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James M. Robertson

James M. Robertson

Associate Professor of History, School of Humanities

Biography

James M. Robertson, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History in the School of Humanities at the University of California Irvine. A scholar of the intellectual and cultural history of Eastern Europe, Robertson focuses on the history of Yugoslav socialism, examining the relationship between literature, politics, and spatial theory from the late nineteenth century through the dissolution of Yugoslavia. His research explores how socialist thought operated across different scales—from the local to the global—and investigates the intersections of modernism, political theology, and revolutionary internationalism in the Balkans.

Robertson is the author of Mediating spaces: literature, politics and the scales of Yugoslav socialism, 1870-1995, published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2024. His articles have appeared in journals including Slavic Review, Modern Intellectual History, and the Journal of the History of Ideas. His work examines topics such as self-management culture in postwar Yugoslavia, the relationship between phenomenology and Catholic socialism in Yugoslav Slovenia, and the role of modernism in navigating the postwar liberal order. Robertson has also contributed translations from Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene to English and has written for public-facing outlets including Jacobin.

Robertson served as Assistant Professor of History at UC Irvine from 2018 to 2024 and previously held positions at Woodbury University and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in History from New York University in 2014. At UC Irvine, Robertson teaches courses on world communism, Eastern European history, nations and nationalism, and global radicalism, and coordinates the graduate student workshop in the History Department.

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Education

  • Ph.D. in History, New York University, 2014
  • B.A. in History and Philosophy (Honours 1 in History), University of Sydney, 2007
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Areas of Expertise

  • Eastern European History
  • Intellectual History
  • Socialism and Communism
  • Modernist Literary Movements
  • Critical Geography
  • Theories of Temporality

Recent Publications

  • “Mediating spaces: literature, politics and the scales of Yugoslav socialism, 1870-1995”, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024.
  • “Mediating spaces: the scales of Yugoslav socialist thought” (opens in new tab), Modern Intellectual History, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 728-751, 2024.
  • “Dir. KURS/Miloš Jovanović. Waterfront: A Post-Ottoman, Post-Socialist Story. Belgrade/Göttingen/Los Angeles: KURS and MPI-MMG, 2018. Color. 55 minutes”, Slavic Review, vol. 83, no. 2, pp. 368-369, 2024.
  • “Edvard Kocbek, embodiment, and a personalist rapprochement with communism”, Christian modernity and Marxist secularism in East Central Europe: between conflict and cooperation, Srednja Evropa, pp. 177-196, 2023.
  • “Small socialism: the scales of self-management culture in postwar Yugoslavia” (opens in new tab), Slavic Review, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 563-584, 2021.
  • “Navigating the postwar liberal order: autonomy, creativity and modernism in socialist Yugoslavia, 1949-53” (opens in new tab), Modern Intellectual History, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 385-412, 2020.
  • “Communism as religious phenomenon: phenomenology and Catholic socialism in Yugoslav Slovenia, 1927-1942” (opens in new tab), Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 279-301, 2020.
  • “Dispatches from the appendix of Europe: Miroslav Krleža's abject modernism”, Papers on Language and Literature, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 227-255, 2019.
  • “Joseph Grim Feinberg, The paradox of authenticity: folklore performance in post-communist Slovakia (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2018)”, Contradictions/Kontradikce: A Journal for Critical Theory, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 231-235, 2019.
  • “Modi's Philosopher: an interview with Vinayak Chaturvedi”, Jacobin, 2019.
  • “Literature, revolution and national aesthetics on the interwar Yugoslav left”, Nationalities Papers, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 301-317, 2018.
  • “The socialist world in the second age of globalization: an alternative history?”, Markets, Globalization and Development Review, vol. 3, no. 2, 2018.
  • “From Enver Hoxha to Bill Clinton”, Jacobin, 2018.
  • “Down with the pipe and the poodle!: Yugoslavia, 1968”, Verso Blog, 2018.
  • “Marksismi pärand Ida-Euroopas, 1918–2018”, Vikerkaar, 2018.
  • “Imagining the Balkans as a space of revolution: the federalist vision of Serbian socialism, 1870-1914”, East European Politics and Societies, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 402-425, 2017.
  • “Modernity, tradition and the state in early Soviet history”, Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 59, no. 3-4, pp. 396-401, 2017.
  • “Transgression as ends and means: the trial of Kaur Kender”, Left East, 2017.
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Contact Information

Email: jamesmr1@uci.edu

Phone: (949) 824-6522

Address: 263 Krieger Hall

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This profile was created with the help of AI.

Last updated on 6/25/2026.