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Articles by Alexandra Biktimirova and Victoria Kravtsova

1. Witchhunt in northern Sweden A Bakhtinian approach

   The Russian Byzantinist Sergei Averintsev writes in a critical article about laughter in Bakhtin’s interpretation of popular medieval culture that Bakhtin makes laughter too absolute and that he was wrong in maintaining that it has nothing to do with violence. I apply the reasoning of both authors on a historical phenomenon: the witch trials in Sweden, focusing on one precise geographical place. There seem to be many factors behind the witch trials, but their cultural manifestations demonstrate the qualities of reverse or carnival, culture although without having laughter as their main feature, and including violence as a main element.

2. subversive artistic practices visualizing resistence in the republic of macedonia

   The article discusses subversiveness in visual arts and how its practitioners oppose, transgress and seek changes in the existing social order. This art often employs forms of activism which affect public spaces, such as squares, streets and crossroads, aimed at involving the public in existing societal problems and challenges. The focus is on the recent events in the Republic of Macedonia where artists are intervening in the social and political conditions. Identifying these practices in the Republic of Macedonia contributes to wider debates that highlight engaged forms of artistic actions.

3. Bordering Pomerania Boundary-defining and demographic transgression in a geopolitically contested region

   This study focuses on three aspects of the geography of Pomerania: The definition of the area, in terms of bordering and containment, its governance, particularly in relation to the third aspect, its demography, in terms of which religious and ethnic groups were allowed in or expelled from the area. In the long history of Pomerania, groups in the area also changed religion or ethnicity.

4. The grotesque body in Indian comic tradition An aesthetics of transgression

   The paper examines the comic in relation to the figuration of the grotesque body in Sanskrit tradition in India. It is pursued with two objectives: firstly, to explore bodily figurations in the Indian comic tradition, and, further, to enquire the parallel elaboration of Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque that celebrates the laughing body. A reading of a 14th century Indian text Hāsyārnava provides the ground for the elucidation. The paper elaborates on how the “distorted, deformed and diseased” body which Bharata refers to, the “grotesque body”t as Bakhtin says, institutes hāsya and carnivalesque discursively. The bodily desire pursued is pushed to the limits, resulting in rapture through a transgressive act.

5. CEU’s fate a symbol of what went wrong

   In Hungary, the amount of protest to follow the announcement of Lex CEU was probably underestimated by the government, yet one relatively unexpected feature was that even a number of influential conservative public figures went against the prime minister and showed their support for CEU.

6. The Blue and White pin that matters

   The founders of CEU, politicians, including PM Orban, had a common dream back then. That dream was that we would build a free and successful country where not party apparatchiks, but academics decide who can study at a university, and what institution can call itself a university.

7. Fatherly emotions in Soviet Russia

   New legislation at the end of the 1960s contained clearer procedural rules for marrying and divorcing and material regulations on support payments for children after divorce. Family values and domestic comfort increasingly occupied people’s minds from the 1960s onwards. This decade can be regarded as the point when, for the first time, public demands were made on men to be present in the family and more involved and engaged in their role as fathers.

8. “Sweden is stepping out of the colonial closet”

   Sweden’s indigenous people, the Sami, have struggled for years to get more attention. With little result. But now something is happening.

9. Macedonian elections 2016 the painful turnover of power

   After five months of struggling and political crisis following the general elections in December 2016, Macedonia is finally getting a government. These fourth consecutive early elections were supposed to be a fresh restart and a means to overcome a longer period of deepening political crisis. But the effect was rather the opposite: the governing party lost the elections and have ever since done their utmost to prevent handing over power.

10. The 2017 Parliamentary Elections in Armenia in the Light of the New Constitution

    On April 2, Armenia held its first parliamentary election with the newly adopted constitution, transforming the country from a presidential to a parliamentary republic. In short the change transfers the substantial executive power from the presidential office to the prime minister and the parliament. The elections have widely been regarded as an important test of the democracy in Armenia.

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