Biography

Anita Buhin works as a Junior Researcher on the project ‘Performing Mediterranean masculinities: sex, tourism and gender in Yugoslavia, Italy and Portugal 1960s-1980s‘. She will analyse how local male youth from Mediterranean regions (Dalmatia in Yugoslavia, Algarve in Portugal and Romagna in Italy) shaped their masculinities through sexual and romantic encounters with female foreign tourists. Due to ideological differences, this project will also inquire into the role of the state and collective understanding of what acceptable (hegemonic) masculinity was, and how youthful Mediterranean masculinities were related to the mainstream.

She obtained her PhD at the European University Institute in 2019, and after that she collaborated as a researcher at the Centre for Cultural and Historical Research of Socialism at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, where she was also a lecturer. She is mostly interested in cultural history of socialist Yugoslavia in Mediterranean context, focusing on the relations of popular culture and tourism.

She presented her work on numerous conferences and published papers in English and Croatian. She published her first volume “Yugoslav Socialism ‘Flavoured with Sea, Flavoured with Salt’: Mediterranization of Yugoslav Popular Culture in the 1950s and 1960s under Italian Influences” (Srednja Europa: Zagreb, 2022), translated in Croatian in 2024 (Srednja Europa: Zagreb, 2024).

Research fields

• Cultural history
• Socialism
• Tourism
• Gender and sexuality

Selected publications

• Buhin, Anita, “In search of national style: Yugoslav popular music between the Balkans and the Mediterranean,” in The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans, edited by Catherine Baker, 312–326. London: Routledge, 2024. [link]
• Buhin, Anita. Yugoslav Socialism. “Flavoured with Sea, Flavoured with Salt”. Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2022. [link]
• Buhin, Anita, “”Melodies from the Adriatic:” Mediterranean Influence in Zabavna Music Festivals of the 1950s and 1960s,” in Made in Yugoslavia. Studies in Popular Music, editado por Danijela Š. Beard e Ljerka V. Rasmussen, 25-36. London: Routledge, 2020. [link]
• Buhin, Anita. “Love and fashion: musical comedy and Yugoslav dolce vita,” Studies in Eastern European Cinema 10 (2019): 96-110. [link]
• Buhin, Anita. ““A Romantic, Southern Myth”: ‘One Day’ by the Troubadours of Dubrovnik,” TheMA – Open Access Research Journal for Theatre, Music, Arts 4 (2015): https://www.thema-journal.eu/index.php/thema/article/view/18. [link] 🔓

Main projects

• Individual project “Performing Mediterranean masculinities: sex, tourism and gender in Yugoslavia, Italy and Portugal 1960s-1980s” — Hosted by the IHC and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (2023.08114.CEECIND). 2024-2030
• Postdoctoral project “Galebovi – Yugoslav Mediterranean Casanovas in the Time of Mass Tourism” — Hosted by the IHC and funded by the IHC, with funds from the Foundation for Science and Technology. 2022-2024
• Researcher in the project “Microstructures of Yugoslav Socialism: Croatia 1970-1990 (Microsocialism)” — Coordinated by Igor Duda (Juraj Dobrila University of Pula) and funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. 2018-2023 [link]
• Researcher in the project “Making of the Socialist Man. Croatian Society and the Ideology of Yugoslav Socialism” — Coordinated by Igor Duda (Juraj Dobrila University of Pula) and funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. 2014-2017 [link]