Professional developments...

Professional Developments

While my day-to-day life has become more fulfilling here and I am having a satisfying social life, my professional life is still what primarily consumes me…here and always everywhere as I have a great passion for my work and being here is really allowing me to pursue some great things and learn so so much! Of course I am foremost here to be a professor and to write. But in line with my research, I also do quite a bit of work with some local groups, in particular Belgrade’s Women in Black (WiB) and since school has been out (mid-June) my work in this capacity has been able to be more dedicated. I have been able to take part in more of their demonstrations and activities (which I will detail more in another post).

In addition to my work at the university here, and my direct work with WiB, I have been active in other ways relevant to my research and fueling my passions. In fact, being here has really help me actualize the missing link I have felt so long between scholarship and action. In graduate school I had gone through a phase of feeling so "ivory tower" useless. I study all these global conflicts and atrocities, but from afar while I constantly feel like I should be on the ground doing something tangible. My advisors always said that your scholarship can be a form of activism - can work for social change. But that sounded like a somewhat comfortable cop-out to me. Now, being here I am engaged not only in my scholarship and work with WiB, but am actively seeking ways to put into practice the "rhetorically proactive" strategies I have spent so much time thinking about.

Some images from a Roma rights demonstration earlier this year

This was a demonstration protesting the government's destruction of a Roma refugee settlement

In May I organized a film screening for a friend of mine from Bosnia who is a professor and an activist. He lives in Norway, but he runs an organization in Bosnia called The Center for Democracy & Human Rights through which he holds an annual week-long conference/seminar each summer in Konjic, Bosnia.

Although he is not a professional film-maker, a few years ago he made a film – a sort of documentary – which features the stories of three people who, during the war, committed “heroic acts of good” by helping people from different ethnic groups at great risk to themselves. Though the film is not artistically perfect – a good example of “naïve” art – the message is very moving and important. From the first time I saw the film, a few summers ago while attending the annual seminar, I have been dedicated to helping him gain attention for the film. So, when he told me he would be in Belgrade for a conference in May, I helped to organize (with help from WiB) the film’s Belgrade premier at the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD).

I was the host of the evening, which consisted of my introduction of the film and the film-maker, then the screening of the film, and finally a panel discussion with the film-maker and several local well-known intellectuals. The evening was fantastic! The event was very well attended, with a truly international audience including several ambassadors (from Norway, Austria and Denmark) as well as attendees from the US, Sweden, and other places. And this was in addition to the many local people who attended. Through this evening I met several people who have since granted me some wonderful professional opportunities!

For one thing, I was interviewed for television about this event by both Serbian and Bosnian TV stations! The previous week, while participating in an anti-fascism demonstration, I had been interviewed by a local crew making a film about the treatment of minorities here in Serbia! And now in the last week I have been interviewed for two more films – one being filmed by local students who are making a film about the influence of Disney and other children’s programming on children’s gender identity, and one (just yesterday) being filmed by American film students about the ways that roles, opportunities and expectations for women have changed here from the Communist period through this post-war transition period.

[Interestingly, in this post-war period it seems that gender equality here has regressed seriously! In the Yugo-Tito-Communist period there was more money here, a greater emphasis on education, an unparalleled freedom to travel internationally (thanks to Yugoslavia’s policy of non-alignment during the Cold War), and an acceptance of gender equality that, while perhaps not quite as progressive as somewhere like Sweden, was certainly more egalitarian than in the US at that time. Now, sadly, with no money, HUGE restrictions on travel that make it impossible for Serbs to get visas, and the residual effects of the ethno-national chauvinism of the Milosevic years, things have changed. Young people are increasingly less educated, women get married and have children younger and Feminism as a lived practice is much more a part of the lives of those people over the age of 45 than in is for those under 30.]

So, even though I am not a TV glam-glam screen personality type, and I hate seeing photos of myself, it has been exciting to be sought out for these things!

Also through the film screening I met a woman who is one of the Vice-Deans at the university where I teach here. She is a historian and she helps to lead the American Studies program here. She had me as a guest lecturer in her class a few times in May and June, and now, in Fall semester, I am going to be teaching a graduate seminar for the American Studies program here on the American Civil Rights Movement! I am really excited about that! I have also recently given lectures for the Center for Women’s Studies at my university here, and in Fall semester I will be co-teaching a course for them.

I have also been able to attend some other activities organized by other local activist/NGO groups… There was a fantastic night of short films by students of famous Yugoslav film-maker Zelimir Zelnik at the CZKD. (I really enjoyed this!) There was the performance from local activist theatre group DAH Theatre that for which they performed the testimonies of women from all three sides of the war. (So moving! I really want to be able to bring this performance to my home university in the US!). And last weekend I went to an alternative theatre festival in Pancevo (neighboring town) that was really incredible.

One of the performances was conducted outdoors in Pancevo's central park. It featured four women and was centered on raising awareness of domestic violence here in Serbia. In essence, the performance specifically highlighted the fact that the average woman who is abused by her relational partner will go back 7 times before leaving for good. It was really well done and intense. It was also perfect for the space and the intended audience they hoped to reach.

The performance itself is around 30 minutes. For the ½ hour before they begin, as the performers are setting up, they play popular music very loudly on huge speakers, which draws an audience of many people who happen to be in ear-shot. This strategy allows them to gather a much different audience than just those who chose to come to watch this performance. And in this way they are able to share thei message to many different kinds of people, not just typical "theatre goers" but also a broader general audience. People hear the music and see a group of women dancing around and they come over to see what is going on there - out of curiosity. They come for the music, but stay for the performance – which is just the right length not to lose anyone’s interest!

OK…so the performance itself is incredibly powerful, but what made it even more unintentionally impactful on this occasion was the 5 young boys (between ages 3 yrs. – 7 yrs.) who had gathered in the front during the performance. At first they watched with curiosity. About 10 minutes into the performance, then ran away only to come back holding terrifyingly real looking toy guns! [Made even more scary b/c in the US, toy guns no longer look real, so I was not used to seeing such a thing.]


The boys then proceeded to stand in a line, shoulder-to-shoulder, about 10 feet from the performing women, and began to “shoot” at them. Holding the guns in an eerily accurate way (specifically the little one with the rifle who had it resting on his shoulder with is head cocked slightly over the butt of the gun as he took aim), the boys continued to “fire” upon the women for the rest of the performance and even as they took their bow at the end. After the applause the boys ran away.

Now, the performers did not notice the boys during the performance, but everyone in the audience did, and the photographer (who happens to be an friend of mine from WiB) got some excellent photos of this. In the photos, one cannot even tell that the guns are not real! And so, for me, the message about violence against women that is offered by the performance is made that much more poignant by the boys “playing” at committing violence against these women! UGH! Crazy! (See the photos I've added below)

Young boys take aim and "fire" upon a group of women during a street performance to raise awareness about domestic violence

Here you can really see the little one with the rifle holding it like a real gun! While the one in the red-shirt seems to be scoping the scene to take aim at his next target.

Again in this one the rifle-boy is in full action and now red-shirt has found his mark. See how he holds it with two hands like a professional?

One last thing I want to tell you about from my work with WiB is the weekend seminar I went to with them in Southern Serbia. But I will talk about that in another entry.

OK, well thanks for reading and I will post more about specific WiB seminar experiences in the next post.

Xina