As part of the first event in the annual lecture series Community – Culture – Movement: Global Perspectives, Ana Hofman’s book Socialism Now: Singing Activism after Yugoslavia will be presented in English.
Ana Hofman’s book, published in 2025, examines the resurgence of socialist ideas, memories and political concepts. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, Hofman analyses the self-organised choirs that have emerged across the territory of the former Yugoslavia over the past two decades, and examines how the practice of singing functions as a tool for social critique and as a form of political action.
The discussion will be introduced by Kristóf Nagy, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Research on Adult Education and Knowledge Managementat ELTE PPK.
Ana Hofman is a folk music researcher and anthropologist, and a scientific adviser at the Institute for Culture and Memory Studies (ZRC SAZU) of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her research focuses on processes of memory politics, affect and activism in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, as explored through music, with particular attention to issues of labour, gender, class and political economy. In recent years, she has been a visiting researcher at, amongst others, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the CUNY Graduate Center and King’s College London. Her previous monographs in English include Staging Socialist Femininity: Gender Politics and Folklore Performances in Serbia (Brill, 2011) and Music, Affect, Politics: New Lives of Partisan Songs (ZRC Publishing, 2015; Serbian translation: Biblioteka XX vek, 2016).
The event was organised with the support of the Scientific Council of Eötvös Loránd University.