Slavic Studies Community Engagement
Polish Studies
Polish Studies has organized numerous literary competitions: Polish senior citizens poetry competition (2000), Polish literary competition (2001), many Australian-Polish literary events in the years 1995-2002 and, since 1995, a Polish Cultural Forum for the whole of the Polish community. Various publications have arisen from these activities. An annual refereed journal, Acta Polonica Monashiensis, has recently been launched. The journal publishes (in both English and Polish) scholarly and review articles on all aspects of Polish culture, in particular literature, history, political science, art, social science, film and theatre This publication is sent to major universities in the United States, England, Poland and many other counties in Europe. This publication is fully sponsored by the Polish Consulate in Sydney. The program has close links with the Polish Consulate in Sydney, as well as the Polish Embassy. The Consulate and Embassy support the program by funding prizes for competitions and helping to provide financial assistance towards Polish Studies.
Russian studies, Serbian studies and cultural studies
Millicent Vladiv-Glover's engagement is with the Serbian and, since 2003, Croatian, as well as Russian communities, and also with the Australian community at large through cultural studies and comparative literature. She gives occasional talks (on crime and punishment, the representation of the Chechens in the Russian media, on propaganda in Bush's State of the Union Address, etc.) on ABC Radio and public lectures to the Existentialist Society (e.g., on Contemporary Terrorism in the light of the Catechism of the Russian Revolutionary, poststructuralism and deconstructive readings of canonical literary texts, etc.). She is a consultant to legal firms on social relations in traditional Serbian society, and to business organisations on the history and society of Croatia. She has been guest speaker at conferences organised by community organisations, such as the Migrant Resource Centre (Western Region), the Serbian Church Holy Trinity (Brunswick), the Serbian Studies Foundation (Macquarie University, Sydney). She is a member of the Reference Group for Serbian on the Board of Studies, and of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, which liaises with the Serbian organisations in Australia and invites academic speakers from the USA and Canada whom she helps to co-host and whose talks to the community she helps to organise. She is occasionally invited to contribute to the Serbian and Russian ethnic press (in Russian and Serbian) and to comment on contemporary issues on Russian and Serbian SBS Radio. She is a referee for ethnic literary projects (Russian, Serbian, Croatian) with the Australia Council. She is an elected member of the Yogoslav PEN International and is invited to writers' conferences to discuss contemporary issues pertaining to Australian and Yugoslav literature as well as ethnic literature.