• Offered for Year: 2024/25

• Module Leader(s): Dr James Riding
• Lecturer: Dr Nayara Albrecht, Professor Rachel Woodward

• Owning School: Geography, Politics & Sociology
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

• Capacity limit: 35 student places

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

The Bosnia and Herzegovina field course module is built around a week-long field trip to Sarajevo, a city ringed by mountains with a rich and diverse history, and a day-trip to a UNESCO world heritage site, the Stari Most in Mostar, and its ancient old town. Sarajevo is a city described as 'East-meets-West' and 'the Jerusalem of Europe' with cathedrals, synagogues, and numerous mosques representing a place that was Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and part of socialist Yugoslavia. During the twentieth century, two violent events thrust Sarajevo into the world's consciousness: the assassination which sparked World War I, and the brutal almost-four-year siege of the city in the 1990s. The scars of the longest siege in modern European history are still painfully visible, yet Sarajevo is today a wonderful place to visit, especially for geographers as this module reveals.

The key theme of this field course is memory, and how we remember as societies, asking, why remember? Students will address the complex and contested questions that face post-conflict societies, of what should we remember, what should we forget, and, ultimately, why? The field course will explore the role of publicly visible cultural and collective memory and its potential impact on issues such as reconciliation and healing in the wake of conflict, and how could and should memory processes shape the present and future.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina field course module introduces students to the geographies of memory and creative arts-based field techniques, providing students with an opportunity to critically study this post-conflict state beyond often told narratives. Through four one-hour lectures and one two-hour workshop, the module provides students with a grounded knowledge of the spatial, cultural, and political processes that have shaped contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina, memory and remembering in post-conflict societies, and the use of creative methods to explore cultural memory.

Following the theme of memory, students are encouraged to creatively document memorial sites and sites of memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina through ethnographic and auto-ethnographic writing in field diaries and to create films, photo-essays, and subjective maps that are not only about the war in Bosnia (1992–1995) and the siege of Sarajevo (1992–1996) but are also about the everyday geographies of present-day Sarajevo and the remnants of conflict visible in the fabric and built heritage of the city. In their fieldwork in Sarajevo students could choose to build a project around the multiple 'Sarajevo Roses' of the pavements, the horror of 'Sniper Alley' and the various vantage points of snipers and the victims on the ground, the sites of the Winter Olympics and what was Yugoslavia, the Holiday Inn where journalists filed war-time reports, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Markale massacres, or concrete socialist monuments built following World War II.

Students will work together in small groups in the field to identify a memorial site (or sites) that they would like to explore and exhaust through repeated visits using different creative methods. Each day students will collect field notes in a field diary on their chosen site(s) and they will supplement this written data with arts-based methods, such as short unedited films, photo-essays, and subjective maps created in small groups, which will be shared in a group presentation at the end of the field course when in Sarajevo (assessment 1: 30%). A field report essay submitted after the residential field course when students return to the UK, will draw upon the varied arts-based data collected (a short unedited film, a photo-essay, a subjective map, for example) and will tell the story of their memorial site (or sites) as well as reflecting on memory and remembering in a post-conflict state (assessment 2: 70%).

Outline Of Syllabus

GEO2235 Bosnia and Herzegovina Field Course Timetable


PHASE ONE (Newcastle, UK)

Lecture 1 (1 hour): Introduction to Bosnia and Herzegovina Field Course Module
Lecture 2 (1 hour): Memory and remembering in post-conflict societies
Lecture 3 (1 hour): Creative methods in post-conflict societies
Lecture 4 (1 hour): Exploring sites of memory in Sarajevo
Workshop 1 (2 hours): Guest Lecture by Smajo Beso OBE


PHASE TWO (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

DAY ONE (ARRIVAL DAY): Arrival in Sarajevo, check-in Hotel Holiday, free time to explore the city.

DAY TWO (TOUR DAY): Breakfast in Hotel Holiday at 09:00, leave hotel at 10:00, whistle-stop tour of memorial sites by module leader ending at Sarajevo cable car (speak to module staff about memorial site(s) in groups for your group project and begin to formulate an idea), explore memorial site(s) in your groups in the afternoon, debrief at Hotel Holiday in the lobby with module staff at 17:00 (Evening meal at 19:00).

DAY THREE (MUSEUM DAY): Breakfast in Hotel Holiday at 09:00, leave hotel at 10:00, Visit Galerija 11/07/95 at 10:30, visit War Childhood Museum at 12:30 (speak to module staff about your your memorial site(s) in groups for your group project and begin to refine your idea), explore memorial site(s) in your groups in the afternoon, debrief at the Hotel Holiday in the lobby with module staff at 17:00, free time in the evening.

DAY FOUR (MOSTAR DAY): Meet outside Hotel Holiday beside the fountain at 06:30, walk to railway station, train departs for Mostar at 07:15, tour of Mostar at 09:30 for 3-5 hours with university arranged lunch in Mostar, train returns to Sarajevo at 17:09, free time in Sarajevo in the evening.

DAY FIVE (RESEARCH DAY): Breakfast in Hotel Holiday at 09:00, meet module staff at 10:00 in the lobby of Hotel Holiday to discuss your project idea and to let them know where you are going for the day, group project work in memorial site(s) to conduct research in Sarajevo, meet module staff at 17:00 in the lobby of Hotel Holiday to discuss what you have been working on (Evening meal at 19:00).

DAY SIX (PRESENTATION PREPARATION DAY): Breakfast in Hotel Holiday at 09:00, meet module staff at 10:00 in the lobby of Hotel Holiday to refine your project idea and to let them know where you are going for the day, group project work in memorial site(s) to conduct research in Sarajevo in morning, in afternoon work on your 10 minute presentation at Hotel Holiday, meet module staff in the lobby of Hotel Holiday at 17:00 to discuss your presentation, free time in the evening.

DAY SEVEN (PRESENTATION DAY): Share group project work (assessed: 30% of module grade) via a group presentation from 10:00 in the morning at Hotel Holiday (each 10 mins in length) (Lunch in Hotel Holiday at 1:30), free time in afternoon (Evening meal at 19:00).

DAY EIGHT (DEPARTURE DAY): Departure from Sarajevo, check-out Hotel Holiday, travel to airport.


PHASE THREE (Newcastle, UK)

Field report essay submitted via Canvas Turnitin box: deadline TBC (70% of the overall module grade).

In 2500 words, discuss how creative methods can be used in post-conflict societies like Bosnia and Herzegovina to explore memory and remembering.

The essay should draw on your fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina and reflect upon the original material that you created while in Bosnia and Herzegovina, telling the story of your creative outputs and why they matter. You should include material from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the purpose of the essay is not to describe this place. The essay should not be a case study of the city of Sarajevo. You must also draw upon a wider literature on memory, creative methods and post-conflict societies, to underpin your argument for using this particular creative method in Bosnia and Herzegovina to explore memory and remembering. You must include creative outputs that you created during your time in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The preliminary lectures and workshop will serve as an introduction to the relevant literature on post-conflict states in human geography, geographies of memory and memory studies, and creative arts-based methods in relation to cultural memory and post-conflict states, as well as the practicalities of studying in the field in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Fieldwork projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be undertaken with the aim of exploring a memorial site or site of memory by creating artworks in small groups and will be student-led, supported by study visits, guest talks at museums, and walks through the city of Sarajevo led by the module leader and invited local experts.

Students are expected to be proactive in taking full advantage of the learning opportunities in the field course, and to represent the University positively at all times. The University’s General Regulation about absence and the Student Charter will be strictly enforced during the field course and attendance is compulsory at all timetabled activities scheduled on the field course. Students will be given a timetable for the week on arrival and must attend and participate in every scheduled session. Non-attendance or non-participation in any timetabled session during the field course without explicit prior agreement from the module leader will constitute unsatisfactory conduct, disengagement from the field-learning element of the module and non-compliance with the University’s Student Charter. Such conduct, particularly where it is linked with alcohol or substance use, may lead to the invocation of the University’s Student Disciplinary Procedure and / or its Fitness to Study Procedure.

On return to the UK, students should dedicate time to further reading for and production of the assessed written work.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Group presentations of creative work on/in memorial site(s) presented at a student research symposium at the end of the field course in Bosnia and Herzegovina will allow students to engage in debates with their peers and reflect on learning in the field and to collect feedback on their creative work before essay writing. The group presentation is a summative assessment and will be formally assessed, presenting an opportunity to assess and give feedback on students’ presentation and communication skills as well as their contribution to a collaborative project.

Students are expected to produce an academic field report essay that discusses how creative methods can be used in post-conflict societies like Bosnia and Herzegovina to explore memory and remembering. The essay should draw on fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina and reflect upon the original material created while in Bosnia and Herzegovina, telling the story of student-produced creative outputs and why they matter. This will include material from Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the purpose of the essay is not to describe this place. The essay should not be a case study of the city of Sarajevo and must also draw upon a wider literature on memory, creative methods and post-conflict societies, to underpin arguments for using creative methods in Bosnia and Herzegovina to explore memory and remembering. This work will be undertaken independently in Semester 2, though builds on work produced during the field course as part of group project work.

Reading Lists

• GEO2235's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• GEO2235's Timetable