Transgender in the Post-Yugoslav Space

"This richly textured and important book could not have come at a more welcome time. We have been long aware of the questions we would need to ask to understand the conditions for trans experiences and activism in the post-Yugoslav space, but unable to answer them without recourse to a work of this sensitivity and depth. That work has now arrived." Catherine Baker, University of Hull

“This path-breaking collection of post-Yugoslav transgender scholarship provides vital insight into critical refigurations of trans discourse on Europe’s eastern periphery that we in the West would do well to heed.” Susan Stryker, Executive Editor, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly

"This inspiring volume makes our community stronger, more resilient, and politically more self-reflexive. By doing so, it offers us a platform for responding to the encroachments upon democracy which have been taking place throughout the post-Yugoslav region and beyond." Maja Pan, lesbian feminist activist and independent scholar

"This precious volume combines empathy with knowledge and by doing so promises to augment our possibilities to freely experience and express ourselves in our region that has gone through such harsh times. We need books like this to empower us to live a life without aggression, violence, pathologisation, to encourage us to go beyond those suffocating frames that want to determine who we are and what it is that we can be." Agatha Milan Đurić, Geten, Center for LGBTIQA People's Rights

Bojan Bilić is Lise Meitner Fellow at the University of Vienna and Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna.

Iwo Nord is Lecturer at DIS Study Abroad in Scandinavia and Södertörn University.

Aleksa Milanović is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications at Singidunum University.

Foreword: The Yellow Brick Road of trans queer survival in Yugoslavia and after - Agatha Milan Đurić

Introduction: In post-Yugoslav trans worlds - Bojan Bilić, Iwo Nord, and Aleksa Milanović

Part 1: Lives

1. Transgender lives in North Macedonia: citizenship, violence, and networks of support - Slavcho Dimitrov

2. The resilience of trans existence through solidarity in Montenegro: (non)pathologising narratives of transgender lives - Jovan Ulićević and Čarna Brković

3. Transgender and non-binary persons, mental health, and gender binarism in Serbia - Jelena Vidić and Bojan Bilić

Part 2: Activisms

4. From survival to activism: tracing trans history in Kosovo from the 1970s onwards - Lura Limani

5. Tortuous paths towards trans futures: the trans movement in Slovenia - Martin Gramc

6. (Post)socialist gender troubles: transphobia in Serbian leftist activism - Bojan Bilić

Part 3: Culture

7. Trans artivism in the post-Yugoslav space: resistance and inclusion strategies in action - Aleksa Milanović

8. ‘The truth is what is in the body’: an interview with Aleks Zain - Slađana Branković

9. Queering sevdah: gender-nonconformity in the traditional music of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Tea Hadžiristić