Department of Sociology, University of Ljubljana
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14 May 2014
Theories of Ideology, a lecture by Rastko Močnik (Department of Sociology, University of Ljubljana), at the 7th Subversive Festival
History
The very first beginnings of Sociology studies date to 1927/28 when the course on Sociology was lectured by the philosopher France Veber. In brief, after sporadic attempts and after the Second World War there were a few courses in Dialectical and Historical materialism, taught by Cene Logar, Vladimir Seliškar and Jože Goričar.
On the initiative of the sociology study group at the Faculty of Arts and on the initiative of Boris Ziherl from the Institute for Sociology, in 1960 the Department of Sociology was formally established. A major reorganisation of the department followed shortly after. The study programme for the independent profession in sociology was transferred to the later established Faculty of Social Sciences. The focus of the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts remained mostly in the general field of educating the future pedagogic workers for sociology and social sciences.
In the years 1981/82 the undergraduate study programme of Sociology of Culture was introduced, the postgraduate study programme followed a year after. It resulted from the interest in sociocultural aspects in the field of humanities and social sciences within the framework of Marxist sociology and historical materialism. The academic staff, especially the late Iztok Saksida, encouraged the research in the field of social anthropology and comparative studies in natural sciences (physical anthropology, palaeoanthropology, biology, and primatology).
The Sociology of Culture programme provided different social science and humanities courses and a body of selected subjects: Women's Studies and Feminist Theory, Sociology of Cinema, Social Anthropology of Music, Sociology of Drama, Theatre and Ritual, Historical Anthropology, Journalistic Genres. Both Sociology programmes offered at the Department of Sociology allowed interdepartmental connections with other majors offered by the University of Ljubljana's Faculty of Arts as well as with Political Science and Journalism from the Faculty of Social Sciences and from the Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana.
Today
Along with the core courses (Introduction to Sociology of Culture, Discursive Analysis, Theory of Ideology, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Media, etc.), the Department has broadened and added several new selected courses in the Sociology of Culture and Sociology (e.g., Sociology of Globalisation, Sociology of Books and Reading, Popular Music, Sociology of Youth Culture, Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies, Lifestyles and Family Practices, Sociology of Intellectualism and Intellectuals, etc.).
Institutional links within Slovenian have been made with the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies in Humanities at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (ISH), the Peace Institute - Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies, in the past connections have been established with the Central European University Budapest, the European Workshop of International Historical Research on Comintern, the University of Bologna, the University of Forli, the European University Institute, Florence, the University of Vienna, the Institut fur Höhere Studien, Vienna, and the University of Strasbourg.
Besides the mentioned international links, the CEEPUS and SOCRATES/ERASMUS student exchange programme is possible at different European universities in: Belgium (Catholic University in Louvain, University of Antwerpen), Italy (University of Bologna), the Netherlands (University of Utrecht), Portugal (University of Lisbon), Slovakia (Comenius University in Bratislava), Spain (University of Salamanca), and Turkey (Boğaziçi University, Gaziantep University).
The Department of Sociology is active in organising guest lecturers, recent international guests have included Zygmunt Bauman, Will Kymlicka, Nira Yuval-Davis, Judith Stacey, Samir Amin, Noam Chomsky and Umberto Eco (lectures are accessible online).
Students at the Department of Sociology are active in the sociology students' association Sociopatija ("Sociopathy"), which organises excursions, lectures and social events.
See also
External links
- Department of Sociology, University of Ljubljana website (in Slovenian)
- Sociology Students Association Sociopatija (in Slovenian)
- Video online library of the lectures by international guests