ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the Balkans was shaped as an object for area studies during the Cold War in a process that crossed the East–West as well as North–South divides. It was, to a large extent, promoted by international organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The chapter examines how Southeast European scholars created a specialized organization and a milieu of interaction that generated a counter-circulation of self-representations projected beyond national and regional confines. The institution that mediated these dynamics was the International Association of South-East European Studies (AIESEE), created in Bucharest in 1963. The trigger event for AIESEE was a UNESCO-sponsored colloquium on Balkan civilizations organized in 1962 in Sinaia, Romania. UNESCO’s attempts to push AIESEE into transregional initiatives materialized not only in self-centred discourses but also in projects that brought Southeast European academics closer to their peers in Western Asia and North Africa.
