Stijn Vervaet

Vervaet, Stijn. Holocaust, War and Transnational Memory: Testimony from Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Literature. Routledge, 2018.  ISBN 9781472478757,  176 pages.

Vervaet, Stijn. Centar i periferija u Austrougarskoj. Dinamika izgradnje nacionalnih identiteta u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1878. do 1918. godine na primjeru književnih tekstova. Sarajevo and Zagreb: Synopsis, 2013, 532 pages. 

Beronja, Vlad & Stijn Vervaet (eds): Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter, Series Media and Cultural Memory, 2016, 312 pages.

• Božinović, Damjan & Vervaet, Stijn (2025). Translating Memories of the Bosnian War: Translators as Memory Brokers of Violent Conflict. In Laanes, Eneken; Ortner, Jessica & Sindbæk-Andersen, Tea (Ed.), Literature and Mnemonic Migration. Remediation, Translation, Reception. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9783111544748. p. 123–142. doi: 10.1515/9783111544748-008. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter takes the role of translation both as praxis and as metaphor as a point of departure for discussing the complex travels of memories of the Bosnian war. It explores two case studies that, each in a different way, articulate, recall and help circulate memories of the war, and shed light on the various roles of translation and the translator in these mnemonic processes. The first is the 1999 Bosnian-Norwegian bilingual anthology of contemporary Norwegian poetry devoted to the Bosnian war titled Mourning That Blooms Dark (Sorg som blomstrer mørkt), edited by the poet and translator Munib Delalić, who also translated the Norwegian poems into Bosnian. The second case study is the 2020 film Quo Vadis, Aida? directed by Jasmila Žbanić. The article argues that the poems go a long way to provincialise Scandinavian memory culture, while the film asks about Western Europe’s complicity in, and responsibility for, the war crimes that happened during the Bosnian war. Both case studies show how translation lays bare the potential and limitations for the transnational travel of memories of violent conflict at different scales, within and across European borders. In these processes, the interpreter serves as a mediator, not only between languages, but also of the collective memory of the genocide.

• Vervaet, Stijn (2024). Studying Literary Multilingualism, Revisiting National Philology: Post-Imperial East-Central European Literature as a Testing Ground. In Beganović, Davor; Božić, Zrinka; Andrea, Milanko & Ivana, Perica (Ed.), Procedures of Resistance: Contents, Positions and the 'Doings' of Literary Theory. Palgrave Macmillan. ISSN 9783031493850. p. 133–158. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-49386-7_7. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter discusses recent theoretical attempts to redefine national philology through a focus on literary multilingualism, by looking at them from the perspective of East-Central European literature, a region “comparative by birth” (Emerson). How, and to what extent, can studies of literary multilingualism function as moves of resistance against the traditional Herderian triad of national language—national identity—national literature? Claims that multilingual literature is subversive per definition need to be interrogated, given that both the monolingualizing impulse of literature and its opening up to the multilingual character of world literature can be traced back to the same source, early German Romanticism. Drawing on Vladimir Biti’s conceptualization of post-imperial literature, particularly on the notion of translatio imperii, it is argued that a number of current developments which scholars of literary multilingualism celebrate as postnational (or postmonolingual) can already be observed in post-imperial East-Central European literature. Vice versa, medievalists remind us that the linguistic is the key to any operation of translatio imperii. If used complementarily, theories of literary multilingualism, post-imperial and world literature can illuminate how the monolingual paradigm in East-Central European literature emerged and how linguistic diversity in individual literary texts was shaped by and responded to the post-imperial condition.

• Vervaet, Stijn (2024). Remembering Migration, Rethinking Belonging: Saša Stanišić’s Herkunft [Where You Come From], Mediating Historical Responsibility: Memories of ‘Difficult Pasts’ in European Cultures. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9783111012971. p. 295–318. doi: 10.1515/9783111013299-015. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2024). Remembering the Female Partisan: Sanja Iveković’s Transnational Memory Work. In Erll, Astrid; Knittel, Susanne & Wüstenberg, Jenny (Ed.), Dynamics, Mediation, Mobilization: Doing Memory Studies With Ann Rigney. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9783111439273. p. 223–230. doi: 10.1515/9783111439273-032. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2022). Envisioning a Socialist Future. Albert Vajs and the Rebuilding of the Yugoslav Jewish Community. In Gerber, Jan; Graf, Philipp & Pollmann, Anna (Ed.), Geschichtsoptimismus und Katastrophenbewusstsein. Europa nach dem Holocaust. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISSN 9783525317365. p. 427–453. doi: 10.13109/9783666317361.427. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Taking as a starting point the life and work of the Yugoslav Jewish legal expert Albert Vajs [Weiss] (1905–1964), this paper focuses on three interconnected aspects of postwar Jewish life that together shed light on the ways in which Holocaust memory was articulated in the two first decades of socialist Yugoslavia. As president of the Jewish Federation, Vajs played a crucial role and often took the lead in well-organized efforts to rebuild the Yugoslav Jewish community and to integrate it into the socialist state, to commemorate the country’s victims of the Holocaust in public space, to document war crimes conducted on Yugoslavia’s territory, including the genocide of its Jewish population, and to prosecute Nazi war criminals and perpetrators of the Holocaust. These efforts were defined by the dynamics and tensions between the necessity to articulate Jewish concerns within the dominant socialist paradigm and the endeavor to carve out a space for Jewish specificity. The article argues that the relationship between the socialist state and its Jewish citizens cannot be reduced to top-down regulations, but was rather characterized by the active engagement of the Jewish community.

• Vervaet, Stijn & Mandić, Marija (2022). Mapping Minority Multilingualism: Perspectives from Central and South-Eastern European Borderlands–Introduction to the Thematic Issue. Zeitschrift für Slawistik. ISSN 0044-3506. 67(4), p. 501–510. doi: 10.1515/slaw-2022-0025. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2022). Linguistic Diversity in East-Central European Minority Literature: The Post-Imperial Borderlands of Petar Milošević. Zeitschrift für Slawistik. ISSN 0044-3506. 67(4), p. 628–654. doi: 10.1515/slaw-2022-0031. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Abstract Most recent studies on multilingual writing deal with literature by first- or second-generation immigrants. This article responds to debates about multilingual literature by examining the asymmetrical, historically-rooted multilingualism of minority groups in East-Central Europe. It does so by exploring linguistic diversity and its effects in the novels of the bilingual Serbian-Hungarian author Petar Milošević, novels that put the Serbian minority in Hungary centre stage. It is argued that Milošević’s prose fiction not only invites the reader to rethink the nature of script, standard language and cultural identity as historically contingent and multiply entangled, but also effectively refashions the cultural memory of the Serbian minority in Hungary. The novels’ broader relevance lies in their foregrounding of the minority’s cultural and linguistic doubleness, both in relation to the nation-state in which they live and to the external homeland. As such, they also potentially illuminate the position of other linguistic minorities in former Habsburg borderlands.

• Vervaet, Stijn (2020). Empathic Vision? War Photography, Ekphrasis, and Memory in Bosnian War Literature. In Armstrong, Charles Ivan & Langås, Unni (Ed.), Terrorizing Images. Trauma and Ekphrasis in Contemporary Literature. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9783110694031. p. 117–136. doi: 10.1515/9783110693959-008. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This book combines two focal points: trauma and ekphrasis. It responds to the recognition of how terrorizing images permeate the public sphere in connection with traumatic experiences and confl icts and emphasizes the ways in which such images are described and interpreted by words. Contributors analyze the use of verbally represented images in a variety of literary texts in several different languages.

• Vervaet, Stijn (2019). “Let’s Work on our Serbian!”: Standard Language Ideology, Metaphors, and Discourses about Serbian National Identity in the Newspaper Politika in 2015. In Saric, Ljiljana & Stanojevic, Mateusz-Milan (Ed.), Metaphor, Nation and Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISSN 9789027202499. p. 101–126. doi: 10.1075/dapsac.82.05ver. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter explores the use of metaphors in the column “Let’s Safeguard Serbian” in the Serbian newspaper Politika in 2015. In this column, adherents of the standard language ideology offered advice about spelling, loanwords, and syntax as well as regarding the name of the language and preferred alphabet. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and metaphor analysis, I examine the link between prescriptivism and contemporary discourses on Serbian national identity. I argue that most metaphors appearing in texts that fall into “the complaint tradition” (Milroy and Milroy) do not reveal a clear-cut link between prescriptivism and nationalism. However, the complaint tradition also reactivates a rich repository of conventional(ized) metaphors and metonymies that reach back to Romanticism and have much more far-reaching implications ideologically.

• Vervaet, Stijn (2019). Jugoslovenska književnost kao postimperijalna konstelacija: ka transnacionalnoj i višejezičkoj istoriji jugoslovenske književnosti. In Marčetić, Adrijana; Stojanović-Pantović, Bojana; Zorić, Vladimir & Dušanić, Dunja (Ed.), Jugoslovenska književnost: prošlost, sadašnjost i budućnost jednog spornog pojma/Yugoslav Literature: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Notion. Čigoja. ISSN 9788653105037. p. 109–123. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Tokom šezdesetih godina 20. veka u Jugoslaviji se vodila živa debata o mogućnosti pisanja istorije jugoslovenske književnosti. Teze jednog od učesnika u toj debati, Svetozara Petrovića, čine se relevantnim i danas, naročito njegove primedbe o višestrukoj isprepletenosti, bilingvizmu i perifernom položaju jugoslovenskih književnosti. U ovom radu se pokazuje kako se ispitivanjem dveju međusobno povezanih konstelacija – imperijalnog nasleđa i višejezičnosti – može baciti novo svetlo na višestruku isprepletenost jugoslovenskih književnosti. Ukazuje se, prvo, na potrebu da se razvije jednu „višejezičku filologiju“ (Dembeck 2014), tj. da se razvijaju čitalačke strategije koje bi omogućile otkrivanje i tumačenje književnih tekstova pisanih „s one strane maternjeg jezika“ (Yildiz 2012). Drugo, ukazuje se na potrebu za jednim „(trans)skalarnim pristupom“ (up. Ram 2015) koji će posvetiti pažnju onim razinama koje se nalaze ispod i iznad nacionalnog i omogućiti da se promišljaju odnosi između tih nivoa. Na taj način se mogu osvetliti preplitanja i ukrštanja jugoslovenske književnosti koja kako nacionalne književne istorije, tako i novije teorije „svetske književnosti“ (Casanova, Moretti) prikrivaju. Nakon uvodnih razmatranja o značaju skale u savremenim teorijama svetske književnosti, navode se dva primera kojima se ilustrira teza o jugoslovenskoj književnosti kao postimperijalnoj konstelaciji: (1) povezanost kulturnog nacionalizma, standardizacije jezika i pojave nacionalne književnosti na slovenskom jugu i (2) višejezičnost jugoslovenskih modernista. Zbog ograničenog prostora, primeri nisu razrađeni u detalje već su predstavljeni kao nacrt jednog planiranog istraživačkog programa.

• Vervaet, Stijn (2018). Sećanje na Holokaust u jugoslovenskoj književnosti: transnacionalne dimenzije traumatskih sećanja na Balkanu. In Lošonc, Mark & Krstić, Predrag (Ed.), Holokaust i filozofija. Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju. ISSN 9788680484181. p. 103–130. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2018). Serbischer Okzidentalismus? Anti-westliche Rhetorik in Bosnien-Herzegowina während der österreichisch-ungarischen Besatzung. In Ruthner, Clemens & Scheer, Tamara (Ed.), Bosnien-Herzegowina und Österreich-Ungarn, 1878–1918. Annäherungen an eine Kolonie.. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. ISSN 9783772086045. p. 407–423. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2017). Cosmopolitan Counter-Narratives of Dispossession: Migration, Memory, and Metanarration in the Work of Aleksandar Hemon. In Biti, Vladimir (Eds.), Claiming the Dispossession: The Politics of Hi/Storytelling in Post-imperial Europe. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004353923. p. 224–246. doi: 10.1163/9789004353930_012. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Ugrešić, Hemon, and the Paradoxes of Literary Cosmopolitanism: Or How to “World” (Post-) Yugoslav Literature in the Age of Globalization. In Marčetić, Adrijana; Bečanović-Nikolić, Zorica & Elez, Vesna (Ed.), Komparativna književnost: teorija, tumačenja, perspektive. Encompassing Comparative Literature: Theory, Interpretation, Perspectives.. Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. ISSN 9788661533099. p. 161–169. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vladislav (2016). Introduction: After Yugoslavia – Memory on the Ruins of History. In Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vlad (Ed.), Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9783110439434. p. 1–20. doi: 10.1515/9783110431575-002. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Intersecting Memories in Post-Yugoslav Fiction: The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s through the Lens of the Holocaust. In Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vlad (Ed.), Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9783110439434. p. 99–126. doi: 10.1515/9783110431575-007. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Between Local and Global Politics of Memory: Transnational Dimensions of Holocaust Remembrance in Contemporary Serbian Prose Fiction and Film. Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. doi: 10.4324/9781315586977-8. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2016). Revolutionaries or Terrorists, Heroes or Victims? Young Bosnia and Gavrilo Princip in Biljana Srbljanović's Theater Play "Mali mi je ovaj grob". In Ruthner, Clemens & Preljević, Vahidin (Ed.), "The Long Shots of Sarajevo" 1914: Ereignis - Narrativ - Gedächtnis. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. ISSN 9783772085789. p. 551–566. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2016). A Janus-Faced Modernity? Narratives of Austro-Hungarian Rule (1878–1918) in Bosnian Literature. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach. ISSN 0258-6819. 78, p. 61–94. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2016). On Comics, Flea Markets, Collecting, and Cultural Memory: Aleksandar Zograf’s Second-Hand World and Leonid Šejka’s Integral Painting. In Martinoska, Ana & Jokimovska-Toshic, Maja (Ed.), Popular Culture: Reading from Below. Institute of Macedonian Literatures. ISSN 9786084744054. p. 280–304. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2015). Cultural Politics, Nation Building and Literary Imagery: Towards a Post-Colonial Reading of the Literature(s) of Bosnia and Herzegovina 1878-1918. In Ruthner, Clemens; Detrez, Raymond; Reynolds-Cordileone, Diana & Reber, Ursula (Ed.), WechselWirkungen: Austria-Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Western Balkans, 1878-1918. Peter Lang Publishing Group. ISSN 9780820497259. p. 71–89. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2015). Revolucionari ili teroristi, heroji ili žrtve? Mlada Bosna i Gavrilo Princip u pozorišnom komadu "Mali mi je ovaj grob" Biljane Srbljanović. In Ruthner, Clemens & Preljević, Vahidin (Ed.), Sarajevski dugi pucnji 1914. Događaj – narativ – pamćenje.. Vrijeme. ISSN 9789958180767. p. 467–484. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2015). From Memoir to Fiction: Early Partisan Narratives Revisited. In Jakiša, Miranda & Gilić, NIkica (Ed.), Partisans in Yugoslavia: Literature, Film and Visual Culture. Transcript Verlag. ISSN 9783837625226. p. 303–330. doi: 10.14361/9783839425220-004. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2014). Staging the Holocaust in ‘the Land of Brotherhood and Unity’: Holocaust Drama Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s. Slavonic and East European Review. ISSN 0037-6795. 92(2), p. 228–254. doi: 10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.92.2.0228. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Entangled Histories: Family Memories and the Representation of the Holocaust in the Work of David Albahari. In Dhooge, Ben & Langerak, Thomas (Ed.), Belgian Contributions to the XV International Congress of Slavists. Minsk 2013. Pegasus. ISSN 9789061433798. p. 191–208. doi: 10.4324/9781315586977-6. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Fashioning Legacies of Austria-Hungary: The Canonisation of Petar Kočić. In Vervaet, Stijn & Dobbeleer, Michel De (Ed.), (Mis)Understanding the Balkans: Essays in Honour of Raymond Detrez.. Academia Press. ISSN 9789038222677. p. 337–349. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Facing the Legacy of the 1990s: Saša Ilić’s Berlin Window. Slavic and East European Journal. ISSN 0037-6752. 57(1), p. 13–27. doi: 10.30851/57.1.001. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Pisati subjekat nakon Holokausta: Konstantinovićev Ahasver, ili traktat o pivskoj flaši. Sarajevske sveske. ISSN 1512-8539. p. 94–104. Full text in Research Archive
• Bruyn, Dieter De & Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Reporter in de ‘contact zone’: Johan de Boose in Polen en Kroatië. In Bruyn, Dieter De; Heuckelom, Kris Van & Strycker, Carl De (Ed.), Van Eeden tot heden. Literaire dwarsverbanden tussen Midden-Europa en de Lage Landen. Academia Press. ISSN 9789038220918. p. 281–299. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2011). Whose Museum? Whose History? Whose Memories?: Remembering in the Work of Dubravka Ugrešić. Comparative Critical Studies. ISSN 1744-1854. 8(2-3), p. 295–306. doi: 10.3366/ccs.2011.0024. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2011). A Different Kind of War Story: Aleksandar Zograf’s Regards from Serbia and Tomaž Lavrič’s Bosnian Fables. Slavic and East European Journal. ISSN 0037-6752. 55(2), p. 161–187. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2011). Writing War, Writing Memory: The Representation of the Recent Past and the Construction of Cultural Memory in Contemporary Bosnian Prose. Neohelicon. ISSN 0324-4652. 38(1), p. 1–17. doi: 10.1007/s11059-010-0076-3. Full text in Research Archive

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• Vervaet, Stijn; Zaharijević, Adriana & Pavlović, Aleksandar (2020). Holokaust, rat i transnacionalno sećanje: svedočanstvo iz jugoslovenske i postjugoslovenske književnosti. (Preveli s engleskog Adriana Zaharijević i Aleksandar Pavlović). Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju & Akademska knjiga. ISBN 9788680484440. 271 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2018). Holocaust, War and Transnational Memory: Testimony from Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Literature. Routledge. ISBN 9781472478757. 176 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn & Beronja, Vlad (2016). Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture. De Gruyter Brill. ISBN 9783110439434. 312 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn & Dobbeleer, Michel De (2013). (Mis)Understanding the Balkans: Essays in Honour of Raymond Detrez. Academia Press. ISBN 9789038222677. 456 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Vervaet, Stijn (2013). Centar i periferija u Austrougarskoj. Dinamika izgradnje nacionalnih identiteta u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1878. do 1918. godine na primjeru književnih tekstova. Synopsis. ISBN 9789537035877. 532 p. Full text in Research Archive

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