Colloquy session 6: Bosnian epics

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An elderly woman holds a curved stick with strings (the bow of an instrument). Next to her a white-haired man points to the wooden back of a long-necked musical instrument.

About

Topic: Bosnian epics: interfaith soundscapes or theme songs for genocide?

Speaker: Dr Safet HadžiMuhamedović

In the south-eastern corner of Bosnia, divided groups of Muslims and Christians recount memories of a peculiar single-stringed instrument, gusle, twenty years after the beginning of a genocidal war. Safet extends their narratives to discuss the epic songs of the Balkan highlanders as not only the framing devices for a shared and syncretic cosmology in a harmonious society, but also as vehicles for ethnonationalism and religious hatred.

The advance reading for this session is:

  • Safet HadžiMuhamedović (2021) ‘The epic unconscious’, in Waiting for Elijah: Time and encounter in a Bosnian landscape. Oxford: Berghahn.

About the speaker

Dr Safet HadžiMuhamedović is an anthropologist based at the University of Cambridge, where he holds courses on religious encounter and conflict and runs the Shared Sacred project (sharedsacred.com). He is Research Associate in Anthropology at the Faculty of Divinity, the Director of Studies and Bye-Fellow at Fitzwilliam College, and a CIP-affiliated Researcher.

More about Safet (via the Faculty of Divinity website) (divinity.cam.ac.uk)

NB This session will be followed immediately by a closing session with Dr Iona Hine.

This event is part of the CIP Summer Colloquy on Religious relations and sound (3 July to 7 August, 2023). Attendance is restricted to those participating in the Colloquy.

Contact

cipcolloquy@divinity.cam.ac.uk