A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Tatjana Aleksic

Tatjana Aleksic received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University in 2007 and has been teaching at the University of Michigan since 2007. She is the editor of Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans (2007). Additional publications include articles on nationalism, gender, language, and myth and translations into Serbian of short fiction, haiku, and medical textbooks.  She is the recipient of research awards from the University of Michigan (2008), Serbian Ministry for the Diaspora (2008), and a Rutgers University Dean’s fellowship (2002-2004).

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She is active in National Association for Slavic Studies, the American Comparative Literature Association, and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Ongoing projects include a book manuscript on sacrifice, the body, and the nation.  Teaching interests in Comparative Literature include undergraduate courses on twentieth-century culture and history, women and myth, and graduate seminars on nationalism, and poststructuralist theory.

Languages:

  • Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, native), working knowledge of French, Italian, Latin, Modern Greek.

Affiliation(s):

  • Comparative Literature, CREES, Slavic Languages & Literatures

Fields of Study:

  • Literary Theory
  • Postmodern Fiction
  • Contemporary Balkan literature, with an emphasis on Serbian and Modern Greek fiction
  • Balkan Film
  • Myth, History, and Memory
  • Nationalism
  • Postcolonialism
  • Exile
  • Issues of Identity
  • Gender Issues
  • Music

Select Publications:

  • Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans, ed. Tatjana Aleksic (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007)
  • “Making Patriarchal History Women’s Own: Eugenia Fakinou’s The Seventh Garment.” Forthcoming in Sanja Bahun-Radunovic and Julie Rajan, eds., Myth and Violence in Contemporary Female Text: New Cassandras, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010.
  • “Southeast European Novel,” Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel,  ed. Peter Logan, 2010.
  • “National Definition through Postmodern Fragmentation: Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars,” Slavic and East European Journal (SEEJ) 53:1 (Spring 2009): 86-104.
  • “The Emerging Subject of Rhea Galanaki’s Ismail Ferik Pasha,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 27:1 (May 2009): 31-54.
  • “Grief Can only Be Written in One’s Mother Tongue.” Literature of Exile, ed. Agnieszka Gutty (New York, Berlin: Peter Lang Publishing, 2009) 155-175.
  • “Disintegrating Narratives and Nostalgia in Post-Yugoslav Postmodern Fiction.” Balkan Literatures in the Era of Nationalism, Murat Belge, Jale Parla, eds. Istanbul, Turkey: Bilgi University Press, 2009, 3-14.
  • “Extricating the Self from History: Bait by David Albahari.” MMLA Journal 39:2 (Fall 2006): 54-70.
  • Review of Lorraine Mortimer, Terror and Joy: The Films of Dušan Makavejev in The Slavic Review (Summer, 2010).
  • Review of Danilo Kiš, Mansarda, tr. John Cox in World Literature Today (March/April 2009): 68-9.
  • Review of Dubravka Ugrešic, Lend Me Your Character, tr. Celia Hawkesworth and Michael Henry Heim in Balkanistica 20, (Spring 2007): 185-187.

Education:

  • 2002 MA in English Literature and Theory, University Of Nis, Serbia
  • 2007 Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Rutgers University

Book:

  • (2013) The Sacrificed Body

From: Slavic Languages & Literatures


SA

 

People Directory

Jelena Vidovic

Jelena Vidovic was born on February 7th, 1997. She came to the United States at the age of 5 with her parents and started playing tennis at the age of 9. With six short months of tennis experience, she entered her first tournament and placed first in both singles and doubles. When she was in high school, she did the Running Start program. Freshman and sophomore year, she took Advanced Placement classes at her high school and her junior and senior year; she took classes at a community college. This allowed her to earn her high school diploma and Associate’s Degree at the same time. She continued playing tennis throughout high school as the number 1 player all four years and she had opportunity to play Division I tennis. Being an excellent student, she decided to play at a private Division III university to focus on her academics. Studying at a private university is extremely rigorous, but she was still able to graduate in 3 years at a 4-year Public Health program​. She lives in Vancouver, Oregon with her parents, Desimir and Duja​.

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Publishing

Holy Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan

by Bishop Athanasius (Yevtich)

In 2013 Christian world celebrates 1700 years since the day when the Providence of God spoke through the holy Emperor Constantine and freedom was given to the Christian faith. Commemorating the 1700 years since the Edict of Milan of 313, Sebastian Press of the Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church published a book by Bishop Athanasius Yevtich, Holy Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan. The book has 72 pages and was translated by Popadija Aleksandra Petrovich. This excellent overview of the historical circumstances that lead to the conversion of the first Christian emperor and to the publication of a document that was called "Edict of Milan", was originally published in Serbian by the Brotherhood of St. Simeon the Myrrh-gusher, Vrnjci 2013. “The Edict of Milan” is calling on civil authorities everywhere to respect the right of believers to worship freely and to express their faith publicly.

The publication of this beautiful pocket-size, full-color, English-language book, has been compiled and designed by Bishop Athanasius Yevtich, a disciple of the great twentieth-century theologian Archimandrite Justin Popovich. Bishop Athanasius' thought combines adherence to the teachings of the Church Fathers with a vibrant faith, knowledge of history, and a profound experience of Christ in the Church.

In the conclusion of the book, the author states:"The era of St. Constantine and his mother St. Helena, marks the beginning of what history refers to as Roman, Christian Empire, which was named Byzantium only in recent times in the West. In fact, this was the conception of a Christian Europe. Christian Byzantine culture had a critical effect on Europe; Europe was its heir, and then consciously forgot it. Europe inherited many Byzantine treasures, but unfortunately, also robbed and plundered many others for its own treasuries and museums – not only during the Crusades, but during colonial rule in the Byzantine lands as well. We, the Orthodox Slavs, received a great heritage of the Orthodox Christian East from Byzantium. Primarily, Christ’s Gospel, His faith and His Church, and then, among other things, the Cyrillic alphabet, too."