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

Téa Obreht

Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia (Belgrade, Serbia), and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. Her first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, has been published by Random House on March 8 2011. She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Téa Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York.

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Publishing

The Meaning of Reality

Essays on Existence and Communion, Eros and History

by Christos Yannaras

The collection of articles traces the thought of Christos Yanaras through his long journey in discovering the meaning of existence, communion, eros, and history. It is a cause of immense joy that no fewer than twenty articles of passionate significance and substance have at present been gathered together in this volume under the title The Meaning of Reality.

Yannaras is undoubtedly one of the most significant thinkers of our time. Kallistos Ware once described him as "the most creative and prophetic religious thinker at work in Greece today," while Rowan Williams characterizes him as "one of the most significant Christian philosophers in Europe." His very wide and no less deep education helps him to develop an inimitable blend of philosophy, theology, and social criticism, and to speak in an original way about the traditional and contemporary issues of human existence, as well as the latest challenges of modern empirical science and political engagement. A detailed knowledge of the writings of the Holy Fathers has always been his foundation amidst the labyrinth of modern thought - which is inimately bound up with psychoanalysis, environmental issues, human rights, postmodernism, and pluralism , to mention just a few. Insistence on the primacy, uniqueness, and eternal value of human personality prevails in almost all his works and inspires his own vigorous theological and ecumenical engagement, based on the Orthodox eucharistic and ascetic tradition.