The abstract (cf. Balkan Studies 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) of Edin Hajdarpašić (Chicago): Balkan Policy Ghosts: Studying Southeastern Europe in the United States since the 1990s

In the US political, intellectual, and popular discourses of the 1990s, "the Balkans" emerged as a troubling Eastern European site that revealed a disturbing underside of the generally optimistic beginning of the post-Cold War era. In this context, the "Balkan" attribute in fact became a shorthand for a variety of post-Yugoslav phenomena revolving around the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo and the specter of multiple international community interventions in the region. Almost fifteen years later, »Balkan studies« in the US still bear a heavy imprint of "foreign policy" debates on intervention.