Jovana Babović has been a member of the Geneseo faculty since 2018.
Professor Babović is a historian of modern transnational Europe. Her research focuses on urban culture and society in Eastern Europe during the twentieth century. You can find more information about Professor Babović’s work on her website.
Office Hours, Fall 2023
Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:30am-12:00pm
Curriculum Vitae
Research Interests
Eastern Europe, the Balkans, urban history, popular culture, oral history
Education
PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
MA, Central European University
MA, New York University
BA, Smith College
Publications
Metropolitan Belgrade: Class and Culture in Interwar Yugoslavia, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018
Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out (33 1/3 Series), Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2016
“National Capital, Transnational Culture: Foreign Entertainment in Interwar Belgrade,” East Central Europe 42.1 (2015): 104-122.
Classes
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HIST 244: Europe in the Shadow of War
From the First to the Second World War, from the Spanish to the Yugoslav Civil Wars, and with workers', students', and anti- colonialists' uprisings in between, Europe's twentieth century has been overshadowed by conflict. In this class, we explore political, social, and cultural struggles and how they impacted the everyday lives of ordinary people. When we study the Great War, for instance, we study trench warfare as well as the crusade to reconfigure gender relations. When we explore Stalinism in the Soviet Union, we discuss the violence of industrialization and its effect on the state as well as the lives of millions of peasants. And when we turn our attention to the 1960s, we ask how the decade of protests redefined European society as well as the place of women, minorities, and youth in it. Primary sources like novels, films, art, and political manifestos will allow us to learn about the past through the voices of those who lived it.
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HIST 455: War & Peace in Balkans
This course examines the history of the Balkans region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on moments of conflict as well as those of peaceful coexistence. Covered themes include everyday life under the Ottoman Empire, national liberation movements, the Balkan Wars, urbanization, eugenics, the First and Second World Wars, communism, youth culture, and the Yugoslav Wars. The course also considers orientalizing Western narratives about the Balkans and how they have shaped the writing of the region’s history. Prerequisite: HIST 302 (HIST 301 also recommended).