Brownbag Session | Conflict, Memory, and Social Division in the Former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country (Blaze Joel)

Conflict, Memory, and Social Division in the Former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country

This presentation analyzes the exacerbation and maintenance of social division through conflict and commemoration in four different European societies – Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country. These societies all experienced intense inter-ethnic conflicts that made ethnicity more salient and turned ethnic understandings into oppositional forces, a trend which has been reinforced in the years since the conflicts have ended. As the Breakup of Yugoslavia, the Troubles, and the Spanish-Basque Conflict have moved further into the past, they have become essentialized into key mobilizing events that are the focus of the memorial cultures of each respective community, which set (often literally) in stone the divisions from the conflicts, transforming them into part of the daily lives of people regardless of their ethnicity. These divisions over memory also have immense consequences for politics, education, sport, and social and cultural life.

Blaze Joel is a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley in History. He will be in Regensburg from 15 February to 31 March. His research focuses on nationalism, memory, violence, and national identity in twentieth-century Europe. He studies these issues in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, and the Basque Country, as well as in an international, trans-European framework.

The Regensburg-Berkeley Doctoral Exchange Program is supported by Universität Regensburg, the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, CITAS, Regensburger Universitätsstiftung, and the Institute of European Studies (IES) at the University of California Berkeley.