Associate Professor of Comparative Literature; Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures
About
Areas of research: 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.
Languages: Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, native), working knowledge of French, Italian, Latin, Modern Greek.
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). 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.
Select Publications:
Monograph
Sacrificed Body: Balkan Community Building and the Limits of Freedom.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013.
Edited Volume
Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans, Tatjana Aleksic, ed.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Ltd., UK, 2007.
Select Articles
“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 Sacrificed Subject of Rhea Galanaki’s Ismail Ferik Pasha.”
Journal of Modern Greek Studies 27:1 (May 2009): 31-54.
“Extricating the Self from History: Bait by David Albahari.”
MMLA Journal 39:2 (Fall 2006): 54-70.
Book Chapters
“Making Patriarchal History Women’s Own: Eugenia Fakinou’s The Seventh Garment.” Myth and Violence in Contemporary Female Text: New Cassandras, Sanja Bahun-Radunovic, Julie Rajan, eds.
Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2011, 143-160.
“Grief Can only Be Written in One’s Mother Tongue.” Literature of Exile, Agnieszka Gutty, ed.
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.
“Mythistorical Genres of the Nation,” Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans, Tatjana Aleksic, ed.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Ltd., UK, 2007, 1-11.
“The Balkan Immurement Legend: Between Myth and a Nationalist Project,” Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans, Tatjana Aleksic, ed.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Ltd., UK, 2007, 87-106.
Affiliation(s)
- Comparative Literature, CREES, Slavic Languages & Literatures
