Branko Mikasinovich


Branko Mikasinovich is a Serbian American scholar of Yugoslav and Serbian literature, as well as a noted Slavist.

Education and career

Mikasinovich was born in Belišće. He received his B.A. from Roosevelt University in Chicago in 1965, his M.A. from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois in 1967, and a Ph.D from the University of Belgrade in 1984. He has taught the Russian language and Slavic literature at Tulane University and the University of New Orleans, and was president of the Louisiana Association of Professors of Slavic and Eastern European languages.
He has appeared as a panelist on Yugoslav press on ABC's Press International in Chicago and PBS's International Dateline in New Orleans. He also appears on Voice of America and a Serbian Service television program, Open Studio.

Work

He edited Introduction to Yugoslav Literature, a representative anthology of modern Yugoslav prose and poetry in English; Five Modern Yugoslav Plays, a unique collection of plays written between 1945 and 1980; Modern Yugoslav Satire, which was selected for "Best Titles of 1979" by Library Journal and included in the Pushcart Prize V: The Best of the Small Presses; Yugoslav Fantastic Prose, the first anthology of Yugoslav supernatural tales in English; and Yugoslavia: Crisis and Disintegration.

Influences

Baron Mihailo Mikasinović, who was instrumental in opening Serbian schools in Krajina in the 18th century; Stefan Mikasinović, a teacher of Dositej Obradović and a prime mover of the Serbian cultural rebirth in the period of Enlightenment; and his father Sava Mikasinovich inspired, to a large extent, the author's scholarly activities.