Symbolic nation-building through images in post-Yugoslav history textbooks

Pavasović Trošt, Tamara (author), Mihajlović Trbovc, Jovana (author)

The use of history textbooks in order to instill particular images of the nation and national identity has been widely recognized, with a proliferation of studies focused on the problematic content in textbooks. Yet, history textbooks rely on a range of other media like maps, graphs, illustrated timelines, and photographs, which also play an im- portant role in visually signposting the nation. While some of these images serve primarily as a form of representation aligned with the text itself, other aspects of visual content distinctly and autonomously construct national identity. In this piece, relying on qualitative visual analysis, we point to the function played by images in symbolically constructing the nation in contemporary primary school textbooks in five post-Yugoslav republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia.

• Language: English
• Keywords: history textbooks, illustrations, images, nationalism, ethnicity, former Yugoslav republics, historiography, national identity, nation-building, symbolic geography, visual analysis, Yugoslavia
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 20-42
• Numbering: Vol. 15, issue 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-148267
• UDC: 323.1:37:93/94(497.1)
• ISSN on article: 2041-6938
• DOI: 10.3167/jemms.2023.150102
• COBISS.SI-ID: 152648451
• Publication date in RUL: 08.08.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of educational media, memory, and society
• Shortened title: J. educ. media mem. soc.
• Publisher: Berghahn Journals. Ltd.
• ISSN: 2041-6938
• COBISS.SI-ID: 152855299

Licences

• License: CC BY-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
• Description: Under the NoDerivatives Creative Commons license one can take a work released under this license and re-distribute it, but it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: učbeniki za zgodovino, ilustracije, slike ipd., nacionalizem, etnična pripadnost, nekdanje jugoslovanske republike, zgodovinopisje

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: J6-2573
• Name: Šole in imperialne, nacionalne in transnacionalne identifikacije: Habsburška monarhija, Jugoslavija in Slovenija