Course Title and Purpose	1. Course Title THE IMAGE OF THE OTHER IN BALKAN LITERATURES
	2. Aims of the Module: Students who take this course will be able to understand: :: culture to be the semantic space, the field of signs and practices in which human beings construct and represent themselves and others, and hence their societies and histories;  :: ethnicity as a cultural construct that always includes several different paradigms; :: that ethnicity has a dynamic and changeable structure and its “ borders ” are porous and open for the influences of the “ Other ”; :: that individual or group identities take shape in interaction with other identities, and that is why identity’s substance is constructed of different linguistic, national, religious, cultural, etc. elements. :: the ways and mechanisms that are used to speak or write about Balkan Others :: that while analyzing images of the Other, which are influenced by the ideological, national, or cultural referential frame, we create a starting point for understanding of differences
Course Delivery	3. Contents: Literature provides a remarkably suitable vehicle for the creation and expression of national identity, and an imagological approach takes care of both the internal workings of the text and its interaction with external factors, that is ‘the context’. Imagology is highly interdisciplinary and combines history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural and political studies. Its object is the study of stereotypes, clichés, and images. Imagology (or ‘image studies’) deals with the origins, nature and impact of national stereotypes, images of the self (‘auto-images’) and images of the Other (‘hetero-images’). We shell discuss literary articulations of the ‘Other’, in a broad range of identity related subjects - national, religious, ethnic, local, gender, etc.
	4. Indicative Reading: Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978); Leerssen, Joep Th., Echoes and images: reflections upon foreign space, in: Alterity, Identity, Image. Selves and Others in Society and Scholarship; (Amsterdam - Atlanta: Rodopi, 1991); Beyond Pug’s Tour: National and ethnic stereotyping in theory and literary practice, ed. C. C. Barfoot (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997); Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans (New York - Oxford: Oxford University press, 1997); Wachtel, Andrew Baruch, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation. Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 1998).
	5. Learning and Teaching Methods: Total Contact Hours:  56 Range of Modes of Contact: Lectures (two contact hours per week and possible extra hour for questions / discussions), weekly seminars based on small group, presentations based on independent learning and directed reading. Range of other Learning Methods: Independent learning and directed reading. Total Study Hours:  150
Course Assessment	6. Course Learning Outcomes: After taking this course, students will be able to understand: :: how do we construct narratives for others and for ourselves; :: what is the relation between literature and ‘historical memory’; :: how do various literature genres construct the Other and history; :: how does literature cast the foreigner; :: what are the mechanisms we use to remember or forget; :: how does the East conceives the West, and vice-versa; :: how does literature help or hinder our travels to the reality of a distant or closer otherness.
	7. Assessment Methods and Number, Type and Weighting of Elements: Grades will be awarded on the basis of several assignments during the course: regular attendance and participation (20%), short oral presentations (20%), final paper of ca. 3000 words (40%), oral exam/discussion of final paper (20%). The topic of the final paper will be determined during the course.
Course Management	8. Credit Points and Duration: 8 credit points (ECTS); duration of the course is one semester.
	9. Contact Person: Dr Ivana Živančević-Sekeruš University of Novi Sad E-mails: psekerus@eunet.yu, ivana_sekerus@yahoo.fr