Jovana Suvajdžić, research assistant, born in 1994 in Kruševac. She completed her primary and secondary education in Belgrade.
She graduated from the Faculty of Philology (University of Belgrade) in 2020 with the average grade of 9,87; her final paper was titled “Depersonalization as an Aspect of Narrative Modernization in Gustave Flaubert’s November and Miloš Crnjanski’s The Journal of Čarnojević”. In 2021 she obtained her master’s degree (average grade of 10,00) with the master’s thesis “Decadent Imagination in Miloš Crnjanski’s drama Mask”. Currently, she is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Philology (University of Belgrade). Under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Predrag Petrović she is preparing her doctoral dissertation, titled “Narrative Shaping of Collectivity in Ivo Andrić’ Novels”.
She volunteered as a proofreader for the Serbian language in the editorial office of the humanitarian Red Info Portal (Red Cross of Belgrade) from January to December 2017. In 2018, 2019 and 2020, she co-authored manuals for teachers of Serbian language and literature for the publishing house Novi Logos. In May and June 2022, she worked as a junior research assistant at the Faculty of Philology (University of Belgrade). Since July 2022, she has been employed as a junior research assistant at the Institute for Serbian Culture Priština – Leposavić. In September 2024 she became a research assistant at the Institute for Serbian Culture Priština – Leposavić.
While in her studies, she was the recipient of awards for outstanding essays and final papers: award of the Vladan Nedić Fund for the best paper and excellence in the subject of Literary Folklore in the academic year 2013-2014; the memorial Miodrag Pavlović Award of the Department of Serbian Literature with South Slavic Literatures for the best paper written in the course Methodology for Teaching Serbian Literature and Language in the academic year 2016-2017; the third Branko Award bestowed by Matica Srpska to the best student works created during undergraduate as well as master studies in the academic year 2019-2020, for the final paper “Depersonalization as an Aspect of Narrative Modernization in Gustave Flaubert’s November and Miloš Crnjanski’s The Journal of Čarnojević”; award of the Radmila Popović Fund for the best final paper pertaining to the Serbian literature of the 20th century; Prof. Radmila Milentijević Award for excellence in undergraduate studies of Serbian literature in the academic year 2019-2020. As part of the 58th Dis Spring (2021), the essay “Gloomy Pilgrim in the Garden of Literature: A Picture from the Correspondence of Vladislav Petković Dis” won the third prize in the essay contest on Dis’s oeuvre. She is the winner of the first prize at the “Dositej’s Golden Feather” contest for 2023, for the paper “Triumphs and Miseries of the Satirist: The Figure of Daniel Defoe in Erih Koš’s Essay ’Poet on the Pillar of Shame’ in the Context of Koš’s Reflections on Satire and Censorship”.
She participated in the work of student round tables and presented papers at national and international conferences. From June 2017 to June 2018, she was an associate, and then, until October 2018, one of the editors of the student newspaper Vesna at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Starting from the academic year 2022/2023, together with Uroš Đurković, a researcher at the Institute for Serbian Culture, she heads the Club for Contemporary Theory within the “Conversations with the Department” initiative of the Department of Serbian Literature with South Slavic Literatures at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. In 2023 and 2024, she was a lecturer and mentor to the participants of the Classics of Serbian Literature summer school, organized by the Department of Serbian Literature with South Slavic Literatures (University of Belgrade) and the Program Board of the scientific-educational cultural center “Vuk Karadžić” in Tršić.
Main areas of interest in her previous research: modernism of Serbian prose of the 20th century; the Decadent movement in European literature and its reflexes in modern Serbian drama and poetry; early literary works of Miloš Crnjanski; reception of Gustave Flaubert’s works in modern and contemporary Serbian literature; classical and post-classical narratology; narrative poetics of Ivo Andrić.
She speaks English and French.