist paradigm and the endeavor to carve out a space for Jewish specificity. The article argues that the relationship between the socialist state and its Jewish citizens cannot be reduced to top-down regulations, but was rather characterized by the active engagement of the Jewish community.
Vervaet, Stijn (2020). Empathic Vision? War Photography, Ekphrasis, and Memory in Bosnian War Literature. In Armstrong, Charles Ivan & Langås, Unni (Ed.), Terrorizing Images. Trauma and Ekphrasis in Contemporary Literature. Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter). ISSN 978-3-11-069403-1. p. 117–136. doi: 10.1515/9783110693959-008. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This book combines two focal points: trauma and ekphrasis. It responds to the recognition of how terrorizing images permeate the public sphere in connection with traumatic experiences and confl icts and emphasizes the ways in which such images are described and interpreted by words. Contributors analyze the use of verbally represented images in a variety of literary texts in several different languages.
Vervaet, Stijn (2019). Yugoslav Literature as Post-Imperial Constellation: Towards a Transnational and Multilingual Literary History of Yugoslav Literature. In Marčetić, Adrijana; Stojanović-Pantović, Bojana; Zorić, Vladimir & Dušanić, Dunja (Ed.), Jugoslovenska književnost: prošlost, sadašnjost i budućnost jednog spornog pojma/Yugoslav Literature: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Notion. Čigoja. ISSN 9788653105037. p. 109–123. Show summary
Tokom šezdesetih godina 20. veka u Jugoslaviji se vodila živa debata o mogućnosti pisanja istorije jugoslovenske književnosti. Teze jednog od učesnika u toj debati, Svetozara Petrovića, čine se relevantnim i danas, naročito njegove primedbe o višestrukoj isprepletenosti, bilingvizmu i perifernom položaju jugoslovenskih književnosti. U ovom radu se pokazuje kako se ispitivanjem dveju međusobno povezanih konstelacija – imperijalnog nasleđa i višejezičnosti – može baciti novo svetlo na višestruku isprepletenost jugoslovenskih književnosti. Ukazuje se, prvo, na potrebu da se razvije jednu „višejezičku filologiju“ (Dembeck 2014), tj. da se razvijaju čitalačke strategije koje bi omogućile otkrivanje i tumačenje književnih tekstova pisanih „s one strane maternjeg jezika“ (Yildiz 2012). Drugo, ukazuje se na potrebu za jednim „(trans)skalarnim pristupom“ (up. Ram 2015) koji će posvetiti pažnju onim razinama koje se nalaze ispod i iznad nacionalnog i omogućiti da se promišljaju odnosi između tih nivoa. Na taj način se mogu osvetliti preplitanja i ukrštanja jugoslovenske književnosti koja kako nacionalne književne istorije, tako i novije teorije „svetske književnosti“ (Casanova, Moretti) prikrivaju. Nakon uvodnih razmatranja o značaju skale u savremenim teorijama svetske književnosti, navode se dva primera kojima se ilustrira teza o jugoslovenskoj književnosti kao postimperijalnoj konstelaciji: (1) povezanost kulturnog nacionalizma, standardizacije jezika i pojave nacionalne književnosti na slovenskom jugu i (2) višejezičnost jugoslovenskih modernista. Zbog ograničenog prostora, primeri nisu razrađeni u detalje već su predstavljeni kao nacrt jednog planiranog istraživačkog programa.
Vervaet, Stijn (2019). “Let’s Work on our Serbian!”: Standard Language Ideology, Metaphors, and Discourses about Serbian National Identity in the Newspaper Politika in 2015 . In Saric, Ljiljana & Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan (Ed.), Metaphor, Nation and Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027202499. p. 101–126. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.82.05ver. Full text in Research Archive
Vervaet, Stijn (2018). Serbischer Okzidentalismus? Anti-westliche Rhetorik in Bosnien-Herzegowina während der österreichisch-ungarischen Besatzung. In Ruthner, Clemens & Scheer, Tamara (Ed.), Bosnien-Herzegowina und Österreich-Ungarn, 1878–1918. Annäherungen an eine Kolonie.. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. ISSN 978-3-7720-8604-5. p. 407–423.
Vervaet, Stijn (2018). Sećanje na Holokaust u jugoslovenskoj književnosti: transnacionalne dimenzije traumatskih sećanja na Balkanu. In Lošonc, Mark & Krstić, Predrag (Ed.), Holokaust i filozofija. Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju. ISSN 978-86-80484-18-1. p. 103–130.
Vervaet, Stijn (2017). Cosmopolitan Counter-Narratives of Dispossession: Migration, Memory, and Metanarration in the Work of Aleksandar Hemon. In Biti, Vladimir (Eds.), Claiming the Dispossession: The Politics of Hi/Storytelling in Post-imperial Europe. Brill Academic Publishers. ISSN 9789004353923. p. 224–246. doi: 10.1163/9789004353930_012.
Vervaet, Stijn (2016). A Janus-Faced Modernity? Narratives of Austro-Hungarian Rule (1878–1918) in Bosnian Literature. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. ISSN 0258-6819. 78, p. 61–94.
Vervaet, Stijn (2016). On Comics, Flea Markets, Collecting, and Cultural Memory: Aleksandar Zograf’s Second-Hand World and Leonid Šejka’s Integral Painting. In Martinoska, Ana & Jokimovska-Toshic, Maja (Ed.), Popular Culture: Reading from Below. Institute of Macedonian Literatures. ISSN 978-608-4744-05-4. p. 280–304.
Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Between Local and Global Politics of Memory: Transnational Dimensions of Holocaust Remembrance in Contemporary Serbian Prose Fiction and Film. Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. ISSN 2037-741X. doi: 10.4324/9781315586977-8.
Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Ugrešić, Hemon, and the Paradoxes of Literary Cosmopolitanism: Or How to “World” (Post-) Yugoslav Literature in the Age of Globalization . In Marčetić, Adrijana; Bečanović-Nikolić, Zorica & Elez, Vesna (Ed.), Komparativna književnost: teorija, tumačenja, perspektive. Encompassing Comparative Literature: Theory, Interpretation, Perspectives.. Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. ISSN 9788661533099. p. 161–169.
Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Revolutionaries or Terrorists, Heroes or Victims? Young Bosnia and Gavrilo Princip in Biljana Srbljanović's Theater Play "Mali mi je ovaj grob". In Ruthner, Clemens & Preljević, Vahidin (Ed.), "The Long Shots of Sarajevo" 1914: Ereignis - Narrativ - Gedächtnis. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. ISSN 9783772085789. p. 551–566.
Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Intersecting Memories in Post-Yugoslav Fiction: The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s through the Lens of the Holocaust. In Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vlad (Ed.), Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter). ISSN 978-3-11-043943-4. p. 99–126. doi: 10.1515/9783110431575-007.
Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vladislav (2016). Introduction: After Yugoslavia – Memory on the Ruins of History. In Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vlad (Ed.), Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter). ISSN 978-3-11-043943-4. p. 1–20. doi: 10.1515/9783110431575-002.
Vervaet, Stijn (2015). Cultural Politics, Nation Building and Literary Imagery: Towards a Post-Colonial Reading of the Literature(s) of Bosnia and Herzegovina 1878-1918. In Ruthner, Clemens; Detrez, Raymond; Reynolds-Cordileone, Diana & Reber, Ursula (Ed.), WechselWirkungen: Austria-Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Western Balkans, 1878-1918. Peter Lang Publishing Group. ISSN 9780820497259. p. 71–89.
Vervaet, Stijn (2015). From Memoir to Fiction: Early Partisan Narratives Revisited. In Jakiša, Miranda & Gilić, NIkica (Ed.), Partisans in Yugoslavia: Literature, Film and Visual Culture. Transcript Verlag. ISSN 9783837625226. p. 303–330. doi: 10.14361/9783839425220-004.
Vervaet, Stijn (2015). Revolucionari ili teroriste, heroji ili žrtve? Mlada Bosna i Gavrilo Princip u pozorišnom komadu "Mali mi je ovaj grob" Biljane Srbljanović . In Ruthner, Clemens & Preljević, Vahidin (Ed.), Sarajevski dugi pucnji 1914. Događaj – narativ – pamćenje. . Vrijeme. ISSN 9789958180767. p. 467–484.
Vervaet, Stijn (2014). Staging the Holocaust in ‘the Land of Brotherhood and Unity’: Holocaust Drama Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s. Slavonic and East European Review. ISSN 0037-6795. 92(2), p. 228–254. doi: 10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.92.2.0228.
Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Facing the Legacy of the 1990s: Saša Ilić’s Berlin Window. Slavic and East European Journal. ISSN 0037-6752. 57(1), p. 13–27. doi: 10.30851/57.1.001.
Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Pisati subjekat nakon Holokausta: Konstantinovićev Ahasver, ili traktat o pivskoj flaši. Sarajevske sveske. ISSN 1512-8539. p. 94–104.
Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Entangled Histories: Family Memories and the Representation of the Holocaust in the Work of David Albahari. In Dhooge, Ben & Langerak, Thomas (Ed.), Belgian Contributions to the XV International Congress of Slavists. Minsk 2013. Pegasus. ISSN 9789061433798. p. 191–208. doi: 10.4324/9781315586977-6.
Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Fashioning Legacies of Austria-Hungary: The Canonisation of Petar Kočić. In Vervaet, Stijn & De Dobbeleer, Michel (Ed.), (Mis)Understanding the Balkans: Essays in Honour of Raymond Detrez.. Academia Press. ISSN 9789038222677. p. 337–349.
De Bruyn, Dieter & Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Reporter in de ‘contact zone’: Johan de Boose in Polen en Kroatië. In De Bruyn, Dieter; Van Heuckelom, Kris & De Strycker, Carl (Ed.), Van Eeden tot heden. Literaire dwarsverbanden tussen Midden-Europa en de Lage Landen. Academia Press. ISSN 9789038220918. p. 281–299.
Vervaet, Stijn (2011). Writing War, Writing Memory: The Representation of the Recent Past and the Construction of Cultural Memory in Contemporary Bosnian Prose. Neohelicon. ISSN 0324-4652. 38(1), p. 1–17. doi: 10.1007/s11059-010-0076-3.
Vervaet, Stijn (2011). Whose Museum? Whose History? Whose Memories?: Remembering in the Work of Dubravka Ugrešić. Comparative Critical Studies. ISSN 1744-1854. 8(2-3), p. 295–306. doi: 10.3366/ccs.2011.0024.
Vervaet, Stijn (2011). A Different Kind of War Story: Aleksandar Zograf’s Regards from Serbia and Tomaž Lavrič’s Bosnian Fables. Slavic and East European Journal. ISSN 0037-6752. 55(2), p. 161–187.

View all works in Cristin

Vervaet, Stijn; Zaharijević, Adriana & Pavlović, Aleksandar (2020). Holokaust, rat i transnacionalno sećanje: svedočanstvo iz jugoslovenske i postjugoslovenske književnosti. (Preveli s engleskog Adriana Zaharijević i Aleksandar Pavlović). Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju & Akademska knjiga. ISBN 9788680484440. 271 p.
Vervaet, Stijn (2018). Holocaust, War and Transnational Memory: Testimony from Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Literature. Routledge. ISBN 9781472478757. 176 p.
Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vlad (2016). Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. Walter de Gruyter (De Gruyter). ISBN 978-3-11-043943-4. 312 p.
Vervaet, Stijn & De Dobbeleer, Michel (2013). (Mis)Understanding the Balkans: Essays in Honour of Raymond Detrez. Academia Press. ISBN 9789038222677. 456 p.
Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Centar i periferija u Austrougarskoj. Dinamika izgradnje nacionalnih identiteta u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1878. do 1918. godine na primjeru književnih tekstova. Synopsis. ISBN 9789537035877. 532 p.

View all works in Cristin

Published Feb. 29, 2016 10:52 AM - Last modified June 8, 2023 12:15 PM

Projects

No ongoing projects