[alst-l] Everyone, welcome to ALST-L!

[Besnik Pula]

Hello,

I hope all of you have had a good holiday season and I wish everyone a Happy
New Year. I also wanted to welcome everyone to the ALST-L list.

As you know, this list was created to facilitate communication between those
interested in or professionally engaged in the field of Albanian Studies.
What I mean here by Albanian Studies is loosely defined as the study of
Albania or Albanians through the various fields of social science:
linguistics, sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, etc.

As you may know, Albanian Studies is quite a small field of study in the
West, but fortunately in this list we have gathered a small number of good
representatives of all these fields. We have committed professionals and
scholars who actively publish scholarly articles, essays, and books about
Albania and Albanians. We have students, such as myself, who are interested
and wish to learn more about Albanian Studies. And we have many others who
are not directly involved in Albanian Studies, but simply interested in the
field. And finally, we have geographic diversity as members are located in
Albania, Central and Western European states, and the United States.

Although I do not have any great aspirations for this list (i.e. I'm not
planning for us to revolutionize Albanian Studies from here), I still hope
that we will all use this list to our advantage, exchange thoughts, ideas,
and information, and perhaps help each other with locating sources and
information, giving feedback or whatever it may be. This list should be a
useful networking tool for all of us. Although I personally favor English or
Albanian, feel free to use any language you may like, as long as the
discussions conform to reasonable norms of civility. The list is unmoderated
for the time being, just to keep the atmosphere open (and make my life
easier :)), but in case there are attempts at obstruction or things just get
out of hand (as can sometimes happen in that impersonal way of communicating
called e-mail), that may change.

Just to get things going, let me start by introducing myself. I am currently
an M.A. candidate at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, in the Center
for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies, majoring in Government and
minoring in History and Ethnic and Social Issues. I received my B.A. in
political science from Hunter College in New York City in 1998. I
occassionally write for the Koha Ditore daily in Prishtina, as a
correspondent from Washington, dealing mainly with U.S. policy towards the
crisis in Kosova.

I am originally from Prishtina, Kosova, so my interest in the developments
in Kosova, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, and the Balkans in general is
natural, if you will. My current and long time fascination has been
ethnicity and nationalism and the development of nationalism in the Balkans,
its social and political aspects. I am also interested in theories of regime
transition, economic transformation, and post-communist society in general.

If you like, please send a brief introduction about yourself to the list,
just so that we can start in a somewhat friendly manner. Just in case you're
wondering, the data that has been sent to me by subscribers will be used
only for the records of the list and will not be made public.

In the end, I ask all of you to do some campaigning on behalf of this list,
and invite all those who may be interested to join.

Enjoy your stay!

Besnik


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