The Ethnic Identity of Slovene Immigrants in Cleveland

PRESENTED BY: Barbara Martincic Zibelnik

Monday, October 18th at 4:30 in RT 503 (Main Library)
This talk is open to the public. Everyone is welcome!
Contact: Prof Kelly Wrenhaven, RT 1629, k.wrenhaven@csuohio.edu, 216.523.7167

Snacks and refreshments will be served.

Cleveland State University Center for Slovenian Studies & The Department of Modern Languages

Present Professor Tom M.S. Priestly's
Lecture: Getting to know and (mostly) love Koroška

Cleveland State University
Wednesday, October 6th, 6pm in Main Classroom, Room 104

Lakeland Community College
Tuesday, October 5th, 7pm in T-137

Tom Priestly was born in Uganda, raised in England, and has lived in Canada for 44 years. Professor Emeritus of Slavic Linguistics at the University of Alberta, he has a special interest in Slovenian sociolinguistics, his research being based on fieldwork in a Slovenian-minority village in Austria. He has been translating Slovenian literature since 1989, most notably the poetry of Maja Haderlap, Cvetka Lipuš and Kajetan Kovič, and (with Henry R. Cooper) the poetry of Francè Prešeren. He was the editor of Slovene Studies, 1985-1995 and President, Society for Slovene Studies, 1995-98. He is an associate of the Etnografski inštitut Urban Jarnika, Celovec/Klagenfurt; he holds the Janečičevo priznanje, Carinthia, awarded in 2007 and the častni znak svobode Republike Slovenije, awarded in 2000.

His presentation, “Getting to know and (mostly) love Koroška,” will recount his experiences in Carinthia and especially in the high alpine village of Sele, where he first went for fieldwork in 1973 and which he has visited nearly 20 time since – a village which epitomizes the phrase “planinski raj [mountain paradise].” His original aim was to write a linguistic description of the dialect spoken there, but he soon switched his attention to the question why Slovenian has been strongly maintained in some places and nearly lost in many others. This required some knowledge of the political and social
history of Carinthia, and his presentation will show how he thereby came to understand what he was told some 30 years ago: “V raju se nahahajo zmeraj kače [There are always serpents in paradise].”

Prof. Dr. Tom Priestly: On Carinthia.

Prof. Dr. Tom Priestly, a graduate of Downing College, Cambridge, received his PhD from Simon Fraser University in 1970. In 1992 he retired with over twenty-two years experience teaching Russian and Slavic Linguistics from the University of Alberta. He is fluent in Russian, German, French, and Slovene languages, and is the author, co-author, or translator of dozens of scholarly books on subject ranging from Russian pronunciation rules to the history of the Slovene minority in Carinthia. Mr. Priestly lives in Canada with his wife and has two children.

Prof. Dr. Rastko Močnik: on labour unions in Slovenia; on his research of the Julia, the Slovenian Petrarcian Laura in Prešern’s Literature.

He teaches Theory of Discourse and Epistemology of the Humanities at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana. Graduated from the University of Ljubljana in Sociology and Comparative Literature in 1968. Studied semiotics from 1969 – 1975 at l’Ecole pratique des hautes etudes, later École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris), with Algirdas J. Greimas. Obtained doctorat du troisième cycle in linguistics - literary semiotics at the Université de Paris X (Nanterre). In 1983, doctorate in sociology from the University of Ljubljana. Post-doctoral Fulbright fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley,1985. 1987-89 vice-rector of the University of Ljubljana - as the result of a campaign which led to the first fair and open election of the University leadership under the regime of the time.

For more information please contact the Center for Slovenian Studies
Cleveland State University | Rhodes Tower 1654A 
2121Euclid Ave., Cleveland, Ohio 44115
216.687.4859 or i.yuko@csuohio.edu.