Sisyphus and I Kostovski, Ilja; Hirschman, Jack; Hitchcock, Donald
2020, 2020-05-30
eBook
This collection of rebellious poems are a reflection of Macedonian poet Ilja Kostovski's travels across the United States, as well as his interpretations of God's purpose for man. Written over the ...course of a decade from the late 1970s, this work arose out of Kostovski's immersion in the 1978 San Francisco poetry scene and his experience of living in the Shaw district of Washington, DC during the 1980s.
Conditionals encode speculation. They convey how events could have been different in the past or present, or might be different in the future if particular conditions had been or will be met. While ...all languages afford the means to speculate or hypothesize about possible events, the ways in which they do so vary. This work explores some of this variation through an analysis of the stucture and semantics of complex conditional sentences in Russian and Macedonian. It addresses typological questions about the general properties of natural language conditionals and examines the role of the grammatical categories tense, aspect, mood and status in the coding of conditional meaning. The book also discusses the relationship between the use of these categories and the shape of a language's conditional system. For example, the use of tense in counterfactual contexts in Macedonian correlates with the grammaticalization of more shades of conditional meaning than are grammaticalized in Russian, which does not employ tense forms in this way. The study draws on data from a rich variety of sources and thus includes kinds of conditionals overlooked in many other studies. The book addresses issues of concern to Slavists and raises questions for those interested in conditionals and the coding of hypothetical meaning.
Until recently, popular biographers and most scholars viewed Alexander the Great as a genius with a plan, a romantic figure pursuing his vision of a united world. His dream was at times characterized ...as a benevolent interest in the brotherhood of man, sometimes as a brute interest in the exercise of power. Green, a Cambridge-trained classicist who is also a novelist, portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. Green describes his Alexander as "not only the most brilliant (and ambitious) field commander in history, but also supremely indifferent to all those administrative excellences and idealistic yearnings foisted upon him by later generations, especially those who found the conqueror, tout court, a little hard upon their liberal sensibilities." This biography begins not with one of the universally known incidents of Alexander's life, but with an account of his father, Philip of Macedonia, whose many-territoried empire was the first on the continent of Europe to have an effectively centralized government and military. What Philip and Macedonia had to offer, Alexander made his own, but Philip and Macedonia also made Alexander form an important context for understanding Alexander himself. Yet his origins and training do not fully explain the man. After he was named hegemon of the Hellenic League, many philosophers came to congratulate Alexander, but one was conspicuous by his absence: Diogenes the Cynic, an ascetic who lived in a clay tub. Piqued and curious, Alexander himself visited the philosopher, who, when asked if there was anything Alexander could do for him, made the famous reply, "Don't stand between me and the sun." Alexander's courtiers jeered, but Alexander silenced them: "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." This remark was as unexpected in Alexander as it would be in a modern leader. For the general reader, the book, redolent with gritty details and fully aware of Alexander's darker side, offers a gripping tale of Alexander's career. Full backnotes, fourteen maps, and chronological and genealogical tables serve readers with more specialized interests.
Greeks and Macedonians are presently engaged in an often heated dispute involving competing claims to a single identity. Each group asserts that they, and they alone, have the right to identify ...themselves as Macedonians. The Greek government denies the existence of a Macedonian nation and insists that all Macedonians are Greeks, while Macedonians vehemently assert their existence as a unique people. Here Loring Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition, and the role of the state in the process of building a nation. The conflict is set in the broader context of Balkan history and in the more narrow context of the recent disintegration of Yugoslavia. Danforth focuses on the transnational dimension of the "global cultural war" taking place between Greeks and Macedonians both in the Balkans and in the diaspora. He analyzes two issues in particular: the struggle for human rights of the Macedonian minority in northern Greece and the campaign for international recognition of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia. The book concludes with a detailed analysis of the construction of identity at an individual level among immigrants from northern Greece who have settled in Australia, where multiculturalism is an official policy. People from the same villages, members of the same families, living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne have adopted different national identities.
Macedonian Kramer, Christina E; Mitkovska, Liljana
2011
eBook
Macedonian, the official language of the Republic of Macedonia, is spoken by two and a half million people in the Balkans, North America, Australia, and other émigré communities ...around the world. Christina E. Kramer’s award-winning textbook provides a basic introduction to the language. Students will learn to speak, read, write, and understand Macedonian while discussing family, work, recreation, music, food, health, housing, travel, and other topics.     Intended to cover one year of intensive study, this third edition updates the vocabulary, adds material to help students appreciate the underlying structure of the language, and offers a wide variety of new, proficiency-based readings and exercises to boost knowledge of Macedonian history, culture, literature, folklore, and traditions. Winner, Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages
History is a social science, which is concurrently humanistic since it offers not only knowledge about the past, but through the study of historical processes and phenomena influences the creation of ...a representation of today's concepts and social processes. History is the foundation on which the personality of each individual is built and formed, particularly in education where history models the mankind about their knowledge of themselves and others. Unfortunately, in more or less all Balkan historiographies there is a certain extent of history mythologizing, reinterpretation of facts depending on the needs of usually the government or certain structures and centers of power, and the imposition of truth that should not be discussed, or what is written in textbooks. That is why the mentioned structures create purposeful crises, and then they manage them and, if necessary, resolve them. Socio-political relations are changing and most frequently, apart from a small circle of people who have an interest, ordinary people and society as a whole suffer from long-term harmful consequences that can often get out of control. That is why history has become a powerful weapon that is very often used to manipulate and achieve various, mostly political goals. That is why it is difficult to be a historian in the Balkans! It is quite normal and logical for historians to argue and disagree about certain historical processes and phenomena, but the problem is that because of the above mentioned, historians become an instrument for achieving a certain goal and ideology. One such example is North Macedonia, which suffers consequences in its development, position in the world and realization of its strategic goals precisely because of the (mis)use of history and historical revisionism. This is particularly pronounced by the blocking of North Macedonia to start the negotiations for EU membership by Bulgaria due to the history and processes in the past that are not in line with the so-called Bulgarian historical narrative. Using an argument of force, not facts, using its better international position, Bulgaria creates and imposes a narrative on the Bulgarian identity of the Macedonian people, and the Macedonian language for the Bulgarian dialect, with the relativization of the then Bulgarian participation in the fascist coalition, and the negation of the occupying regime. This is utterly inappropriate for one state to intervene in this way on the history and historical facts of another state. Bilateral disputes are not new to Europe, but the way and pressure that Bulgaria is exerting on North Macedonia is morally and legally unjustified, in which a large part of historians are co-sponsors, becoming an instrument of certain structures. In addition to the analysis of controversial attitudes and positions as a result of historical revisionism of Bulgarian institutions and „historians“, the paper shows that the development of relations between the two countries is directly correlated with changes in government and governing structures, i.e, their ideologies and needs. The resolution of disputes related to the past is possible only with the application of modern approaches and depoliticization of history and its role in modern society.
History is a social science, which is concurrently humanistic since it offers not only knowledge about the past, but through the study of historical processes and phenomena influences the creation of ...a representation of today's concepts and social processes. History is the foundation on which the personality of each individual is built and formed, particularly in education where history models the mankind about their knowledge of themselves and others. Unfortunately, in more or less all Balkan historiographies there is a certain extent of history mythologizing, reinterpretation of facts depending on the needs of usually the government or certain structures and centers of power, and the imposition of truth that should not be discussed, or what is written in textbooks. That is why the mentioned structures create purposeful crises, and then they manage them and, if necessary, resolve them. Socio-political relations are changing and most frequently, apart from a small circle of people who have an interest, ordinary people and society as a whole suffer from long-term harmful consequences that can often get out of control. That is why history has become a powerful weapon that is very often used to manipulate and achieve various, mostly political goals. That is why it is difficult to be a historian in the Balkans! It is quite normal and logical for historians to argue and disagree about certain historical processes and phenomena, but the problem is that because of the above mentioned, historians become an instrument for achieving a certain goal and ideology. One such example is North Macedonia, which suffers consequences in its development, position in the world and realization of its strategic goals precisely because of the (mis)use of history and historical revisionism. This is particularly pronounced by the blocking of North Macedonia to start the negotiations for EU membership by Bulgaria due to the history and processes in the past that are not in line with the so-called Bulgarian historical narrative. Using an argument of force, not facts, using its better international position, Bulgaria creates and imposes a narrative on the Bulgarian identity of the Macedonian people, and the Macedonian language for the Bulgarian dialect, with the relativization of the then Bulgarian participation in the fascist coalition, and the negation of the occupying regime. This is utterly inappropriate for one state to intervene in this way on the history and historical facts of another state. Bilateral disputes are not new to Europe, but the way and pressure that Bulgaria is exerting on North Macedonia is morally and legally unjustified, in which a large part of historians are co-sponsors, becoming an instrument of certain structures. In addition to the analysis of controversial attitudes and positions as a result of historical revisionism of Bulgarian institutions and „historians“, the paper shows that the development of relations between the two countries is directly correlated with changes in government and governing structures, i.e, their ideologies and needs. The resolution of disputes related to the past is possible only with the application of modern approaches and depoliticization of history and its role in modern society.
Called by Plutarch "the oldest and greatest of Alexander's successors," Antigonos the One-Eyed (382-301 BC) was the dominant figure during the first half of the Diadoch period, ruling most of the ...Asian territory conquered by the Macedonians during his final twenty years. Billows provides the first detailed study of this great general and administrator, establishing him as a key contributor to the Hellenistic monarchy and state. After a successful career under Philip and Alexander, Antigonos rose to power over the Asian portion of Alexander's conquests. Embittered by the persistent hostility of those who controlled the European and Egyptian parts of the empire, he tried to eliminate these opponents, an ambition which led to his final defeat in 301. In a corrective to the standard explanations of his aims, Billows shows that Antigonos was scarcely influenced by Alexander, seeking to rule West Asia and the Aegean, rather than the whole of Alexander's Empire.
L’évolution du comparatisme littéraire en Macédoine du Nord témoigne d’un constant effort de dépassement de ce dilemme sur un double versant : géographique — en montrant que les petites nations sont ...autant capables de « grandes » créations que les nations démographiquement plus nombreuses et spatialement plus étendues ; et national — en prouvant que la recherche relationnelle, la quête des ressemblances ou des divergences dans les littératures, souligne davantage la valeur de la production nationale, laquelle peut se positionner en élément privilégié dans l’axe de comparaison. Cette perspective pluridimensionnelle, que les comparatistes macédoniens traduisent en approche pluridisciplinaire dans leurs travaux, se voit, ces dernières décennies, déplacée vers les études culturelles, étant donné que la littérature, en tant que l’une des nombreuses manifestations de la culture, se trouve en inextricable relation avec celles-ci. Puisque comparer est une des façons de réfléchir, et que la pensée analogique est inhérente à l’homme en tant qu’instrument épistémologique précieux, l’approche comparative/comparatiste se révèle un modus vivendi que pratiquent de nombreux intellectuels macédoniens. Certains de ces comparatistes par formation ou par vocation ont couronné leur curiosité intellectuelle et leur travail scientifique par leur élection à l’Académie macédonienne des Sciences et des Arts.
