Professor Sanja Bahun
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Email
sbahun@essex.ac.uk -
Location
Colchester Campus
Profile
Biography
Sanja Bahun's area of expertise is international modernism, and her research interests include theory of comparative arts, world literature, psychoanalysis, and women's and gender studies. She is the author of Modernism and Melancholia: Writing as Countermourning (2014), the co-editor of The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism (2006), Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate (2008, 2015), From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women's Aesthetic Production (2009), Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text: New Cassandras (2011), Language, Ideology, and the Human: New Interventions (2012), Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious (2013), Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989: Re-Visions(2014), and Thinking Home: Interdisciplinary Dialogues (2018, second edition 2020), and she has published articles and book chapters on a variety of subjects concerning modernism, world literature, psychoanalytic theory and intellectual history. She has also authored two books of creative writing: On the Atomic Bomb, Pain, Spaghetti, and All the Rest... (1994) and To Icarus, with Love (1998). Professor Bahun is a concept author and chief curator of the exhibition "Aktivitet: 100 Years of Surrealism", running from 19th October 2024 to 25th February 2025 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade.
Qualifications
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BA Belgrade
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MA Rutgers
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PhD Rutgers
Appointments
University of Essex
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Dear PGRE, University of Essex (1/10/2018 - 31/12/2022)
Other academic
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Professor, University of Essex (1/10/2014 - present)
Research and professional activities
Research interests
comparative literature
psychoanalysis
womens and gender studies
the arts and transitional justice
Current research
Aktivitet: 100 Years of Surrealism
Concept author of the project "Aktivitet: 100 Years of Surrealism" (various institutions and governmental and non-governmental organisations) and chief curator of the exhibition "Aktivitet: 100 Years of Surrealism" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade.
More information about this project
Conferences and presentations
Plenary Address: Active Thought and Future Perfect: Reading History and Expression with the Belgrade Surrealist Circle
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, EXC 2020 Anticipating Modernities, EXC 2020 Anticipating Modernities, Berlin, Germany, 7/7/2022
Key Note Address: Cassandras Anew: Women’s Writing and Strategies of Resistance
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Regina Ezera and Eastern European Literature, Riga, Latvia, Riga, Latvia, 3/12/2021
Key Note Address: Lyubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, and the Female Artist as Producer of Reality
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Modernism: Making, Place & Protest, London, United Kingdom, 3/11/2018
“The Fabric of Home: Household Cloth between Ontology and Use-Value in Paul Klee and Varvara Stepanova”
Invited presentation, Modernist Objects: French Society for Modernist Studies Conference, Paris, France, 14/6/2018
Home, Modernists, and Inter-imperiality
Invited presentation, invited lecture, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 21/2/2018
Distinguished Lecture: Modernism and Home inter imperia: Constantine Cavafy and the Yugoslav Surrealists
Invited presentation, distinguished lecture, Evanston, United States, 12/1/2018
Key Note Address: The Economy of Discomfort: Mina Loy, the Homeless Body, and the Issues of Aesthetic Reception
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Aggression, Transgression, and the Avant-garde International Conference, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 6/7/2017
Key Note Address: Literature, Justice, Transition
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, The European Conference on Literature and Librarianship,, Brighton, United Kingdom, 12/7/2016
Teaching and supervision
Previous supervision
Degree subject: Film Studies (Creative Practice)
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 1/6/2023
Degree subject: Theatre Studies
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 3/5/2022
Degree subject: Film Studies (Creative Practice)
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 2/3/2020
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 10/6/2019
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 11/10/2018
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 5/7/2018
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 16/3/2018
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 20/4/2017
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 17/11/2015
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 18/12/2013
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 3/7/2013
Degree subject: Film Studies
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 3/7/2013
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 22/10/2012
Degree subject: Literature
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 1/5/2012
Publications
Journal articles (16)
Bahun, S., (2020). Beyond Good and Evil? Popular Songs, Mathemes, and Bus Rides (Art and Transition in the Region of Former Yugoslavia). Media, War, and Conflict. 12 (Special Issue: The Political Aesthetics of Democratization Conflicts,), 70-87
Bahun, S., (2019). Beyond Good and Evil? Popular Songs, Mathemes, and Bus Rides (Art and Transition in the Region of Former Yugoslavia). Media, War and Conflict. 12 (2), 70-87
Bahun, S., (2018). Gaps, Or the Dialectics of Inter-imperial Art: The Case of the Belgrade Surrealist Circle. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies. 64 (3), 458-487
Bahun, S., (2017). The Pleasures of Daldaldal: Freud, Jokes, and the Development of Intersubjective Aesthetics. Modernist Cultures. 12 (2), 249-274
Bahun, S., (2015). On Transience, Presence and Anticipation: Notes Towards a Palimpsestic Approach to Temporal Literary Study, with Reference to 1915: Figure:. Forum for Modern Language Studies. 51 (4), 445-463
Bahun, S., Finburgh, C. and Littau, K., (2014). Guest Editors' Introduction to Comparative Critical Studies (special issue: Migration). Comparative Critical Studies. 11 (2-3), 145-160
Bahun, S., (2011). Croatian Animation, Then and Now: Creating Sparks or Just a Little Bit of Smoke?. Kinocultura
Bahun, S., (2010). There Was Once A Country An impossible chronotope in the writings of Slavenka Drakulić and Dubravka Ugrešić. European Journal of English Studies. 14 (1), 63-74
Bahun, S., (2009). Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution. SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL. 53 (2), 312-314
Bahun, S., (2009). Faces Not Different from Our Own: Alain Resnais?s Night and Fog as Cross-Historical Testimony. The Holocaust in History and Memory. 2, 69-81
Bahun, S., (2008). The Burden of the Past, the Dialectics of the Present: Notes on Virginia Woolf's and Walter Benjamin's Philosophies of History. Modernist Cultures. 3 (2), 100-115
Bahun, S., (2008). Faulkner, Фолкнер, Folkner, Fokner: A Case Study of Slavic-Anglophone Translatability. The Faulkner Journal. 24 (1), 11-27
Bahun, S., (2008). History in Postmodern Theater: Heiner M�ller, Caryl Churchill, and Suzan-Lori Parks. Comparative Literature Studies. 45 (4), 446-470
Bahun, S., (2008). Faulkner, ???????, Folkner, Fokner: ? Case-study of Slavic-Anglophone Translatability. The Faulkner Journal. 24 (1-2), 3-19
Bahun, S., (2007). The Success of Failure: Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of History. Nasleđe/Наслеђе: Journal of Language, Literature, Arts and Culture/часопис за књижевност, језик, уметност и културу. 4 (7), 31-54
Bahun, S., (2003). The Dialectics of Madame de Staël: (On Corinne, or Italy). Exit 9: The Rutgers Journal of Comparative Literature. 5, 1-15
Books (15)
Petric, B. and Bahun, S., (2018). Thinking Home Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Bloomsbury Publishing. 1350062340. 9781350062344
(2018). Introduction On Violence, Gender, and Global Connections. Routledge
(2016). Language, Ideology, and the Human. Routledge
Bahun, S. and Radunovic, D., (2016). Introduction: Introducing, Intervening, and Introspecting
Rajan, VGJ., (2016). Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text. Routledge
Bahun, S., (2014). Modernism and Melancholia: Writing as Countermourning. Oxford University Press. 9780199977956
Littau, K., Bahun, S. and Finburgh, C., (2014). Migration (Special Issue of Comparative Critical Studies). Edinburgh University Press
Haynes, AJ. and Bahun, S., (2014). Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989: Re-Visions. Routledge
Burnett, L., Bahun, S. and Main, R., (2013). Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious. Karnac books. 978 1 78220 002 4
Bahun, S. and Radunović, D., (2012). Introduction: Introducing, intervening, and introspecting
Bahun, S. and Radunović, D., (2012). Introduction: Introducing, intervening, and introspecting
Bahun, S. and Radunović, D., (2012). Language, ideology, and the human: New interventions. 9781409428343
Bahun, S. and Rajan, VGJ., (2011). Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text. Ashgate. 9781409400011
Rajan, VGJ. and Bahun, S., (2009). From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women?s Aesthetic Production. Cambridge Scholars. 9781443805377
Bahun, S. and Rajan, VGJ., (2008). Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate. Ashgate. 9780754673644
Book chapters (26)
Bahun, S., (2024). Modernism. In: Europe in British Literature and Culture. Editors: Rau, P. and Rossiter, W., . Cambridge University Press. 180- 196. 9781009425490
Bahun, S., (2023). 'Part heathen, part Christian’: Recording Transitions and Amalgamations of Belief Systems in Constantine Cavafy’s Poetry. In: Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth, and Religion. Editors: Hobson, S. and Radford, A., . Edinburgh University Press. 457- 476. 9781474494786
Bahun, S., (2021). “Marko Ristić, Surrealist Wall, Belgrade”. In: Surrealism beyond Borders. Editors: d’Alessandro, S. and Gale, M., . The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Yale University Press. 176- 179. 9781588397270
Bahun, S., (2021). History and Active Thought: The Belgrade Surrealist Circle’s Transforming Praxis. In: Historical Modernisms: Time, History and Modernist Aesthetics. Editors: Spiropoulou, A. and Rabate, J-M., . Bloomsbury. 215- 233. 9781350202962
Bahun, S., (2020). ‘Me you – you – me’: Mina Loy and the the Art of Ethnographic Intimacy. In: Modernist Intimacies. Editors: Högberg, E., . Edinburgh University Press
Bahun, S., (2020). The Fabric of Home: Cotton Cloth between Ontology and Use-Value in Paul Klee’s, Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova’s Artwork. Editors: Cuny, N. and Kalck, X., . Clemson University Press. 97- 112. 978-1-949-97950-3
Bahun, S., (2018). 'Let Us Go, Then, Exploring . . .': Intertextual Conversations on the Meaning of Life. In: Sentencing Orlando: Virginia Woolf and the Morphology of the Modernist Sentence. Editors: Hogberg, E. and Bromley, A., . Edinburgh University Press. 68- 79. 9781474414609
Bahun, S., (2016). Transitional justice and the arts: Reflections on the field. In: Theorizing Transitional Justice. 153- 166
(2016). Introduction: Cassandra's Gift. In: Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text. Routledge. 15- 30
Bahun, S., (2015). Transitional justice and the arts: Reflections on the field. In: Theorizing Transitional Justice. Editors: Corradetti, C., Eisikovits, N. and Rotondi, J., . Ashgate. 153- 166. 9781472418296
Bahun, S., (2014). Broken music, broken history: Sounds and silence in Virginia Woolf’s between the acts. In: Virginia Woolf and Music. Indiana University Press. 229- 259. 9780253012463
Bahun, S. and Haynes, J., (2014). Introduction. Questioning and Questing: re-staging state socialist cinema. In: Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989 Re-Visions. Editors: Bahun, S. and Haynes, J., . Routledge. 1- 6. 1317818725. 9780415813235
Bahun, S., (2014). The Human and the Possible: Animation in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, 1960-1980. In: Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989 Re-Visions. Editors: Bahun, S. and Haynes, J., . Routledge. 9780415813235
Bahun, S. and Haynes, J., (2014). Introduction. Questioning and Questing: re-staging state socialist cinema. In: Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989 Re-Visions. Editors: Bahun, S. and Haynes, J., . Routledge. 1- 6. 9780415813235
Bahun, S., (2013). 'Virginia Woolf and Psychoanalytical Theory'. In: Virginia Woolf in Context. Editors: Randall, B. and Goldman, J., . Cambridge University Press. 9781107003613
Bahun, S., (2012). A Conversation with Joško Marušić: Sending a Message to Unknown Friends. In: In Contrast: Croatian Film Today. Hrvatski filmski savez. 129- 135. 9780857458940
Bahun, S., (2012). Croatian Animation, Then and Now: Creating Sparks or Just a Little Bit of Smoke?. In: In Contrast: Croatian Film Today. Hrvatski filmski savez. 76- 88. 9780857458940
Bahun, S., (2012). The Balkans Uncovered: Toward Historie Croisée of Modernism. In: The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms. Oxford University Press. 25- 47. 9780195338904
Bahun, S., (2012). Woolf and Psychoanalytic Theory. In: Virginia Woolf in Context. Cambridge University Press. 92- 109. 9781107003613
(2012). Cross-Gendered Literary Voices. In: Cross-Gendered Literary Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, Embracing. Editors: Kim, R. and Westall, C., . Palgrave Macmillan UK. 57- 73. 9781349335534
Bahun, S., (2012). ''These heavy sands are language tide?': Tidal Voicing and the Poetics of Home in James Joyce?s Ulysses'. In: Cross-Gendered Literary Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, Embracing. Editors: Kim, R. and Westall, C., . Palgrave-Macmillan. 57- 73. 9780230299870
Bahun, S., (2011). 'Cassandra?s Gift'. In: Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text. Editors: Bahun, S. and Rajan, VGJ., . Ashgate. 1- 15. 9781409400011
Bahun, S., (2011). 'The Ethics of Animal-Human Existence: Marie Darrieussecq?s Truismes'. In: Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text. Editors: Bahun, S. and Rajan, VGJ., . Ashgate. 55- 74. 9781409400011
Bahun, S., (2011). 'The Politics of World Literature'. In: The Routledge Companion to World Literature. Editors: D'haen, T., Damrosch, D. and Kadir, D., . Routledge. 373- 382. 9780415570220
Bahun, S., (2009). "The Feminist Gaze: Looking Back and Across the Landscape of Myth". In: From Word to Canvas: Appropriations of Myth in Women?s Aesthetic Production. Editors: Rajan, VGJ. and Bahun, S., . Cambridge Scholars. 1- 7. 9781443805377
Bahun, S. and Rajan, VGJ., (2008). On Violence, Gender, and Global Connections. In: Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate. Editors: Bahun, S. and Rajan, VGJ., . Ashgate. 1- 7. 9780754673644
Thesis dissertation (1)
Bahun, S., Modernism and Melancholia: History as Mourning-Work
Other (1)
Bahun, S., (2017).The Arrested Flight of Surreality: The Belgrade Surrealist Circle (Field Report with Invitation). Modernism/Modernity. 2(4 [Online section]),Johns Hopkins University Press
Grants and funding
2017
Home and Modernism
Leverhulme Trust
Home and Modernism
Leverhulme Trust
2010
60% To develop an open-source interactive video browser 60%
Technology STrategy Board
40% To develop an open-source interactive browser
Adventure Pictures Ltd
