Concrete Utopias, Contested Pasts: Revolutionary Monuments in the Former Yugoslavia

3 credits · Undergraduate

Come study abroad in a country that no longer exists! Strewn through the countryside of the countries of the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia) are monuments (spomeniks) to the resistance of the Yugoslav people against Fascist occupation in World War II and to the emancipatory revolution born from this struggle. These monuments, created from the 1950s-1980s, lay claim at once to the past, present, and future: they were commemorative sites, living aesthetic symbols of Yugoslavia's non-aligned path that broke with Soviet hegemony, and abstract, innovative architectural constructions pointing to a revolutionary future. We will journey through the sites of a dozen of Yugoslavia's most striking, significant monuments of this kind, which must be seen in-person to be fully appreciated, replicating trips taken by Yugoslav citizens to these historically significant spaces while reflecting on how their memory is negotiated today. Their daring design will anchor our investigation of memory, place, and art's political power.