Thesis deals with the issue of the conceptualization, analysis and understanding of the Balkans after 1991 as a specific geopolitical area in order to examine the proclivity of the region towards conflicts and give general idea of the geopolitical position of the Balkans in local and global context. First, the definition of the Balkans and its borders in physic and politico geographical structure along with the historical definitions and geopolitical position settings and significance prior 1991 are tackled. Then follows the application of the geopolitical theories and concepts on the geopolitical map with the states of the Balkans after 1991 in order to conceptualize the area and thus having a framework for examination and comparison of the territorial changes and geopolitical events that occurred in this historical period as well as for better understanding of strategic significance of internal and external geopolitical position of the Balkans. As a third step follows the explanation and outline of the greater territorial irredentist and geopolitical concepts of the Balkan nation states which have been revived and actualized in the period after 1991 serving as a background and basic platform for their geopolitical agenda. Lastly, the thesis tackles the territorial changes that came as a result of...

This thesis "The Bosnian minority in Serbia and Montenegro in the period of disintegration of Yugoslavia" is, based on the theoretical concept of the problem of modern nation and modern state formation, in constructivist approach and its consequences for internal security connected with the existence of national minorities, focusing on setting the problems of forming the national identity of the Muslims or the Bosniaks into a wider framework of the second and third Yugoslavia disintegration. The matter of bosniak nation genesis is focused on the territory of Saniak of Novi Pazar, which is situated in a very sensitive area among Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The main goal is to answer the following questions: What was the development of the Muslim and Bosniak national identity like in the conditions of peripheral territory of Sanjak? Based on the perception of the local Bosniak national elites, what was the relation of the Bosniak/Muslim minority towards the state, the regime, and the nation it lived in/with like? What correlations between the state, political changes in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro and the perception of real national existence of Muslim/Bosniak community within these states can be observed? The thesis is not supposed to be a narrowly focused study, but a...

This thesis explores the work of historians, history teachers, and NGO employees engaged in regional initiatives to mitigate the influence of enduring ethnocentric national histories in the Balkans. In conducting an ethnography of the development and dissemination of such initiatives, I queried how conflict and controversy are negotiated in developing alternative educational materials, how “multiperspectivity” is understood as a pedagogical approach and a tool of reconciliation, and how the interests of civil society intersect with those of the state and supranational actors. My research sought to interrogate the field of power in which such attempts to innovate history education occur, with attention trained on the values encoded and deployed in this work.

Master thesis examines comics that reflect the break-up of Yugoslavia. The theoretical part describes the main discourses that aim to explain the dissolution of Yugoslavia as well as the essential theoretical background of comics studies. The analytical part examines the ways in which comics mediate the break-up of Yugoslavia and, in particular the trauma associated with it. Authors of the comics most often work with a discourse that argues ethnic hatred, but they view it critically and point out its falsity. The analysis further revealed that comics provide a vast space for empathizing with victims of war trauma. Getting to know the survivors of traumatic events closely, as well as the concept of false memories that develop during reading of comics, facilitates empathetic reading. All the authors refuse to glorify war, focusing instead on the fatal effects that war has on the lives of ordinary people.

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It remains one of the saddest ironies in the history of conflict in the twentieth century that Yugoslavia, of all those communist states of Eastern Europe which transformed in its penultimate decade, was the one that had demonstrated the greatest degree of liberalization in its social, political, and economic structure and development, yet was the one that disintegrated amid the greatest violence and loss of life.