Vida Penezic is a writer, scholar, and educator.  In her creative and scholarly work, she explores the tension between awareness and the cultural frameworks that structure our thinking. She has published short stories, romance novels, and essays. She has also given numerous presentations and lectures. Her career as an educator includes a five-year stint as an instructor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and fifteen all-consuming years of teaching elementary school in Los Angeles. Before she came to the United States, she worked as a journalist in her native Yugoslavia.

Degrees and Credentials

Ph.D.       in      American Culture Studies

M.A.        in      Popular Culture

B.A.         in     Sociology

California Clear Teaching Credential

Selected Publications

Managing Happiness, Los Angeles, California, 2018

Mind Travel: Two Stories about Awareness, Los Angeles, California, 2018

A New Kind of Nemesis, Los Angeles, California, 2018

Art for Hotels, short stories, ARTaVIVA BOOKS, 2010. (In collaboration with the artist Relja Penezic)

“Women in Yugoslavia,” in Post-communism and Body Politic, Genders 22, Spring 1995.*

*Please note: If you click on the link above, you will land on Post-communism and the Body Politic, Genders 22, the volume that contains my article, not the article itself. You then have to browse through the volume to get to the article. This is not a problem as the access is easy and free. What is unfortunate is the cold-war ideological paradigm of the blurb that introduces the volume. This paradigm (commonly used at the time and to an extent still) is exactly what I argue against. My article is a critique of the cold-war picture of the world—within which the questions about Yugoslavian women were asked in the American popular discourse at the time, after the “fall of Communism”. In fact, all of the talks and lectures about the former Yugoslavia listed on this page question the simplistic cold-war view of the world and the place Yugoslavia was assigned in it.

Belgrade City Center, or: Some Aspects of the Transnational in Culture (doctoral dissertation), Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, 1992

Selected poems, in New Works Writers Series IV, by New Works Writers, Toledo, OH, 1990.

“Pavao Pavlicic, Yugoslavian Crime Writer,” Clues, Summer-Spring 1989.

Romance Novels**

Povratak (Homecoming), Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1990.

Prijateljica noći (A Lady of the Night), Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1989.

U vrelini noći (On a Hot Night), Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1988.

Zamak Lajtonovih (Lightons’ Family Castle), Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1984.

Ljubav dolazi dvaput (Love Comes Twice), Gornji Milanovac: Dečje novine, 1983.

**These novels were published in Yugoslavia, in the language that was at the time called Serbo-Croat, under a pen name.

 Conference Presentations

“No Success Needed: the Danish Path to Happiness,” National Conference of the Popular Culture Association, April 2022

“Grandma,” fiction (book chapter), National Conference of the Popular Culture Association, April 2022

“Happiness Narrative in Three Movies,” National Conference of the Popular Culture Association, June 2021

“Out of the Box,” fiction (book chapter), National Conference of the Popular Culture Association, June 2021

“Managing Happiness,” fiction (book chapter), Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, San Diego, CA, April 12-15, 2017

“Teaching Happiness,” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, San Diego, CA, April 12-15, 2017

“A Teacher Within,” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, Seattle, WA, March 22-25, 2016

“Toyota in My American Garden: Recent Immigrants’ Views on the American Dream,” paper,  Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, San Diego, CA,  March 31 to April 2, 1999.

“Global Popular Culture,” Regional Conference of the Popular Culture Association, Bowling Green, OH, November 1996.

“Walking Through a Hostile Cultural Landscape,” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, Las Vegas, NV, March 1996.

“Academia as Popular Culture: The Role of Formulas, Rituals, Star System, and Sound Bytes in the Contemporary Knowledge Industry,” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, Chicago, IL, April 1994.

“Higher Education in Belgrade, Yugoslavia,” International Conference on Higher Education, Bowling Green, OH, July 1993.

“Paradigm Shift and Transcultural Studies,” The Human Sciences at the Age of Theory Conference, Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism, London, Ontario,  Canada, April 1993.

“Yu/American/Transcultural,” The 30th Annual Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, Atlanta, GA, March 1993.

“On Female Virtue,” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, Canada, 1990.

“Romance Novels: Art or Kitsch?” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association , Saint Louis, MO, 1989.

“Pavao Pavlicic: Yugoslavian Crime Writer,” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, New Orleans, LA, 1988.

“Conditioning and Catharsis in Popular Literature,” Joint National Conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1987.

 Lectures***

“American Popular Culture and the Global Village,” Hastings College, Hastings, NE, November 1998.

Consultant and guest speaker for the Russia and East Europe in Transition workshop, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, Summer 1994.

“Women and Postcommunism,” Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH,  Women’s History Month, March 1994.

“Nowhere is My Home,” Kent State University, Geauga, OH, Women’s History Month, March 1994.

“Issues of Cultural Purity and National Identity and their Role in the War in Bosnia,”  Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, Fall 1993.

A Series of lectures on transcultural approach to the cultural and political separation in the former Yugoslavia at the University of St. Andrews, Laurinburg, NC.

*** Please see the note that follows “Women in Yugoslavia” article above.