ISH Monitor

Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Monitor ISH has been published twice a year since 2001. It publishes original scientific articles in the humanities and social sciences — from anthropology and history to linguistics, cultural studies, and feminist theory — in Slovenian and English.

The journal connects Slovenian and international researchers and encourages interdisciplinary dialogue. It publishes contributions by established researchers as well as younger authors. All articles are open access and published under a Creative Commons license.

The journal is indexed in ERIH PLUS and IBZ and is included in the Digital Library of Slovenia.

ISSN 1580-688X  ·  e-ISSN 1580-7118  ·  Media register entry number: 272

Current issue

Volume XXVII, Issue 2 (2025) A thematic issue devoted to questions of collective memory, border studies, post-conflict societies, and transnational migrations. 174 pages, 7 contributions in English and Slovenian. Contents: Petra Hamer — Between Camp and Cross: Ambiguity, Memory, and Commemoration in Trnopolje Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen — Constructing the Discursive Frontiers: A Discourse-Theoretical Analysis of the Blue Homeland Doctrine Evgeny Romanovskiy — Dagestan De-constructed: Failed Multiculturalism and Internal Borders Mayurakshi Das — Liminal Lives: Violence, Peace, and Urban Belonging in Calcutta, 1946–1992 Maja Zadel — Everyday Nationhood and the Border(scape): Slovenian Istria and Italian Media Consumption Zarja Rustja — Fingerprint between surveillance and resistance: biometrics and the autonomy of migration in the European Union Ana Ješe Perković — Transnational social spaces of descendants of Bosnian immigrants in Slovenia Download PDF

Classic works from the archive

MARTIN JAIGMA, If Thou Lackest Knowledge, What Hast Thou Acquired?

Social Mobility of Estonian and Jewish Communities in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries — a Comparative Study (If you lack knowledge, what have you acquired at all? Social mobility of Estonian and Slovenian Jewish communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — a comparative study), Monitor ISH, 2008, Volume X, special issue, 220 pages, EUR 15.50.

"A Jewish shoemaker made a pair of shoes for his son and hung them up on the telephone wire: 'Let the shoes go now to Russia for my son to wear!' A passer-by saw this, took down the shoes and found them good to wear too." This folkloric tale from 19th-century Livonia tells in a humorous way how the Jews in Eastern and Central Europe were, against all the odds and despite many setbacks, frequently in the vanguard of human ingenuity and resourcefulness. They often had to walk thorny paths in order to gain social acceptance and respected positions, and in the modern era, the primary tool for Jews to achieve these objectives was education. The stories of Slovenian and Estonian Jewish intelligentsia and Jewish communities before World War II are exciting illustrations to this pattern. The main protagonists of the tale are the Jewish students of the Ljubljana and Tartu universities.

The comparative study focuses on the different social paths and activities of Jewish communities in Estonia and Slovenia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with an emphasis on the period between the two world wars. It places special focus on the personal data of Jewish students at the universities of Tartu and Ljubljana, thereby examining the group characteristics of one of the most socially mobile parts of society — the intelligentsia. During modernization, aspirations for education were undoubtedly a necessary and valuable investment for upward social mobility.

MARJANA HARCET, Allah's brides

ISH: special issue of the journal Monitor ISH, Ljubljana 2007, 120 pages, EUR 12.50.

Marjana Harcet’s work Allah's brides brings a series of new insights into the Slovenian context and dismantles many prejudices and generalizations regarding the role of Islam in shaping female identity. The author presents and analyzes the innovations and improvements that Islam brought with regard to women’s image and status. In doing so, she refutes generalizations according to which Islam would, a priori, oppress women. The author’s contextual and historical approach offers the possibility of understanding the reasons and circumstances that led to the hegemony of one or another interpretation of sacred texts. Harcet shows where the possibilities lie for a productive dialogue between Islam and feminist theories.
This is the first original Slovenian work that provides concrete portrayals of the position of women in Islam, which can contribute to dismantling many prejudices and generalizations that otherwise characterize understandings of Islam in today’s climate of tensions between the Western and Islamic worlds. It emphasizes the importance of learning about Islamic customs, which is the first step toward coexistence in a globalized and multicultural world.

Editorial team

Editors-in-chief
prof. dr. Lenart Škof
assoc. prof. dr. Barbara Gornik
assoc. prof. dr. Luka Trebežnik

Editorial board
Nadja Furlan Štante · Matej Hriberšek · Petra Kleindienst · Eva Klemenčič Mirazchiyski · Sebastjan Kristovič · Aleš Maver · Svebor Sečak · Tone Smolej · Rok Svetlič · Verica Trstenjak

International advisory board
Rosi Braidotti (University Utrecht)
Maria-Cecilia D'Ercole (Université de Paris I — Sorbonne)
Marie-Élizabeth Ducroux (EHESS, Paris)
Daša Duhaček (Center for Women's Studies, FPN, Belgrade)
François Lissarrague (EHESS, Centre Louis Gernet, Paris)
Lisa Parks (UC Santa Barbara)
Miodrag Šuvaković (Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade)

Publisher: Alma Mater Europaea University — Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis, Faculty of Humanities, Ljubljana
For the publisher: Jurij Toplak

Indexing

Monitor ISH is included in the following databases:

• dLib.si — Digital Library of Slovenia
• ERIH PLUS — European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences
• IBZ — Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur

License

All contributions in the journal are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. © Authors.