Balkan Studies Program
Columbia University has been the training ground and intellectual home for many prominent scholars and specialists on the Balkans. The Harriman Institute fulfills its mission of training academic experts on the region and providing a public forum to discuss important issues relating to the Balkans through sponsoring courses, lectures, and conferences devoted to the Balkans.
Balkan Program
Latest NewsPast Balkan Events
M.I. Pupin Pulitzer Prize Conference
M.I. Pupin Pulitzer Prize Conference
Austro-Hungarian and Serbian War Literature
Austro-Hungarian and Serbian War Literature
The Power of Three: The Triptych in Yugoslav Cinema
The Power of Three: The Triptych in Yugoslav Cinema
Balkan Studies Faculty
Aleksandar Bošković
Senior Lecturer in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian; Co-Deputy Director of the East Central European Center
Tanya Domi
Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs
Valentina Izmirlieva
Director, Harriman Institute; Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Mark Mazower
Ira D. Wallach Professor of World Order Studies and Director of Columbia's Institute for Ideas and Imagination
Elidor Mëhilli
Adjunct Associate Professor of History
Amra Sabic-El-Rayess
Associate Professor of Practice (Education Policy and Social Analysis Department), Teachers College
History of the Balkan Studies Program
Over the years, many prominent scholars and specialists on the Balkans have been trained at Columbia University and the Harriman Institute/East Central European Center. The following is just a sampling of the intellectual contribution Columbia faculty and alumni have made to southeastern European studies in the United States:
Abrahams, Fred
A Village Destroyed, May 14th, 1999: War Crimes in Kosovo (co-author)
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)
Albright, Madeleine
Madam Secretary (New York: Hyperion, 2003)
Barkey, Karen
Empire of Difference: the Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)
Biberaj, Elez
Albania in Transition: The Rocky Road to Democracy (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1999)
Bose, Sumantra
Bosnia After Dayton: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Bošković, Aleksandar
Zenithism (1921-1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (co-edited with Steven Teref) (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2023); The Fine Feats of ‘The Five Cockerels’ Gang: A Yugoslav Marxist-Surrealist Epic Poem for Children (translated and co-edited with Ainsley E. Morse) (Leiden: Brill, 2022).
Cohen, Lenard J.
Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milošević (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001); Broken Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993)
Gagnon, V.P.
The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)
Gorup, Radmila
In a Foreign Harbor: Essays in Honor of Vasa D. Mihailovic (co-editor) (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2000); The Prince of Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Serbian Short Stories (co-editor) (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998).
Halpern, Joel M.
Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); A Serbian Village in Historical Perspective (co-authored with Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern) (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1972); A Serbian Village: Social and Cultural Change in a Yugoslav Socialist Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956)
Holbrooke, Richard
To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998)
Lencek, Rado
Slovenes, the Eastern Alpine Slavs, and their Cultural Heritage (New York: Institute on East Central Europe, 1989); Structure and History of the Slovene Language (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1982)
MacKenzie, David
The Serbs and Russian Pan-Slavism, 1875-1878 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967)
Mazower, Mark
Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 (New York: Vintage, 2005); The Balkans: A Short History (New York: The Modern Library, 2000)
Mosely, Philip E.
Communal Families in the Balkans: The Zadruga: Essays by Philip E. Mosely and in his honor (Notre Dame, In: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976); Russian Diplomacy and the Opening of the Eastern Question in 1838 and 1839 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934)
Nettelfield, Lara J.
Courting Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Hague Tribunal’s Impact in a Postwar State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Petrovich, Michael Boro
A History of Modern Serbia, Volumes I & II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic, 1976)
Rothschild, Joseph
Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle, Wa: University of Washington Press, 1974)
Shoup, Paul S.
The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999); Communism and the Yugoslav National Question (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968)
Silber, Laura
Yugoslavia, Death of a Nation (co-author); (New York: TV Books, Inc., 1996)
Skendi, Stavro
Balkan Cultural Studies (New York: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1980); The Albanian National Awakening, 1878-1912 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); Albanian and South Slavic Epic Poetry (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1954)
Snyder, Jack
From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000)
Sullivan, Stacy
Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America: How a Brooklyn Roofer Helped Lure the U.S. into the Kosovo War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004)
Zimmerman, Warren
Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers—America’s Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why (New York: Times Books, 1996)