Дисертации
Defended PhD theses in Bulgaria in the field of linguistics, literature, history, folklore, ethnography and art studies
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Defended PhD theses in Bulgaria in the field of linguistics, literature, history, folklore, ethnography and art studies
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Salonica was the centre of the national idea in the Ottoman Empire, which distinguished it essentially from the cosmopolitan Ottoman cities along the Asia Minor coast. The Bulgarians had a significant role to play in the political and ideological ebullience that had gripped the city in the first decade of the 20th century. Its representatives were among the most prominent proponents of the national, socialist and anarchist idea that inevitably influenced the Jewish community in the city. Even though its Jewish population did not identify itself with the national-liberation aspirations of the Christian population, the proximity of the Balkan nation states and particularly of Bulgaria had a tangible effect on the city and predetermined its fate.
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“Hexagon” is an innovative method for the Bulgarian educational system, aimed at developing the logical thinking and creative abilities of students. It not only updates or develops content-based learning material, but also its systematic application in lessons increases the ability to perceive. It allows to move from passive to active form of learning that builds sustainable cognitive interests in the subject of History and Civilizations.
More...Гусев, Н., 2020. Болгария, Сербия и русское общество во время Балканских войн 1912 – 1913 гг. Москва: Индрик
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The paper provides a chronological timeline of the cholera epidemics in Bulgaria and the Balkans from the 1820s through the 1920s. In the course of a century these territories were eight times heavily struck by the so-called “blue death” – the cholera. This acute infectious disease was usually imported through the dislocation of military units, as well as maritime and rail transport. It penetrated first the seaports and then the inland settlements. Both the official statistics and the unofficial judgements reveal relatively great fatality numbers which dropped drastically only in the early twentieth century due to mass vaccination among the military and the civil population. The author reminds Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s worldwide famous novels Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Love in the Time of Cholera, and concludes that the mankind should learn better the lessons of history in order to be able to save its honour in the face of new pandemics, the COVID-19 pandemic including.
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On the basis of the theoretical model for political entrepreneurship proposed by the author, initiatives and projects of Bulgarian public and political subjects from the beginning of the 19th century until the creation of the new Bulgarian state in 1879 are analyzed. Church-national movement is the longest and most effective political entrepreneurship, ending with the creation of a Bulgarian proto-state – the Exarchate. The manifestations of the evolutionary direction in the national liberation movement are considered, especially those in the period after the Crimean War (1853–1856) to the end of 1876 after the April Uprising. Legal political actions are a kind of political entrepreneurship, as the ultimate goal of most of them is to establish political autonomy of the Bulgarians in the diocese of the already established Bulgarian Exarchate without formal separation from the “inseparable” Ottoman Empire proclaimed in Paris in 1856. Most of the revolutionary Bulgarian initiatives from the period 1856–1876 can be characterized as “startup” projects with all the conventions in the transfer of a predominantly economic phenomenon from the 21st century to the specific environment of the 19th century. The lack or insufficiency of own funding is particularly important for the success of these endeavors and therefore their organizers resort to risky assistance from external forces, which predetermines and limits to a large extent the results even of those who achieve their political goals such as the April Uprising of 1876.
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The exploration of the Romanian communist experiences and memories has generated several collective representations ranging from trauma of the past to everyday life images and narratives, communist memorabilia and nostalgic feelings. The role of literature and art in addressing the communist past has been increasingly more often included in the current debates. This paper argues that based on its visual constructions, comics expand the general knowledge of the past by targeting a segment of audience that may engage more deeply with visual expressions than with other memory media. Therefore, comic books can mediate the transgenerational transmission of memory and the reading of past narratives. Using as a case study a collective volume dedicated to the 1989 Romanian Revolution, this paper questions the use of graphics and narratives in (re)working past events and explores the dynamic of trauma, fear and violence in comics. Special attention is given to the way in which meaning is produced or conveyed and to the strategies used to address past events. Based on three interconnected instruments – content analysis, close reading and mise en scène – the graphics and narrative of the represented events are examined in relation with both the memory and the postmemory of the communist past.
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The 13th volume of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies reflects some of the research presented at the 12th International conference on Baltic and Nordic studies titled “Rethinking multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and The Baltic Sea Region,” which will be held on May 27-28, 2021, under the auspices of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies. RethinkMulti-Kulti2021 was called to reflect on multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region 10 years after German Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted the end of German multicultural society. Many politicians with Conservative leanings praised the confirmation that the half-century-cherished multi-kulti “utterly failed,” and far-right gurus interpreted it as an omen. Furthermore, Merkel’s track record as a committed democratic-minded politician, EU leader, and proponent of migrant integration has garnered near-universal support for this argument. Furthermore, in academia, Merkel’s assertion has never been adequately questioned, but rather taken for granted. Meanwhile, policies governing multiculturalism and multilingualism in the EU and EEA have been stuck in a rut, particularly in what Fareed Zakaria properly refers to as illiberal democracies.
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This article compares the projects for the initial modernization of education among the Czechs, Slovaks, Vojvodina Serbs and Bulgarians, their conception, initiation and the social factors responsible for their implementation. The role of the clergy for the spread of Enlightenment ideas and the preservation of the literary tradition – a factor common to all peoples – is outlined. The connection between the literacy of the broad strata of the subjugated peoples and the development of the native language is analyzed. The author considers the reform of education in the general context of state policy, noting that while in the Habsburg monarchy it was a governance policy aimed at the general process of modernization of the state, in the Ottoman Empire the central government remained indifferent and the Bulgarian educational project was the work of wealthy patriotic emigration.
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In this article I return to St. Marina, on whose folkloric image and faith I worked many years ago. My goal is to supplement my previous observations with new ones and to expand the territorial scope. Special attention is paid to the veneration of the saint’s sacred relics in the Mediterranean and the reactivation of her cult. I also consider the transformational models in the believers’ notions of the cave and nature, and the periodic renewal of those notions through archaization and return to archetypes personified in the cult of St. Marina.
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This paper is investigating how the Crimean War (1853 – 1856) was depicted in the Journals of Queen Victoria. The Queen's Journals are a valuable source of information about this phase of the Eastern Question. They can provide an important perspective on the conflict between the West and Russia.
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In my article, I deal with museums of health and education founded at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Social Museum and later Museum of Public Health and the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna. My main question concerns how two social museums could operate so differently in two closely connected cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In my analysis, I examine what economic and ideological changes led to the formation of the concept of culture, which provided an ideological medium for presenting workers’ bodies of industrial capitalism and their living conditions and for the education of the working class. To answer this question, I interpret the cultural practices of the labor movement of the early 20th century in the economic and aesthetic framework of modernity. Social museums sprung up in several large cities beginning in the 1890s (Paris, Budapest, Vienna, Harvard-Cambridge, etc.), and their establishment was largely connected to the representation of the social question. These museums dealt with education, healthcare, housing, leisure activities, and eugenics. In Budapest, in 1901, the Minister of Commerce founded the museum with the aim of "serving the moral, political and health education of the workers" through exhibitions on public health and the workers' interests. Almost 25 years after the Budapest one, the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (GeWiMu) was founded in 1924 by Otto Neurath, a sociologist and philosopher from the left-wing of the Vienna CircleThe institution, like the one in Budapest, was state-maintained and operated with the support of the Red Vienna City Council (1919–1934) and the trade unions. The target audience was also the working class; however, both the goals and the means were vastly different. My analysis compares the two institutions, and I argue that the differences stem from two reasons. The first reason is the difference between the two cities’ development into large industrial-economic cities. The other was the different cultural perceptions within the labor movement embedded in this newly transformed industrial capitalist relationship. Both institutions played a role in the formation of new states after the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1867–1918) and the development of industrial capitalism. However, they became part of the state institutions seeking to integrate industrial labor for completely different purposes. In the following, I present the changes in welfare politics and ideology that have shaped the two museums in the two cities. The starting point for all this is how the social question emerged in Vienna and Budapest. What is the reason why the worker's body, living, and housing conditions appeared so differently in the two cities? In other words, how did the state-represented political anatomy and body culture move in such a different direction in the two related cities of the era?
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Following the regime change of 1989/1991, the cultural infrastructure has also undergone significant transformation in most Eastern European countries. Two "foreign", i.e. transregionally and transnationally operating donor organisations have played a significant role in this transformation: the Soros Foundation (later Open Society Foundations / OSF) and the ERSTE Foundation. Their initiatives have led to the creation and increasing professionalisation of the field of contemporary arts in the region. Given that the organisations in question have provided corporate philanthropy, a potential tension arises between the progressive social content of the objectives promoted on the one hand, and the more conservative economic policies enabling the wealth being donated, on the other. This is particularly relevant in the case of the Soros Foundation/OSF, which, unlike the ERSTE Foundation, has a decades-long history of political philanthropy and currently efficiently advocates, on a global level, a range of progressive social causes. This paper explores this tension and weighs the kind of democratic deficit inherent in philanthropy, especially in its politically motivated forms.
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The article focuses on the attempts at healthcare reform by the Truman administration alongside the liberal wing of the Democratic party in the 1940s. The proposals of both the White House and different groups of congressmen are laid out in detail. The main reasons for the failure of healthcare reform, as proposed by the author, are the lack of coordination among the Democrats supporting healthcare reform, Truman’s poor influence on Congress, and the role some key professional organizations play in weakening public support for the administration’s initiatives.
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