In memory of the philosopher Miladin Životić, the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade awards the Prize for Critical Engagement to leading theorists whose work has a significant impact on social practice.
The Institute’s Scientific Council, upon the recommendation of the Commission, has decided that the 2024 award will be presented to Maria Todorova (Мария Тодорова), Emeritus Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (https://history.illinois.edu/directory/profile/mtodorov).
Maria Todorova is one of the world’s most prominent historians and theorists, originally from the Balkans. In her works, she has described the centuries-old tradition of stereotyping the Balkans in the West as inferior and has strongly opposed it, advocating for an equal, inclusive, and culturally sensitive approach to the Balkans and its peoples.
Maria Todorova is a historian whose work combines intellectual history, comparative history, Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history), quantitative history, family history, and microhistory, initiating debates on fundamental questions of her intellectual era. In an article marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Guardian editorial described her as both a historian and philosopher, an assessment that is entirely accurate. Although her work has consistently focused on a careful reading of the past, Todorova approached history as a problem in itself, where the categories of time and space, along with the ways we think about, perceive, and shape them into images, are of crucial importance. Becoming a prominent theorist at a time when the ability to transcend disciplinary boundaries was highly valued, Todorova emerged as an exemplary figure. This was enabled by her profound erudition, bold and ambitious projects characterized by meticulous historiographical precision, her vast knowledge of languages and cultures, as well as her keen sense of humor and irony. Todorova provided original insights on topics such as otherness, backwardness, nationalism, socialism and postsocialism, (post)coloniality, memory, nostalgia, and emotions – in other words, themes that marked the decades of her active engagement, all of them shaped by a perspective rooted in the Balkans. Not only did she elevate the Balkans into a scientific category with a specific place in the production of knowledge, but she is also credited with the emergence of Balkan studies – an area of study that grants the Balkans its own voice and refuses to allow it to be ‘Balkanized’ from a predominantly Western perspective.