Starting in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continuing up to the present, Imagining the Balkans covers the Balkan's most formative years. From the down fall of the Ottoman Empire, through the turbulent nationalist years of the nineteenth century, up to World War I, the idea of the Balkans was fiercely, often violently, contested. In the wake of WWI, the beginnings of a tradition, largely enforced by academics, emerged stigmatizing the Balkans. Since then, the region has suffered from the neglect, abuse, and scant regard of both western Europe and the world. The result has been in many direct ways to compound the Balkan's poverty, internal violence, and lack of national self-image. A startling history of ideas, Imagining the Balkans provides a much needed exploration into a region too long neglected.

Imagining the Balkans: Послепис

The politics of gay and transgender visibility and representation at the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual televised popular music festival presented to viewers as a contest between European natio...

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The ‘gay Olympics’? The Eurovision Song Contest and the politics of LGBT/European belonging

This doctoral project is an investigation of the imaginaries of sexual citizenship in post-Maidan Ukraine. I used a queer feminist discourse analysis method to examine how LGBT+ communities seek to position themselves in relation to hegemonic discourses of state and nationhood. Collecting data from focus group discussions and online forums, I identified the Euromaidan (2013-2014) as a pivotal moment wherein sexual citizenship was intensified as a dynamic process of claims-making and negotiation between LGBT+ communities and the state. Analysing how LGBT+ communities imagine and make sense of sexual citizenship, I demonstrated how the dominant discourse of sexual citizenship – homopatriotism, as I call it – emerged as a specific form of homonormativity at the complex intersection of the post-Maidan nationalist mobilisation, war in the eastern part of Ukraine, global human rights discourse, post-socialism, neoliberalism and axes of colonial power. Through homopatriotism, the universal discourse of (neoliberal) human rights and the particular discourse of Ukrainian ‘civic nationalism’ have become intertwined. This enmeshment, I argue, positioned LGBT+ communities as patriots and ‘good citizens’ and enabled instrumentalisation of the LGBT+ claims for sexual citizenship by the state. Being oriented towards Western models of ‘LGBT+ progress’ and away from ‘Russian’ and ‘Soviet’ regimes of sexuality, homopatriotism in Ukraine reinvigorated the geotemporal position of Eastern Europe as undeveloped and, therefore, ‘catching up’. 

Following the methodological and ethical bases of queer feminist studies, I looked closely at the counter-discourses that are scattered across the communities, with particular emphasis on grassroots ‘queer activism’. Opposing both heteronormativity and homonormativity, critiquing capitalist/neoliberal, militarist, racist, ableist, misogynist and Western-centred tendencies within mainstream LGBT+ politics, the counter-discourses point to the analytic limits of the concept of sexual citizenship and enable alternative imaginaries of belonging, subjectivities and solidarities to emerge beyond the framework of sexual citizenship.

Imaginaries of Sexual Citizenship in Post-Maidan Ukraine: A Queer Feminist Discursive Investigation

The EU identifies and presents itself as an organisation founded on ‘fundamental values’ and as a defender and guardian of fundamental rights. The development of this ‘fundamental rights myth’ (Journal of Common Market Studies 48(1):45–66, 2010) has taken place against the broader backdrop of a globalisation of human rights discourse (Journal of Common Market Studies 48(1):45–66, 2010; McGill Law Journal 49(4):951–968, 2004). Fundamental values have also increasingly become the narrative driving EU foreign policy, including enlargement and neighbourhood policies. As Article 3(5) clarifies, ‘In its relations with the wider world, the [European] Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to […] the protection of human rights’. Article 49 sets forth respect for the so-called founding values—‘respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights’ (Art. 2 TEU)—as a precondition for EU membership.

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The Co-evolution of EU’s Eastern Enlargement and LGBT Politics: An Ever Gayer Union?

Disputes over gay and lesbian rights occupy a central place on both national and international agendas in recent years. This is also the case in societies emerging from chronic ethnonational conflict where debates over gay and lesbian rights vs. ethnic-based rights predominate. While much scholarly work focuses on the influence of socio-demographic factors in determining attitudes toward gay and lesbian rights in postconflict societies, to date, the role of political influences, such as ethnonationalism, is noticeably under-researched. It is with this omission in mind that this paper focuses on the influence of ethnonationalism, or congruency in religious, national and communal identity, on attitudes towards gay and lesbian rights issues. Using nationally representative data from Northern Ireland, the results suggest that while ethnonationalism is a key predictor of attitudes among Protestants, it is socio-demographic factors, such as gender, age and educational attainment, that are the primary determinants of Catholic views.

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Ethnonationalism and attitudes towards gay and lesbian rights in Northern Ireland

In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), tolerance of homosexuality has been portrayed as a value associated with the idea of Europe (or the West, or America) both by local queers aspiring to attaining rights in their own countries and perhaps even more by nationalists who want to exclude homosexuals from the nation by portraying homosexuality as a foreign import. It is part of a tradition I have followed since the early 1990s (Moss 1995). I have found numerous examples of right-wing nationalists in Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and Yugoslavia defining national identity as purely heterosexual, while portraying homosexuality as an import from Western Europe. Wiktor Grodecki’s three pseudo-documentaries about Prague rent boys, for example, present the boys as innocent straight Czechs who fall into the clutches of depraved gay clients from Western Europe (Moss 2006). Recently the best analysis of this kind of mapping has come from Agnieszka Graff in Poland (Graff 2006, 2008, 2010). Anxieties about joining the European Union (EU) were expressed in Poland via attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, and for the nationalists “homophobia” became a mark of national difference. The conflict, she writes, “was more about cultural identity and national pride than about sexual orientation or public morality” (Graff 2010: 584). In other words, Poles were homophobes not because they were Catholic or because homosexuality is immoral or unnatural, but because they were Poles, and homophobia is a sign of patriotism. Tolerance of gay people became a litmus test for attitudes toward EU accession.

Split Europe: Homonationalism and Homophobia in Croatia

Supervising @Cornell training modules are groups of courses focused on a specific topic area. There are 9 core modules: a fundamentals of supervisory skills module, a module dedicated to Cornell-specific content, and seven modules aligned to the Leadership Skills for Success. Participants must complete SUPERHR500 "Welcome to Supervising at Cornell," which then permits access to all other courses in whatever order you choose.

Kevin Moss

Papers

Split Europe: Homonationalism and Homophobia in Croatia

Working at Cornell