Maria Todorova
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Maria N. Todorova (born 1949, Sofia) is a Bulgarian historian and philosopher.
[edit] Career
Professor Maria Todorova is currently a Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in the history of the Balkans in the modern period.
Her publications include Imagining the Balkans, (Oxford University Press, 1997), Balkan Family Structure and the European Pattern: Demographic Developments in Ottoman Bulgaria (American U Press, 1993), English Travelers' Accounts on the Balkans (16th-19th c.) (in Bulgarian, Sofia, 1987), England, Russia, and the Tanzimat (in Russian, Moscow, 1983; in Bulgarian, Sofia, 1980), Historians on History (in Bulgarian, Sofia, 1988), Selected Sources for Balkan History (in Bulgarian, Sofia, 1977), The History of the Balkan Peoples - 1702-1704 Vol. 5, as well as edited volumes and numerous articles and essays on social and cultural history, historical demography, and historiography of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Her current research revolves around problems of nationalism, especially the symbolism of nationalism, national memory and national heroes in Bulgaria and the Balkans.
She studied history and English at the University of Sofia, and obtained her PhD in 1977. Maria Todorova was subsequently Adjunct and Visiting Professor at various institutions - including Sabanci University in Istanbul and the University of Florida (where she was also Professor). She was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000.
[edit] 'Balkanism'
Todorova is well known for her work concerning the history of the Balkans. Her groundbreaking work, Imagining the Balkans deals with the region's inconsistent (but usually negative) image inside Western culture, as well as with the paradoxes of cultural reference and its assumptions. In it, she develops a theory of Balkanism, similar to Edward Said's Orientalism. She has said of the book:
- "The central idea of Imagining the Balkans is that there is a discourse, which I term Balkanism, that creates a stereotype of the Balkans, and politics is significantly and organically intertwined with this discourse. When confronted with this idea, people may feel somewhat uneasy, especially on the political scene...The most gratifying response to me came from a very good British journalist, Misha Glenny, who has written well and extensively on the Balkans. He said, 'You know, now that I look back, I have been guilty of Balkanism,' which was a really honest intellectual response"[1].
