Paper short abstract:

The relationship between two very different ethnographers of the early 20th century: Jelica Belović-Bernadzikowska (1870-1945) and F. S. Krauss (1859-1938) reveals the uses of sexuality and gender in the ethnography of the Southern Slavs.

Paper long abstract:

The paper discusses the collaboration between Jelica Belović-Bernadzikowsa (1870-1945) and F.S. Krauss as collectors of both folk songs and textiles after 1910.

Belović was a noted, Croatian-born, amateur ethnographer and journalist who worked in the world of museums and exhibitionary culture in Sarajevo and Zagreb. She helped to establish the ethnographic (textile) collections at Museums in both cities and she also worked to collect and document folk songs. After 1910, she developed a close relationship with the ethnographer Friedrich Salomon Krauss and contributed to his controversial journal Anthropophytia between 1912-1915.

Using archival material in Los Angeles and Sarajevo, this paper presents new information about the collaboration of Belović and Krauss 1910-1927 to light. Memoirs and letters between the two document not only Belović's romantic nationalism and nostalgic approach to collection but also the ways in which she grew to appropriate gender and sexuality as a way of challenging the intellectual and cultural hegemony of Austria in the region.