The other Europe: Locating Albania in contemporary European discourse.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Taking as its point of departure the border anxieties of post-Cold War Europe as they emerge in attempts to both expand and secure the perimeter of the European Union, this dissertation examines the rhetorical construction, in fiction, film, polemic, and policy papers, of one such margin--Albania--in the contemporary moment. The dissertation brings together internal Albanian debates on European integration, official EU communications that define the relationship between the EU and its immediate outside, Ismail Kadare's novel The Three-Arched Bridge, set on the verge of Albania's Ottoman occupation, and a quartet of films, Theo Angelopoulos's Balkan film trilogy ( The Suspended Step of the Stork, Ulysses' Gaze, Eternity and a Day) and Gianni Amelio's Lamerica, in which the figure of the refugee haunts the Albanian border. In all these texts Albania emerges as the location of profound anxieties of identity and proximity, both internally, in debates over European belonging, and externally, where the familiar figuration of Albania-as-bridge suspended between East and West constitutes a threat (illegal migration, for example) that must be contained.