Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora: Art, Film, and Activism

Please join us for a 4-day hybrid symposium (partially on zoom, partially in-person) from Monday April 24 through Thursday, April 27, “Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora: Art, Film, and Activism,” which will feature multiple panels and film screenings, a keynote lecture, masterclass and book launch, as well as an in-person performance. The symposium brings together scholars, artists, film directors, and activists who work from within the context of the Yugoslav diaspora. While the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has historically been regarded as an opening up of “the East” to the rest of the world, in Yugoslavia, that narrative was turned on its head: the more open socialist system of Yugoslavia quickly cascaded into the 1990s civil wars, which broke up the country into new nations and isolated its citizens from one another. With the surge in nationalist sentiments and conservative policies during the wars, the relative advances for feminist and LGBTQ causes under Yugoslav socialism were halted and their proponents attacked, silenced, and exiled. A new generation of Yugoslav refugees, immigrants, and émigrés emerged from this difficult context, forced to navigate their positions as outsiders in their new adopted homes as well as in the post-Yugoslav region.

Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora: Art, Film, and Activism is the first symposium in North America that centers the perspectives of the feminist and queer Yugoslav diaspora. How has the history of the Yugoslav wars shaped their work and what insights might we glean from their varied paths from the 1990s to today? What is to be gained from thinking through feminist and queer legacies of socialist Yugoslavia from the diasporic perspective? How have these legacies shaped their interventions? Bringing together in-person participants from North America and zoom participants from Europe, we will critically engage with these questions through the contexts of art, activism, film, and performance.

The symposium is co-organized by Dr. Jasmina Tumbas (Dept. of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, UB), Dr. Dijana Jelača (Film Dept., Brooklyn College, OIE Global Research Scholar in Residence at UB), and Sarah JM Kolberg (Visual Studies, UB)

Monday, April 24

12:30pm-2:00pm

Book Launch: Transgender in the Post-Yugoslav Space: Lives, Activisms, Culture 

With Dr. Bojan Bilić (University of Vienna)  and Dr. Aleksa Milanović (The Faculty of Media and Communications, Belgrade)

Moderated by Dr. Jasmina Tumbas (UB)

On ZOOM

4:00pm-6:30pm

MASTERCLASS: Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora in Film

By Dr. Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College), OIE Global Research Scholar in Residence at UB

1004 Clemens Hall, UB North Campus (only in-person)

Open to UB graduate students and faculty. 

Space is limited. Please RSVP to Dr. Jasmina Tumbas, jasminat@buffalo.edu

Tuesday, April 25

12:00-1:00pm 

Memorial Tribute to Dubravka Ugrešić: A Feminist Voice on Yugoslav Disintegration

By Dr. Maša Kolanović, University of Zagreb

On ZOOM

6:00pm

Logbook Serbistan (2015) by Želimir Žilnik, Film Screening

Introduction: Dijana Jelača 

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY 

Wednesday, April 26

1:00pm-1:30pm

Introduction: Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora: Art, Film, and Activism 

By Jasmina Tumbas  

Screening of CRNI TITO Blaq Tito addressing the Parliament of Ghosts (2023), by Christian Guerematchi

509 O'Brian Hall, North Campus (in-person, zoom streaming)

1:30-3:00pm

Feminist and Anti-Fascist Legacies in the Yugoslav Diaspora (Panel 1)
Panelists: Tamara Vukov (Université de Montréal), Katja Praznik (UB), and Bojana Videkanić (University of Waterloo)

Moderator: Dijana Jelača

509 O'Brian Hall, North Campus (in-person, zoom streaming)

3:00-3:15: Break

3:15-4:45pm

Queer and Feminist Yugoslavia: Diasporic Perspectives (Panel 2)

Panelists: Boshko Boshković (independent), Ana Grujić (Buffalo-Niagara LGBTQ History Project), and Majda Puača (founding member of the former Queer Beograd collective)

Moderator: Jasmina Tumbas

509 O'Brian Hall, North Campus (in-person, zoom streaming)

4:45-6:00: Break

6:00pm-7:45pm

Landscapes of Resistance (2021) by Marta Popivoda, Film Screening

Introduction: Jasmina Tumbas 

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY 

7:45-8:30: Break

8:30pm

Yugotopia Party by Amir Husak (The New School) and Boshko Boshković

 Eugene V. Debs Hall, Buffalo, NY

Thursday, April 27

9:30-11:30am

Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora in Europe: Activism, Film, and Culture (Panel 3)

Panelists: Christian Guerematchi (researcher/maker contemporary arts), Mima Simić (film critic, writer), Orson Bogović (film director), Lidija Zelović (fim director, writer), Želimir Žilnik (film director), Zoe Gudović (lesbian artivist, Ženergija), and Marta Popivoda (filmmaker and video artist)

Moderator: Dijana Jelača

On ZOOM

11:30-12:30: Break

12:30-2:00pm

Queering Diaspora, Queering Yugoslav Culture (Panel 4)

Panelists: Aleksandar Bošković (Columbia University), Amir Husak, Nataša Kvesić (University of Chicago)

Moderator: Jasmina Tumbas

509 O'Brian Hall, North Campus (in-person, zoom streaming)

2:00-2:30: Break

2:30-3:30pm

Iztranzicionisana, Performance by Bojana Videkanić 

509 O'Brian Hall, North Campus (in-person)

3:30-4:00: Break

4:00pm

Keynote lecture: Radically Out of Place/Time: Yugoslavia Here and Now

By Dijana Jelača

Center for the Arts 112, North Campus (in-person, zoom streaming)

7:30pm-9:00pm

Symposium Reception 

B45 Lower Gallery, Center for the Arts, North Campus

The symposium is co-sponsored by the UB Office of International Education; the Visual Studies PhD Fund; Diversity, Equity, and Belonging’s 2023 Commemorative Observances and Heritage Months, April: Campus Pride, CAS Office of Inclusive Excellence; the UB Gender Institute; the HI QSRW; Hallwalls; the Dept. of Media Study; the Center for Global Film/Global Film Studies Program, Department of English; Department of History; The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy and the Dept. of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies.