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Biography
I graduated with BA in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade (2001). I received my MA (2003) and PhD (2006) degrees from the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Nottingham. My lectureship in Slavonic Studies at this department started in 2007 and I have been teaching modules in Serbian and Croatian Studies (literature, cinema and visual arts) and literary theory.
Expertise Summary
Southeast European Studies (former Yugoslavia)
Comparative literature
Literary theory
Memory Studies
Teaching Summary
R81108 The Clash of Empires: Introduction to Balkan Cultural Identities
R82083 Serbian and Croatian Literature in the 19th Century
R82084 Serbian and Croatian Literature in the 20th… read more
Research Summary
I participate in a joint research project that uses critical discourse analysis to explore the gradual build-up and structure of violent verbal/visual imagery in political and media discourse as a… read more
Current Research
I participate in a joint research project that uses critical discourse analysis to explore the gradual build-up and structure of violent verbal/visual imagery in political and media discourse as a rhetorical prelude to the wars in the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, I am preparing a draft for a monograph Literature beyond Exilium based on my PhD thesis, and working on spin-off articles about legal, literary and cinematic representations of banishment.
Past Research
In my MA thesis 'Transformation and Transference of Legend in Short Stories by Danilo Kiš', I explored how the legendary narratives in literary texts reflect the underlying tensions between the poetical and ethical concerns of the Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš. The thesis was subsequently published as a monograph Kis, legenda i prica (Belgrade: Narodna knjiga 2005). In my PhD thesis 'Literature beyond Exilium: Inscriptions of Enforced Displacement' I undertook an interdisciplinary and comparative enquiry into the rhetoric nature of the concept of exile and its reverberations in the autobiographic works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vladimir Nabokov, Milos Crnjanski and Danilo Kiš.
Future Research
In the next phase of my research I intend to pursue the same methodological approach and transfer it to the field of an analogous social practice, internal displacement, especially as it was utilised by the authoritarian regimes of East and South-East Europe. I will examine and compare a series of literary texts from Balkan and Russian literature which reflect an elaborate system of social and political punishments by means of spatial distance. They range from home imprisonment to castigatory removal from urban into rural areas, to penitentiary colonies in previously uninhabited regions. The main goal is to test the possibility of a pervasive rhetorical code, or set of codes, which informs the discourses of and/or about displaced persons in both external exile and internal displacement.