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Serbian Women Writers



Project in Serbian women's literary history awarded!

The research project ?njiženstvo – theory and history of women's writing in Serbian until 1915 has been approved in January 2011 by the Serbian Ministry of Science for the period 2011-2015. A team of 15 women researchers (most of them Serbian, but also Polish) will work on the history of Serbian women's writing and on the creation of a database, in the next five years. It is a pioneer project in Serbia in both aspects – as a team research of women’s writing, as well as a creation of a database for a literary studies purpose.

The project’s title ?njiženstvo is an old and not much known word for “literature” in Serbian, chosen because it sounds as a combination of the words for “book” (knjiga) and “femaleness” (ženskost, ženstvo).

The project emphasizes theoretical and historical issues, such as: the applicability of feminist theoretical models on the research of literature; the history of literature as oral history; the reception and influences of women’s writing. It will also focus on contextualizing of the events, processes and its participants in the actual historical time and space. Special attention will be devoted to notions and terms such as “literature” and “woman writer” (whose meaning will be historically contextualized and reconsidered), as well as to the questions of influence, education, and schooling system.

The result of Knjiženstvo will be an online database containing information about Serbian women writers until 1915: primarily basic biographical and bibliographical data, but also information regarding translations and other forms of reception of the texts, possible connections with other women writers (both Serbian and foreign), bilateral influences, links that lead to digitized texts, connections with other male and female authors, etc.

Also planned is a complete bibliography (in book form) of women authors until 1915 and a monograph providing a systematic survey of the unwritten and unexplored history of women’s literary and cultural creations.

The project will cooperate with COST Action IS0901 entitled "Women Writers In History: Toward a New Understanding of European Literary Culture”. This Action is being carried out with the help of an online database, central to the project and used as a tool for research into women’s writing and their (national and international) reception in Europe up to 1900: WomenWriters.

The following researchers will participate in the ?njiženstvo project:

  • Biljana Doj?inovi?, project director (Belgrade University, Faculty of Philology, Department for Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature, professor of literary theory, modernism and gender studies, member of the COST Action Management Committee)
  • Magdalena Koch, foreign researcher, (Wroclaw University, Institute for Slavonic Philology, professor of Serbian Literature and gender studies, member of the COST Action Management Committee)
  • Aleksandra Vraneš, researcher (Belgrade University, dean of Faculty of Philology, professor at the Department for Library and IT Studies)
  • Zorica Be?anovi?-Nikoli?, researcher (Belgrade University, Faculty of Philology, professor of Renaissance Literature at the Department for Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature)
  • Jelena Pilipovi?, researcher (Belgrade University, Faculty of Philology, professor of Antiquity Studies at Department for Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature)
  • Dubravka ?uri?, researcher (Singidunum University, Belgrade Faculty of Media and Communication, Belgrade, professor of Gender Studies and Literary Theory)
  • Slobodanka Pekovi?, researcher (from the Institute of Arts and Literature, Belgrade, expert for Serbian modernist literature and women’s magazines)
  • Svetlana Tomin, researcher (University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philosophy, professor of Medieval literature)
  • Slavica Garonja-Radovanac, researcher (University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Literature and Arts, professor of Serbian Literature
  • Ivana Panteli? (Institute for Contemporary History, Belgrade, member of Serbian COST team)
  • Gordana ?okovi? and Dragana Gruji?, young researchers, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology, assistants at the Department for Library and IT Studies.
  • Snežana Kalini? and Ana Kolari?, young researchers, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology, assistants at the Department for Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature.
  • Jelena Milinkovi?, young researcher, PhD student, University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology, member of Serbian COST team.

The project will be presented to the COST Action IS0901 members at the Working Groups meeting which will take place in Belgrade (13 April 2011).


AsK, September 2012



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