January - February 2019
e-mail: martina.baleva(at)unibas(dot)ch
Martina Baleva is an art historian and former Assistant Professor for Cultural Topographies of Eastern Europe at the University of Basel (2012–2017). In March 2019 she will take up a position as Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Innsbruck. She works on visual history, the history of photography, and the politics of memory, with a special emphasis on Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Ottoman and Post-Ottoman world. She acted as researcher in numerous projects, curated exhibitions, and organized various conferences on visual history and visual studies. In 2016, she was awarded a Teaching Excellence Award by the University of Basel. Her PhD (2010) in Art History dealt with “The Invention of the Nation on the Balkans in the Art of 19th Century” and was awarded the Fritz and Helga Exner Foundation Award through the South-East Europe Association, Munich. Martina Baleva has previously been a fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg from November 2011 until July 2012.
Research project at the Kolleg
Revolution in the Darkroom. Photographic History of Revolt
The project explores the impact of photography, especially carte de visite portrait photography, on the field of political resistance and on notions of revolution in the second part of 19th century. The object of research is an extensive corpus of portrait photographs of Ottoman, Central and Southern European resistance fighters and revolutionaries of the time. On their basis, I am discussing the interrelationship between political and media revolution in the age of early photographic history, and the historical processes of upheaval in their social and media dynamics. This interdisciplinary approach opens the view to the manifold levels of entanglement of revolutionary movements in Europe from both a regional and transnational perspective.
Main areas of research
Monographs
Martina Baleva, Bulgarien im Bild. Die Erfindung von Nationen auf dem Balkan in der Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts (Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau, 2012).
Edited volumes
Martina Baleva, ed., Von Basel nach Bursa und zurück. Die Geschichte eines Fotoalbums von Sébah & Joaillier (Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau, 2017).
Martina Baleva and Boris Previšić, eds., ‘Den Balkan gibt es nicht’. Erbschaften im südöstlichen Europa (Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau, 2016).
Martina Baleva, Ingeborg Reichle, Oliver Lerone Schultz: IMAGE MATCH. Visueller Transfer, ‘Imagescapes’ und Intervisualität in globalen Bildkulturen (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2012).
Martina Baleva, Ulf Brunnbauer: Батак като място на паметта/Batak – ein bulgarischer Erinnerungsort (Sofia: Iztok-Zapad, 2007).
Articles
Martina Baleva, ‘The Heroic Lens. Portrait Photography of Insurgents in Nineteenth Century Ottoman Balkans – Types and Uses’, in The Indigenous Lens. Early Photography in the Near and Middle East (=Studies in Theory and History of Photography 8), edited by Staci Scheiwiller and Markus Ritter (Berlin, Munich, Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 237–256.
Martina Baleva, ‘Von Basel nach Bursa und zurück in die Geschichte einer Beziehung’, in Von Basel nach Bursa und zurück. Die Geschichte eines Fotoalbums von Sébah & Joaillier, edited by Martina Baleva (Köln, Wien, Weimar: Böhlau, 2017), 7–18.
Martina Baleva, ‘Den männlichen Balkan gibt es nicht. Überlegungen zum visuellen Balkanismus als bildgeschichtliche Kategorie’, in ‘Den Balkan gibt es nicht’. Erbschaften im südöstlichen Europa, edited by Martina Baleva & Boris Previšić (Köln, Wien, Weimar: Böhlau 2016), 93–120.
Martina Baleva, ‘Revolution in der Dunkelkammer. Historiografische und bildgeschichtliche Aspekte des nationalen Helden in der historischen Fotografie’, in Leipziger Zugänge zur rechtlichen, politischen und kulturellen Verflechtungsgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas, edited by Dietmar Müller and Adamantios Skordos (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2015), 183–208.
Martina Baleva, ‘The Photographic Portrait of Georgi Benkovski, or the De-Archiving of the National Hero’, in Photo Archives and the Idea of Nation, edited by Costanza Caraffa and Tiziana Serena (Berlin, Munich, Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2015), 221–238.