Andrea Pisac

My doctoral thesis ‘Trusted Tales: creating authenticity in literary representations from ex-Yugoslavia’ (2010) looked at how authority and authenticity are expressed, constructed and appropriated within the literary production on the UK book market. By exploring these classical anthropological concepts through ex-Yugoslav exilic writing, I further focused on how ideas and practices of community were employed and negotiated. My research thus brought together ideas of the author as an authentic, representative, voice and exile as a position which grants the writer a new lease of relevancy in the post-socialist context.

During my PhD I worked at the writers' association English PEN where I promoted foreign fiction in the UK. I learned that ‘world literature’ is often promoted in the English-speaking world by invoking the right to free speech for a persecuted writer. My work has thus looked into how ‘free speech’ is negotiated on the ‘free market’ and which stories, as a result of entrepreneurial efforts of translators, writers and publishers get to be translated and trusted.

Literature has been a subject of my research as much as a point for self-reflection by referring to the literariness of academic genres, such as ethnography, and the social embeddedness of authorship. As a fiction writer, I published two collections of short stories in Croatian: Absence (2001) and Until Death Do Us Part or I Kill You First (2007).

I am currently working as a research fellow with Professor Rebecca Cassidy, Dr Claire Loussouarn and Dr Julie Scott on the ‘Gambling in Europe’ project. My case study looks at the development of casino tourism in Slovenia, particularly along the border with Italy. Gambling is approached as a complex and socially embedded process. My fieldwork will include gamblers and non-gamblers (family members), casino workers and industry professionals. I will focus on how ideas, practices and legislation of gambling create and/or dissolve geographical and symbolic borders. This research, although in a different context, builds on the concepts that I developed during my doctoral thesis: chance, risk-taking, uncertainty and management of skill and luck.

Selected publications

2007. ‘Trusted Tales: Authority and Exile in Literary Representations from the Former Yugoslavia’, Exiled Writers Ink, November Issue. London.

2009. ‘An Accidental Serb’, Index on Censorship, 38(3): 140-9