A moving testimony to the power of literature to bring people together in even the most difficult of circumstances. In the spring of 1999, the world watched as more than 800,000 Kosovo Albanians poured over Kosovo's borders, bringing with them stories of torture, rape, and massacre. One year later, Paula Huntley's husband signed on with the American Bar Association to help build a modern legal system in this broken country, and she reluctantly agreed to accompany him. Deeply uncertain as to how she might be of any service in a country that had seen such violence and hatred, Huntley found a position teaching English as a Second Language to a group of Kosovo Albanians in Prishtina. A war story, a teacher's story, but most of all a story of hope, The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo is the journal Hunt-ley kept in scattered notebooks or on her laptop over the eight months that she lived and worked in Kosovo. When Huntley asked her students if they would like to form an American-style "book club," they jumped at the idea. After stumbling upon a stray English-language copy of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Huntley proposed it as the club's first selection. The simple fable touched all the students deeply, and the club rapidly became a forum in which they could discuss both the terrors of their past and their dreams for the future. The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo is a compelling tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.

A moving testimony to the power of literature to bring people together in even the most difficult of circumstances. In the spring of 1999, the world watched as more than 800,000 Kosovo Albanians poured over Kosovo's borders, bringing with them stories of torture, rape, and massacre. One year later, Paula Huntley's husband signed on with the American Bar Association to help build a modern legal system in this broken country, and she reluctantly agreed to accompany him. Deeply uncertain as to how she might be of any service in a country that had seen such violence and hatred, Huntley found a position teaching English as a Second Language to a group of Kosovo Albanians in Prishtina. A war story, a teacher's story, but most of all a story of hope, The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo is the journal Hunt-ley kept in scattered notebooks or on her laptop over the eight months that she lived and worked in Kosovo. When Huntley asked her students if they would like to form an American-style "book club," they jumped at the idea. After stumbling upon a stray English-language copy of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Huntley proposed it as the club's first selection. The simple fable touched all the students deeply, and the club rapidly became a forum in which they could discuss both the terrors of their past and their dreams for the future. The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo is a compelling tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.

In more than 30 novels, several short stories, graphic novels, movies, plays and poems, Ernest Hemingway has been introduced or "appropriated" as an important fictional character. This book is an inquiry into that phenomenon from various perspectives--including that of fan fiction--and deals with such questions as what, if anything, this biographical fiction adds to the dialogue about America's best known and most talked about writer.

The question of Kosovan sovereignty and independence has a history which stretches far back beyond the outbreak of war in 1998. This volume is a compilation of key documents on Kosovo from the first half of the twentieth century. These texts, including numerous diplomatic despatches from the British Foreign Office, deal initially with the Albanian uprising against Ottoman rule in the spring of 1912 and, in particular, with the period of the Serbian invasion of Kosovo in late 1912 and the repercussions of the conquest for the Albanian population. The documents from 1918 to the early 1920s focus mainly on endeavours by Albanian leaders, including those of the so-called Kosovo Committee in exile, to bring the plight of their people to the attention of the outside world - endeavours which largely failed. Further documents reflect the situation in Kosovo up to the outbreak of World War II. This collection provides new perspectives on the Kosovo question and includes many documents which have been largely unavailable up to now. It sheds new light on many of the major and minor episodes that channelled and determined subsequent events, including the Kosovo War of 1998-1999 and the declaration of independence in February 2008.

As the seventh and probably last state to arise from the ruins of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo is the newest country in Europe. For centuries, Kosovo, also known as Kosova, was part of the Ottoman Empire, and for most of the 20th century, it was a province of what was once Yugoslavia. After the military conflict in 1998-1999 and a period of administration by the United Nations, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. Focusing not only on Kosovo's turbulent recent years, the second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Kosovo also relates the country's rich culture and long history. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, places, and events; institutions and organizations; and political, economic, social, cultural, and religious facets. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Kosovo.

This nine-chapter book narrates a writing-centered approach to the teaching of literature and literary research. As the title suggests, the book also embraces a thematic approach to reading and writing about twentieth-century American literature, focusing on the grounds for hope in an age of despair. The first five chapters explore in detail the teaching of the twentieth-century American literature course at the University of Pristina in Kosovo, where the author served as Fulbright Professor of American Literature in the spring semester of 2012. Throughout, these chapters narrate students’ in-class interactions to illustrate writing-to-learn strategies for teaching the literature.Chapter six then follows the same cohort of 22 students as they learned to ground their literary research in their own questions about American and Balkans narratives of oppression and liberty, of despair and hope. The last three chapters document the responses of students and their professors to this American theme of liberty and hope as seen through the Balkans lenses of ethnic violence and emerging republican government. Specifically, chapter seven focuses on students’ participation in a blog featuring Balkans literature that explores the same issues of liberty and justice examined in the American literature they have read. Chapter eight then celebrates student writing, the fruit of the writing-to-learn strategies narrated in earlier chapters. Finally, chapter nine narrates professors’ and students’ responses, gathered through surveys and interviewing, to questions about their country’s violent past and the value of literary study in preparing citizens to shape a new republic.

Kosova or Kosovo is a dependent region of Serbia, part of the former country of Yugoslavia. It was part of the province of Dalmatia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1919.

The fascinating history of Eastern Europe includes highs of soaring cultural achievement and lows of almost unimaginable repression. But we in the West don’t know much about Eastern Europe or its history—this book helps us see why. We got interested when the region became a threat during the Cold War, but what we learned focused on the Communist period after World War II—not Eastern Europe itself or its deep history, a history that continues to live in the hearts of its peoples. James Payton offers an accessible treatment of the history of the region, an opportunity to learn about Eastern Europeans as they are. He overviews that story from pre-history to the present, examining eleven turning points that profoundly shaped Eastern European history. His treatment considers the backgrounds to the turning points, the events, and the long-lasting impacts they had for the various Eastern European nations. This helps us understand how Eastern Europeans themselves see their history—the “long haul” over the centuries, with the influence and impact of events of the sometimes-distant past shaping how they see themselves, their neighbors, and their place in the world.