Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

Dr Marko Zajc

Fellow Marko Zajc

October - Dezember 2014
Mail: zajc.markoz(at)gmail(dot)com

Marko Zajc is a fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg from October 2014 to December 2014. He has been a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana since 2007 (Postdoctoral Assistant 2007–2011, Research Associate since 2011) and currently directs two projects funded by the Slovenian Research Agency: History of Administrative Borders and Boundaries: The Slovenian-Croatian Border, 1800–1991 (2011­–2014) and The Phenomenon of Border Rivers (2014–2017). In 2013 he spent three months as a DAAD Visiting Fellow at the Lehrstühl für Südosteuropäische Geschichte, Humboldt Universität in Berlin. From 2008 to 2010 his research was focused on his postdoctoral project, Slovenians and the Contradictions of Southern Slavic Integration Ideologies to 1914. Between 2001 and 2006 he was a Junior Researcher at the Institute for Ethnic Studies in Ljubljana. Zajc has been the recipient of two OEAD fellowships, one at the Österreichische Ost- und Südosteuropainstitut, Vienna (October 2005 to February 2006), another at the Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte, Vienna (October 2008 to February 2009).

Research Project at the Kolleg

Slovenian Intellectuals and Yugoslavism in the 1980s: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives

The aim of this project is to understand changes in Slovenian intellectual discourse on the “Slovenian national question” in the 1980s. Intellectuals have criticized contemporary and past Slovenianism or revised the question of what it means to be Slovenian, and have attempted to find a place for the Slovenian nation/culture/state in (post-)industrial global society. In doing so, they have helped to (re)construct Slovenian nationalism. Somewhere along the way, the notion of Yugoslavism disappeared imperceptibly from the conceptual space of Slovenian Intellectuals. Yugoslavia was rarely mentioned now; it was simply no longer important. Slovenian Yugoslavism may be said to have gradually ‘peeled away’ like an old street poster, to have become ‘detached’ from Slovenianism precisely by means of absence. The methodology of this project emphasizes comparative and transnational perspectives within the relevant contexts of communism in East Central and Southeast Europe, Central Europe, democratic Europe and intellectuals in Yugoslavia.

Main Areas of Research

  •     Yugoslavism
  •     Boder studies, the Slovenian-Croatian border
  •     Habsburg Monarchy
  •     Intellectual history, media history
  •     Nationalism in South-Eastern and Central Europe

 

Positions and Memberships

  •     member of the Advisory Group on the Arbitration Agreement on the Resolution of the Border Issue between the Republic of Slovenia and Republic of Croatia (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Slovenia)
  •     president of EASTUS (Education, Science and Culture Trade Union of Slovenia) at the Institute of Contemporary History

Monographs

Marko Zajc, Kje se slovensko neha in hrvaško začne, Slovensko-hrvaška meja v 19. in začetku 20. stoletja [Where the Slovenian Ends and the Croatian Begins: the Slovenian-Croatian Border in the nineteenth and early twentieth Century]. Ljubljana: Modrijan, 2006. (Published in Croatian translation as Gdje slovensko prestaje, a hrvatsko počinje, Slovensko-hrvatska granica u 19. i početkom 20. stoljeća [Zagreb, Srednja Europa, 2008].)

Marko Zajc, Janez Polajnar and Filip Čuček, Slovenska zgodovina v preglednicah [Slovenian History in Tables]. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 2011.

Marko Zajc and Janez Polajnar, Naši in vaši, iz zgodovine slovenskega časopisnega diskurza v 19. in začetku 20. stoletja [Ours and Yours: on the History of Slovenian newspaper discourse of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries]. Ljubljana: Peace Institute (Mediawatch), 2012.

Articles

Marko Zajc, Slovenski intelektualci in jugoslovanstvo v osemdesetih letih: izhodišča in teze [Slovenian Intellectuals and Yugoslavism in the 1980s: starting points and theses], in Slovenija v Jugoslaviji 1945–1991, edited by Zdenko Čepič, Recognitiones 10, Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2014.

Marko Zajc, Josip Jurčič's Tradition in Muljava: The Boundaries of Localism and Nationalism, Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 53, no. 2 (2013): 23–36.

Marko Zajc, Philipp-Franz Bresnitz von Sydačoff o ‘panslavističkoj agitaciji’ među Hrvatima, Srbima i Slovencima [Philipp-Franz Bresnitz von Sydačoff on ‘pan-Slavic’ agitation among Croats, Serbs and Slovenes]. Historijski zbornik 63, no. 2 (2010): 455–467.

Marko Zajc, Sotla, majhna voda: Reka Sotla kot naravna, politična in ideološka meja v 19. in začetku 20. stoletja [Sotla, tiny water: the river Sotla as a natural, political and ideological Border in the nineteenth and early twentieth Century]. Zgodovina za vse 19, nos. 1–2 (2012): 101–113.

Marko Zajc, Jugoslovanstvo pri Slovencih v 19. stoletju v kontekstu sosednjih ‘združevalnih’ nacionalnih ideologij [Slovenian Yugoslavism in the nineteenth century in the context of the neighbouring national ideologies of ‘unification’], in Evropski vplivi na slovensko družbo, edited by Nevenka Troha, Mojca Šorn and Bojan Balkovec, Ljubljana: Zveza zgodovinskih društev Slovenije, 2008, pp. 103–114.

Marko Zajc, Jud kot Nemec, liberalec, kapitalist: o slovenskem antisemitizmu v zadnjih desetletjih habsburške monarhije [The Jew as German, liberal, and capitalist: on Slovenian Anti-semitism in the late Habsburg monarchy], in Slovenski Judje, zgodovina in holokavst, edited by Irena Šumi and Hannah Starman, Maribor: Center judovske kulturne dediščine sinagoga Maribor, 2012, pp. 108–117.


Reviews

Marko Zajc, O demokraciji in jugoslovanstvu: slovenski liberalizem v Kraljevini SHS/Jugoslaviji by Jurij Perovšek, Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 54, no. 1 (2014): 347–351.

Marko Zajc: Diagonale, tromeje in popotnik: Zbornik Janka Pleterskega, edited by Oto Luthar and Jurij Perovšek, Zgodovina za vse 11, no. 1 (2004): 109–112.