Forging the Bubikopf Nation

The era between World Wars I and II set East-Central Europe on a path of a modernization that was opening up numerous possibilities for challenging the regions traditional politics and established gender roles. In interwar Yugoslavia, questions of ethnically driven nationalism dominated the public discourse, but the modernizing processes of industrialization and rising consumerism also opened up a small public space for the development of the womens press. The intuitive and change-driven Croatian journalist and novelist Marija Juri Zagorka led this parallel and alternative public discourse in Yugoslavias most popular interwar womens magazine, enski list. Forging the Bubikopf Nation is a book about this magazine, its editor, and its readers as well as about the alternative visions of modernity that they were offering to the magazines readers, both throughout Yugoslavia and within the diasporic communities in the United States and Canada during the thirteen years of the magazines existence from 1925-1938. Sensitively written, but researched with great methodological rigor and from a range of theoretical perspectives, this is a must-read book for all of those who are interested in mass communication, history, gender, and politics and for those who want to better understand this pivotal time in the history of a highly complex and intriguing part of the world.