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

Milina Jovanović

Milina Jovanović came to the U.S. from Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1994. She holds a J.D. and a double master’s in interdisciplinary Social Sciences from the University of Belgrade and San José State University. She was a teaching assistant and a research associate at the Sociological and Criminological Institute in Belgrade between 1986 and 1994. As a graduate researcher in the U.S. she compared women’s education and employment in California and Yugoslavia and published the results of her research. Milina contributed to a nationally recognized study on immigrant contributions and integration practices in Santa Clara County (Bridging Borders in Silicon Valley), and co-edited KIN: Knowledge of Immigrant Nationalities. Her book All Roads Lead to Jackson: Serbian American Contributions in Amador County, CA since the Gold Rush was published in 2013 by Sebastian Press. Jovanović’s articles have appeared in Serbia, other parts of the former Yugoslavia, U.S., U.K., Belgium, and France.

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She has worked with Santa Clara County’s Office of Human Relations (San Jose, CA) since 1999, monitoring human rights, designing programs for immigrants, and providing mediation services. Her professional interests and publications include: Women and Gender Studies, Ecofeminism, history of immigration & history of Yugoslavs in the U.S., EU & U.S. foreign policy, Ethnic Studies, political history of Yugoslavia, Sociology of Law, and Sociology of Love.

In addition to her regular work, she is a community activist, environmentalist, yoga teacher, and poet. Her first collection of poems A Dog Violet in My Hair was published in 2007.


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People Directory

Mirjana Joković

Mirjana Joković (Serbian Cyrillic: Мирјана Јоковић) (born November 24, 1967) is a Serbian film and stage actress, best known for her role as Natalija Zovkov in Underground, the film of Emir Kusturica (1995). She currently is Director of Performance for Acting and an acting teacher in the Theater Faculty of the California Institute of the Arts near Los Angeles.

Mirjana Jokovic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. She spent her early years in Zambia, where her father was an industrial engineer.

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Publishing

Sailors of the Sky

A conversation with Fr. Stamatis Skliris and Fr. Marko Rupnik on contemporary Christian art

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0