INVITATION FOR BOOK PRESENTATION
Catherine Baker:
The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s
The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s involved the violent destruction of a society in the midst of the collapse of state socialism. The moment war broke out, academic and public debates began, concerning the long- and short-term causes of the wars and where responsibility should lie. Not only do these controversies continue - even coming up against each other in courts of law - but fresh areas of debate have also emerged, which historians must take into account.
CATHERINE BAKER brings together the major arguments of the most up-to-date English-language scholarship on the Yugoslav wars. Doing so, Baker exposes the politics and ethical complexities of narrating and interpreting the very recent past. The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s demonstrates how debates have evolved and where more research is required, providing students with an ideal starting point for further investigation.
CATHERINE BAKER is a specialist in post-Cold War history, international relations and cultural studies, working primarily but not solely on the post-Yugoslav region. Her research projects are connected by an overarching interest in the politics of representing, narrating and knowing about the past. After studying the construction of national identity in Croatia through popular music, and subsequently the role of translation and interpreting in peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Bosnia-Herzegovina, her current research emphasises the circulation of representations, people, texts and images from, into and through south-east Europe, including the reproduction of militarised masculinities after the Yugoslav Wars. Her next projects, on grassroots British aid convoys during the Yugoslav Wars and on discourses of race in the post-Yugoslav region, will continue her effort to globalise and historicise the cultural politics of the post-Cold-War period.