Alternatives to Nationalism: Regional Identities in Central Europe

FAIN: FT-53159-05

Thomas Ezekiel Cooper
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)

My research explores the dialogues between minority and majority literatures in a linguistically regions of Romania and Serbia. I seek to de-emphasize the restrictive concept of literary community represented by national literary histories and to foreground instead the interrelationships between the literatures of different national groups, exploring the ways in which regional identities have developed that represent alternatives to national identities. By examining those areas of intercultural convergence that have been ignored by histories of national literatures, I seek to further an understanding of these regions not as homogenous cultural spaces, but rather as spaces in which numerous cultural traditions intersect and blend.