Whose museum? Whose history? Whose memories?: remembering in the work of Dubravka Ugrešić

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Writing war, writing memory: the representation of the recent past and the construction of cultural memory in contemporary Bosnian prose

Focusing on the work of Miljenko Jergović, Nenad Veličković, Alma Lazarevska, and Saša Stanišić, this paper examines how the representation of the recent past intertwines with the construction of collective memory in contemporary Bosnian prose. The author argues that a first, significant function of recent Bosnian literature consisted of not only witnessing the horror of the Bosnian war but also turning historical events into sites of memory. This is especially true for the literature about the wars of the nineties – the siege of Sarajevo, Srebrenica, etc. However, the involvement of Bosnian authors with the recent past – in prose written during the war as well as in more recent works – proves to be more complex and seems to be indicative of a growing interest in and reflexivity upon the ways in which collective and individual memory are constructed. This paper suggests that the interest in memory/remembering the recent past has been accelerated by the war and the social and political turmoil of the nineties. This liminal situation urged writers firstly to represent the horrors of the recent past in order to prevent them from falling into oblivion. Secondly, because war emerged as a kind of turning point, a radical break between past and present, writers were compelled to reflect on the processes of remembering and oblivion and on the ways identity is constituted by a strange and often unpredictable interplay of both

Cultural politics, nation building, and literary imagery: towards a post-colonial reading of the literature(s) of Bosnia-Herzegovina 1878-1918

Departing from two examples that illustrate the interconnectedness of Habsburg cultural politics and (the development of) Bosnian literature as well as their role in and impact on the construction of national identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878-1918), this article examines to what extent the insights of post-colonial studies can be useful for the study of the cultural and literary life in Bosnia under Austro-Hungarian rule. The first case focuses on the canonization of Bosnian folk songs and the foundation of the literary periodical Nada by the Austro-Hungarian authorities and their respective reception at the time in the broader South-Slav context. The second case briefly analyzes the prevailing images of the Dual Monarchy in the daily press and in poetry and prose by prominent Bosnian authors of the time. Both cases demonstrate that whereas the Habsburg cultural politics in Bosnia can be read as an example of “colonizing by way of text”, the different reactions to and images of Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnian literature can be best understood in the light of the competing Serbian, Bosniak and Croatian national projects. It is suggested, then, that a post-colonial approach to the Habsburg experience of Bosnia and Herzegovina makes sense (only) if the specific historical context receives due attention and if “centre” and “periphery” are understood not as monolithic categories but as imaginary geographies with their own internal dynamics

Rationale and safety assessment of a novel intravaginal drug-delivery system with sustained DL-lactic acid release, intended for long-term protection of the vaginal microbiome

Bacterial vaginosis is a prevalent state of dysbiosis of the vaginal microbiota with wide-ranging impact on human reproductive health. Based on recent insights in community ecology of the vaginal microbiome, we hypothesize that sustained vaginal DL-lactic acid enrichment will enhance the recruitment of lactobacilli, while counteracting bacterial vaginosis-associated bacteria. We therefore aimed to develop an intravaginal device that would be easy to insert and remove, while providing sustained DL-lactic acid release into the vaginal lumen. The final prototype selected is a vaginal ring matrix system consisting of a mixture of ethylene vinyl acetate and methacrylic acid -methyl methacrylate copolymer loaded with 150 mg DL -lactic acid with an UD-lactic acid ratio of 1:1. Preclinical safety assessment was performed by use of the Slug Mucosal Irritation test, a non-vertebrate assay to evaluate vaginal mucosal irritation, which revealed no irritation. Clinical safety was evaluated in a phase I trial with six healthy nulliparous premenopausal volunteering women, with the investigational drug left in place for 7 days. Colposcopic monitoring according to the WHO/CONRAD guidelines for the evaluation of vaginal products, revealed no visible cervicovaginal mucosal changes. No adverse events related to the investigational product occurred. Total release from the intravaginal ring over 7 days was estimated through high performance liquid chromatography at 37.1 (standard deviation 0.9) mg DL -lactic acid. Semisolid lactic acid formulations have been studied to a limited extent in the past and typically consist of a large volume of excipients and very high doses of lactic acid, which is of major concern to mucosal safety. We have documented the feasability of enriching the vaginal environment with pure DL -lactic acid with a prototype intravaginal ring. Though the efficacy of this platform remains to be established possibly requiring further development, this approach may offer a novel avenue to modulate and protect the vaginal microbiota

Staging the Holocaust in the land of brotherhood and unity: holocaust drama in socialist Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s

THIS article considers two theatrical works written by Dorde Lebovic (1928-2004), premiered in Socialist Yugoslavia in the mid-1950s and 1960s: Nebeski odred (The Heavenly Squad, 1957, co-authored with Aleksandar Obrenovi6) and Viktorija (Viktorija, 1968). Not only was Lebovic the first playwright in Socialist Yugoslavia to bring the theme of the Holocaust to a larger audience, but his plays also addressed issues of Holocaust remembrance in a highly original and for that time often provocative manner. Although most of Lebovics plays were met with critical acclaim in Yugoslavia at the time of their staging and some of them were included in anthologies of contemporary Serbian drama as well as referred to in encyclopaedic overviews of modern drama,' his work has so far not attracted a great deal of scholarly interest. I propose to examine how Lebovics dramas mediated, shaped and circulated narratives of the destruction of European Jews against the background of the specific memory culture of Socialist Yugoslavia. After a brief discussion of Yugoslavia's politics of remembrance of the Second World War and of the Holocaust, I will take a closer look at both plays. I will not only explore how the plays, as works of fiction, represented the Shoah, but also how they, through their intervention in the public sphere, contributed to the emergence of Holocaust memory in Yugoslavia