Holidays in the sun

If you decide to take your sun and fun in lovely Priština, then Sophie Middlemiss suggests, helpfully, in the Guardian that "the most authentic sleeping experience you'll have is at the family home of a former university professor." The suggestion box is still open for people who prefer an inauthentic sleeping experience.

Znalac. Intelektualac. Sam je sebi stranac. Kao vanzemaljac.

Two intellectuals in the news today. Slobodan Antonić confronts the mysterious fact that intellectuals have a hard time liking the folks who hate them. And Kosta Čavoški remembers wistfully when his pals were powerful enough to keep his furniture untouched.

Back from NY

We just got back from lovely New York City, were planning on spending a longer weekend but Sunday's rainstorm with high wind persuaded us to just pack up and begin the trek back to Boston more or less persuaded that it would be slow. Highlights of the ASN conference were mostly seeing friends, but there was a fine panel "fieldwork after fire" in which Orli Fridman, Chip Gagnon and Saša Milićević stepped down, in different ways, from the academic pose of objectivity to discuss ways in which the real experience of real contact with real people, good and bad, transformed their perceptions of what they were doing and why. There was also a screening of the very fine film on Vukovar by Janko Baljak and Drago Hedl -- great documentary work, with amazing footage of various bad guys (particularly Brana Crnčević and Tomislav Merčep) continuing to lie about what they did. Surprisingly, there was not much said in the film about various good guys, including Josip Reihl-Kir.

It was also nice to find out what you get when you type "hrpa bezveznjaka" into Google.

Essay competition

I'll just bet that among the people who read this blog there are some who might have something to submit to this essay competition. We want to publish the ten best pieces on the theme “Evaluating Intervention: Local perspectives on democracy-building in the Post-Yugoslav countries and territories.”

Update: The announcement that is posted is not the final version. I will link to the final version when it is up. The deadline will be 18 May.