Programme of the 41st Seminar

The School applies the following educational methods for the specialization of foreign Croatian Studies students: language exercise courses/seminars, theme cycles of lectures, facultative programme, cultural events and field trips. Lecturers, language exercise course and seminar teachers, as well as programme coordinators are in most part members of the Department of Croatian Studies, but also lecturers from other departments of the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as lecturers of the University of Zagreb and other Croatian universities.

Module A: Compulsory Language Exercise Courses/Seminars

Language exercise courses and seminars are organized in the form of compressed university courses. Participants are grouped into language exercise courses according to their knowledge of the Croatian language. The courses are designed to further improve certain grammatical, conversational and other skills necessary for everyday as well as expert communication in the Croatian language.

Participants who have full linguistic competence can attend seminars. They cover selected literary and comparative topics.

Each participant can participate in one compulsory language exercise course or seminar from the five listed below.

Language exercise courses:

1. Croatian for beginners (level A1)
2. Conversation I (levels A2+ B1)
3. Conversation II (level B2)
4. Conversation III (level C1 + C2)

Seminar:

5. Seminar on contemporary Croatian literature

The beginner's language exercise course lasts 4 hours a day and other compulsory language exercise courses and seminars last 3 hours a day.

Module B: Elective Language Exercise Course/Seminar

Apart from the compulsory language exercise courses/seminars students may take up one elective course from the two offered below:

1. Old Slavic and Old Croatian language (Glagolitic paleography)
2. Croatian history and culture

Electives last 1 hour a day.

Module C: Lectures

Lectures are organized into two theme cycles, each containing five lectures.

The linguistic cycle of lectures titled Time in Language, which takes place in the first week of the Seminar, consists of five lectures which will discuss the following topics: the temporality in the Croatian language, the system of tenses, expressing temporal relations via case forms and case and preposition phrases, temporal relations in the complex sentence and temporal meanings and the vocabulary. The linguistic cycle will be coordinated by Professor Dr. Ivo Pranjković.

The cycle of lectures titled Writing Degree Zero will describe and interpret the poetic footings of the Croatian literature in the first decade of the 21st century and sketch out the sociocultural context in which this literature takes place. The 2000s in Croatia were marked by the democratization of the society and the establishing of political stability but also by recession, the crisis of values and the tabloid aesthetics. While the literature at the beginning of the decade is qualified mainly as reality-oriented, the poetic labels that prevail in the following years are autobiographical, humorous, generic, blogger's, feminine, chick-lit etc. Following the minimalist nineties, the narrative fiction of the new millennium is marked by a sudden boom of the novel, the poetry by the coexistance of various lyrical concepts ranging from confessional to concretistic discourse, and the drama by the new inquieries into the relationship of text and its performance. The literary situation of the 2000s is shaped, among other things, by the processes of mediatization and popularization (FAK), marginalization of literary criticism and a rapid development of the new technologies and new communication frames (Internet, blog, reality show, hypertext). The cycle of lectures Writing Degree Zero will attempt to depict the layers of the Croatian literary contemporaneity, emphasize what and why the Croatian authors did anew, and where they pursue the literary experiences of the previous decades. The cycle will be coordinated by Professor Dr. Krešimir Bagić.

Module D: Facultative Programme

The facultative programme takes place in the afternoon. It includes screenings of Croatian feature films, as well as organized sightseeing tours of the City of Dubrovnik. Participants interested in Croatian traditional music will have the opportunity to enrol in the music workshop.

Module E: Cultural Events

Apart from the location-specific lectures on Croatian cultural tradition, the School's participants will have an opportunity to meet contemporary Croatian writers as well as attend music and film nights. These events will introduce the School's participants to the recent cultural developments and inform them of Croatian literary, artistic and cultural contemporariness.

Daily schedule during the Zagreb School of Slavic Studies Seminar

Field trips

Field trips are a natural sequence of the afore-mentioned events. They are thematically conceived and are organized by expert guides. Since the School takes place in Dubrovnik, a field trip will take participants to the Elafit islands.