Dejan Ajdačić

Dejan Ajdačić (; born January 22, 1959), is a Serbian Slavist, philologist, folklorist, ethnolinguist, literary critic, translator and editor.

Biography

Education He grew up in Belgrade. Both of his parents were physiochemists. He attended the Primary School "Drinka Pavlović", the Fifth Belgrade Grammar School and Music High School "Stanković" (the violin department). He studied at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade at the Department of Yugoslav Literature and World Literature. He graduated in 1984 with the paper "On Colours in Serbian National Poetry". He defended his Masters thesis under the title "Images of Love and Beauty in the Poetry of the Petrarchists of Dubrovnik" in 1986, and his doctoral dissertation entitled "The World of Demons in the Literature of Serbian Romanticism" in 2000, at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philology. and his publishing research has intensified since 1990. Dejan Ajdačić has published papers in Serbian, Bulgarian, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, English and Italian. He has written nine books in Serbian, one dictionary and five books in Ukrainian, 249 contributions. Some papers have been re-published in several editions and in different languages. The subjects of authorized papers of Dejan Ajdačić fit within the general themes of the collections of papers and annual collections that he has edited, about a third of the papers represents presentations at scientific conferences.

Oral literature of Serbs has been the subject of the early works of Dejan Ajdačić. His career in the library containing rare books of folk literature made him broaden his field of scientific interest to include the folklore of the Balkanic Slavs. The texts devoted to folkloristic science were followed by articles on the work of Vojislav M. Jovanović, his library and his legacy in manuscript form. In 1990s, he produced a number of literary studies, studies at the interface of literature and folk culture from a broader Slavic perspective, and in the latter part of that period the ethnolinguistic studies, as well as lexical and phraseological themes.

Translations Ajdačić has done translations (mostly of philological papers) from Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, Bulgarian, as well as several literary texts from the Ukrainian language.

Editorship As a student, Dejan Ajdačić was a member of the editorial staff of the magazine "Znak" (Sign, 1983), and, later on, of the magazine Književna reč (1995). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the folkloristic-ethnolinguistic magazine "Kodovi slovenskih kultura" (Codes of Slavic Cultures), with contributions in Russian and Serbian (since 1996, ten collections with the following topics: plants, food and drink, wedding, parts of the body, agriculture, colours, children, birds, death, fire). He is the founder and editor of "Ukrainian–Serbian collection Ukras (Ornament)" (since 2006, 8 collections) in Ukrainian. From 1999 he has been the head manager of the electronic library of Serbian culture and culture network Project Rastko which was founded by the playwright Zoran Stefanović.

He has edited approximately twenty thematic Slavistic collections of papers (on eroticism, dystopia, miracles, Old Testament legends, fantastic literature, body, Tesla, Venice, Kyiv, cultural values in language, etc.), which came out in Belgrade, Kraków and Kyiv, then, he compiled an anthology of modern Serbian drama in Ukrainian "Novitnia serbs’ka dramaturgiia" (2006) and a collection of papers of Vojislav M. Jovanovic (1997, 2001), Novak Kilibarda (three books 1998, 2001), Mikola Rjabcuk (2003), Darko Suvin (2009), Per Jakobsen (2010) and Jerzy Bartmiński (2011).

The magazines and collection that were edited by Dejan Ajdačić contain the papers of 430 authors, from Ukraine, Serbia, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italia, and Macedonia.

He is a member of editorial boards, editorial staff or a reviewer of a number of magazines in Bulgaria, Poland and Serbia, a member of the Committee for Ethnolinguistics and the Committee for Folkoristics of the International Committee of Slavists.