ETHNOLOGY OF THE BALKANS
Chair: Assoc. Prof. Elena Marushiakova, Ph.D.
Assistant: Yelis Erolova

The PhD course will present in generalized and summarized form the main parameters of the ethno-cultural heritage of the Balkan people and its contemporary dimensions. As bases of the course the fundamental conceptual notions and analytic ethnologic techniques will be outlined, which will lead to understanding of the processes, which are flowing among the different ethno-national, ethno religious and ethno cultural communities on the Balkans. The PhD course gives the possibilities to receive knowledge about the main ethnologic parameters of the Balkan people, and the different kinds of communities in the “traditional”, i.e. pre-industrial society, in the process of modernization and up till nowadays. As main, key themes are determined the issues of ethnicity, national, regional and community identities, the religious dimensions of the ethno-culture, the family-relative and social networks, migrations and mobility of the Balkan people, and their transition to modern and post-modern.
This course is very significant for the establishment of new personal perspective of each PhD students, which helps for better orientation in our multicultural community, in the process of globalization.
The course will be oriented towards the PhD students in ethnology, but together with that it will give fundamental knowledge, which can be used also for PhD students from wide range of other subjects in field of social sciences and humanities, and especially for history, folklore, and social anthropology, sociology, political sciences etc.
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GYPSIES/ROMA
(HISTORY, TRADITIONS, MODERN TIMES)
Chair: Assoc. Prof. Veselin Popov, Ph.D.
Assistant: Magdalena Slavkova, Ph.D.

The PhD course will present in generalized and summarized form the main parameters of the history and contemporary dimensions of the Gypsies (Roma and other communities) worldwide, with special stress on Bulgaria.
The PhD course will present the origin and early history of the Gypsies, beginning of their migrations from the country of origin, their presence on the Balkans, migration to the Western Europe, their historical fate during the Middle ages, new migrations (19th and 20th centuries) and their contemporary distribution in various countries of the world. The general structure of the heterogeneous Gypsy communities will be outlined and the main ethno-social subdivisions with their main ethno-cultural characteristics will be presented. The PhD students will be introduced to the different patterns of the state politics in regards to the Gypsies in history and nowadays, as well as to the Romani non-governmental sector. The contemporary attempts for construction of the “Roma Nation” will be presented and analyzed as well as the processes of searching of the new identities among part of the Gypsy communities.
The course will be oriented towards the PhD students in ethnology, but together with that it will give knowledge, which can be used also for PhD students from wide range of other subjects in field of social sciences and humanities, and especially for history, folklore, and social anthropology, sociology, political sciences etc.
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CALENDAR CUSTOMS OF BALKAN NATIONS
Chair: Prof. Dr. Rachko Popov
Assistant: Sofia Zahova

This course aim at introducing of students with basic festive-custom’s cycles in the traditional folk calendar of Balkan nations. According to world outlook and custom’s practices of all ethnic and confessional societies on the Balkans, folk calendar is a complex of two cycles and have divided to winter and summer seasons. A lot of folk proverbs from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Serbia and Bosnia, Albania testify about this. The economic year has organized in this way too as it main two holydays are Sveti Dimitar (St. Martin at Catholics; Kasam at Muslims) and Sveti Georgi (St. Yuraj at Catholics; Haderlez at Muslims). There can be outlined a set of isomorphous versions of this two season’s year and economic division of the year which most often are marked by days of those Christian saints which have winter and summer celebration according to Christian calendar. Fundamental ethnographic sources in this problematic have been dated from the second half of XIX and the beginning of XX century.
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MULTICULTURE AND IDENTITY:
TRADITIONAL CRAFTS AT THE BALKANS (XVIII-mid. - XX c.)
Chairs: Assoc. Prof. Mirella Decheva, Ph.D.
Assoc. Prof. Nadezhda Teneva, Ph.D.

The aim of this course is to submit the traditional crafts into the multicultural context at the Balkan (XVIII – mid. XX c.). As a part of the larger area of “Traditional Art”, the content of the course is covering a peculiar subject area and the specific geographical area. The course is focusing on the Ethnology of traditional crafts in context of multicultural relationships at the Balkan in the period of XVIII – mid. XX centuries. This is the time of the Ottoman Empire and of formation of the national ideologies of the Balkan countries, liberated during the XIX-XX century. At the background of this historical atmosphere, the course covers the problems of the Ethnology of the crafts – the specific professional knowledge, the organization, the technologies, the aesthetics. The major subject is expanded by examination of the nascence, the development and the functioning of the crafts in an multicultural sphere; the ethnic „оccupation“ of determinate crafts; the possibilities for reconstruction of the multicultural interaction, by the Ethnology of the craft.
The Ethnology of the crafts directs towards the specific profesional knowledge and the specialized realization of the manual craft, towards the art, put into the work of the traditional crafts, towards the everyday life and the holiday of the craftsmen, their morals and culture of behaviour, related with their position of professional author of material values.
The language of artefacts hands down national peculiarities and style. Put in the context of their own everyday life the work of the craftsmen orientate towards the way of life, ideology, aesthetic tastes of their own consumers. In the area of the Balkans, to the conditions of ethnic mix, Bulgarians, Greeks, Turkish, Armenian, Gypsy/Roma work together and use the work of “their own/foreign” crafts. They “narrate” about the cosmopolitan in ethic, moral and religious aspect life at the frameworks of the Ottoman Empire, about the conditions of the multicultural dialogue, which grounded the bases for the development of the crafts and after the differentiation of the national countries, for the cultural relations and identity in the sphere of the art.
The aim of the course is to expand the thematic envelopment of the course with the inspection of crafts, practiced by craftsmen with different ethnic origin as well as the approach towards the subject – through the multicultural interaction, in which the craftsmen culture has formed, developed and functionalized. It has saved the ethnic identity of the craftsmen and their work.
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