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Maria Nikolaeva Todorova (Bulgarian: Мария Николаева Тодорова) (born 5 January 1949, Sofia) is a Bulgarian historian who is best known for her influential book, Imagining the Balkans, in which she applies Edward Said's notion of "Orientalism" to the Balkans. She is the daughter of historian and politician Nikolai Todorov, who was Speaker of the National Assembly of Bulgaria (July 1990 – 2 October 1991) and acting President of Bulgaria in July 1990.[1]
Professor Maria Todorova is currently the Edward William & Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[2] She specializes in the history of the Balkans in the modern period. Her book Imagining the Balkans (1997) has been translated into fourteen languages, including German, Polish, Greek, Italian, Bulgarian, Turkish, and Albanian.[3]
Todorova's current research revolves around problems of nationalism, especially the symbolism of nationalism, national memory and national heroes in Bulgaria and the Balkans. Between 2007 and 2010, she also led an international research team of scholars on the project Remembering Communism.[4]
She studied history and English at the University of Sofia, and obtained her PhD in 1977. Maria Todorova was subsequently adjunct and visiting professor at various institutions, including Sabancı University in Istanbul and the University of Florida (where she was also professor). She was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000.[5] In 2006, Maria Todorova was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.[6] In 2022, Maria Todorova was inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [7] Todorova also won the 2022 Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Award from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in recognition of her teaching, scholarship, service to the field, and position as "arguably the foremost historian of southeastern Europe in the world today."[8]
Todorova is well known for her work concerning the history of the Balkans. Her groundbreaking work, Imagining the Balkans deals with the region's inconsistent (but usually negative) image inside Western culture, as well as with the paradoxes of cultural reference and its assumptions. In it, she develops a theory of Balkanism or Nesting Balkanisms,[9] similar to Edward Said's Orientalism and Milica Bakić-Hayden's Nesting Orientalisms. She has said of the book:
The central idea of Imagining the Balkans is that there is a discourse, which I term Balkanism, that creates a stereotype of the Balkans, and politics is significantly and organically intertwined with this discourse. When confronted with this idea, people may feel somewhat uneasy, especially on the political scene ... The most gratifying response to me came from a very good British journalist, Misha Glenny, who has written well and extensively on the Balkans. He said, 'You know, now that I look back, I have been guilty of Balkanism,' which was a really honest intellectual response.[10]
Her publications include:
Todorova has also edited volumes, and numerous articles and essays on social and cultural history, historical demography, and historiography of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2017, she has been awarded an Honorary Doctor by Panteion University in Athens.[11]
