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

George Vid Tomashevich

Prof. George Vid Tomashevich, Ph.D. Mar. 3, 1927 - Dec. 3, 2009. Dr. Tomashevich was of Serbian origin, born in the city of Bocin in what was then Yugoslavia. He came to the United States after World World II. He received his bachelor's degree in sociology from Roosevelt University and his master's and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He came to Buffalo in 1968 to teach anthropology at Buffalo State College and retired in 1995. A scholar of universal erudition, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at State University of New York, College at Buffalo.

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His distinguished academic career, including many books, articles and public lectures, contributed to the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, History, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, History of Philosophy and Science, Comparative Religion, Mythology, Linguistics, Folklore and Literature. Prof. Tomashevich, who was born in Vochin, former Yugoslavia, was a survivor of a concentration camp run by Croatian authorities during the Second World War. This harrowing experience stayed with him, and influenced his academic work, for the rest of his life. As a scholar and poet, he wrote movingly on universal human topics, as well as on achievements of Serbian art, history and culture.

His book The Millenniad: Humanity's Road to Maturity, was described as universal in scope, and unusually diversified in content; this work encompasses human efforts, struggles, and concerns from cosmology to sociology. Suffused with benevolent irony and, at times, sardonic humor, it depicts our species’ struggle against early ignorance, fear, and superstition, often institutionalized into powerful and controlling bodies seeking to monopolize the interpretation of the unknown. The whole work is in the form of a poem divided thematically into twelve cantos. It touches upon ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy in relation to concomitant developments in science and technology as they gradually reveal the nature of the universe, its material substance, as well as the problems of life, consciousness, and self-awareness. From the beginning, it also deals with major problems of politics, economics, morality and religion. From the subjective nature of the introductory parts, to the epilogue, the whole work is a portrayal of a modern intellectual’s immersion in, and confrontation with contemporary reality and its open questions. The Millenniad is a massive, erudite, and thought-provoking effort worthy of serious reading and critical contemplation.


SA

 

People Directory

Bishop Jovan (Mladenović)

(1994–2002)

The Divine provision brought the spiritual father of the Monastery Studenica, Bishop Jovan, to continue the work left by the equally most esteemed and humblest spiritual father of the Monastery Hilandar, Bishop Chrysostom.

As an accomplished monastic with the spiritual wealth he attained in the Studenica Monastery, he enriched his flock and clergy. Very soon he gained respect and confidence of his clergy and the faithful.

Bishop Jovan was born in 1950 of father Radojko and mother Stana Mladenović in the village of Dobrace, near Arilje, Serbia. He finished elementary school in his village. At the age of twelve, he went to the Klisura Monasteiy where he remained for one year and then went to the Studenica Monastery. He attended the monastic school in the Ostrog Monastery from 1967 until 1969. He was ordained a hierodeacon in the Studenica Monastery on April 25, 1971. He retained his baptized name of Jovan. Rt. Rev. Vasilije, Bishop of Žiča ordained him as hieromonk in 1973. He graduated from St. Sava Seminary in Belgrade in 1974 and from Theologcial College in Belgrade in 1980.

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Publishing

Serbian Americans: History—Culture—Press

by Krinka Vidaković-Petrov, translated from Serbian by Milina Jovanović

Learned, lucid, and deeply perceptive, SERBIAN AMERICANS is an immensely rewarding and readable book, which will give historians invaluable new insights, and general readers exciting new ways to approach the history​ of Serbian printed media. Serbian immigration to the U.S. started dates from the first few decades of 19th c. The first papers were published in San Francisco starting in 1893. During the years of the most intense politicization of the Serbian American community, the Serbian printed media developed quickly with a growing number of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications. Newspapers were published in Serbian print shops, while the development of printing presses was a precondition for the growth of publishing in general. Among them were various kinds of books: classical Serbian literature, folksong collections, political pamphlets, works of the earliest Serbian American writers in America (poetry, prose and plays), first translations from English to Serbian, books about Serb immigrants, dictionaries, textbooks, primers, etc.

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