Georgian Room, Indiana Memorial Union

Public talk by Professor Theodora Dragostinova  “Cooperation and Good Will: Culture and Regional Cooperation in the Cold War Balkans”

This talk will examine the Bulgarian cultural program in the Balkans – including Romania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Greece – to interrogate the complex relationship between culture and politics during the Cold War. In the 1970s, the communist regime in Bulgaria initiated an ambitious international cultural program focused on the celebration of an important anniversary, 1300 years from the establishment of the Bulgarian state in 681. By the mid-1970s, Bulgaria and Greece, in particular, were bound in an intense cultural dialogue, which allowed them to overcome prior political tensions. Intellectuals, officials, and ordinary citizens enthusiastically embraced this cultural opening across the Iron Curtain, which demonstrated the importance of intellectual networks and personal contacts across national and ideological divides during the Cold War.

Theodora Dragostinova is an Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University. Her work focuses on minorities and refugees in the Balkans, comparative nationalism and communism, the global Cold War, and migration in Europe in comparative perspective. She is the author of Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks in Bulgaria, 1900-1949 (Cornell, 2011) and Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans (CEU Press, 2016).

• Tuesday, September 27, 2016 11:15 am
• Georgian Room, Indiana Memorial Union
• This event is free and open to the public

Co-sponsored by the Modern Greek Program, the Institute for European Studies, Department of History, Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Russian and East European Institute.

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