Maja Ćuk

Filološki pregled

Love and Freedom in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments: The Dystopian Genre and Margaret Atwood’s Works

Ćuk Maja

https://doi.fil.bg.ac.rs/pdf/journals/fpregled/2025-1/fpregled-2025-52-1-4.pdf

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the alarming circumstances in a dystopian society affect individuals in Margaret Atwood’s novels The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, by referencing Erich Fromm’s views on love and symbiotic unions in The Art of Loving and Hannah Arendt’s ideas on freedom and power in The Human Condition. The major protagonist Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale is deprived of control of her own reproductive function and forcibly assigned to bear children for Commander Fred and his wife in an era of environmental pollution and severe restrictions of people’s rights. The depiction of their household, Offred’s strictly monitored tasks, the details about the indoctrination facility for the handmaids, the government-run brothel, and other settings vividly evoke an atmosphere of confinement and restriction. The circumstances and practices which hinder a sense of well-being, love and happiness, are also described in the sequel The Testaments, from the perspective of three different narrators. However, it is interesting that the younger generation of female protagonists in Margaret Atwood’s last dystopian novel show the courage to interrupt the routine activitities in the Republic of Gilead, stepping forward and taking action in order to create a space where freedom can emerge.

human values, power relations, dystopian novels, speculative fiction, Margaret Atwood

M51

Scientific Bulletin of the Politehnica University of Timişoara – Transactions on Modern Languages

'Self-actualization' and Language Learning: Podcasts as Engaging Teaching Materials

Budinčić Valentina i Ćuk Maja

https://sc.upt.ro/ro/publicatii/buletinul-stiintific/issues-bs/854-24-2025

Engaging lesson content lays the foundation for effective language learning. Therefore, providing the materials that talk about a specific topic of interest of a student and resonate with him/her on a deeper level, will positively motivate them to learn. According to Abraham Maslow, apart from the four basic needs that must be met first (the need for food, safety, love and self-esteem), people also strive for self-actualization. In light of this, the aim of our paper is to show how podcasts, having the potential to encourage personal fulfilment and self-expression, may be used as motivating teaching material for improving language skills in a fun and informative way.

language learning, motivation, self-actualization, podcasts, teaching materials

M23 (ERIH Plus)

Reči: časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu

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Urednica: Maja Ćuk

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M55

Reči: časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu

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Urednice: Maja Ćuk i Melina Nikolić

https://www.reci.rs/index.php/Reci

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M55

Godišnjak Filozofskog fakulteta u Novom Sadu

Will the heart ‘go last’ in the future? Alienating Spaces in Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Fiction

Ćuk Maja, Parezanović Tijana

https://godisnjak.ff.uns.ac.rs/index.php/gff/article/view/2526/2349

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the disturbing social forces affect individuals in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Heart Goes Last, by relying on Michel Foucault’s system of ideas on imprisonment in Discipline and Punish and Erich Fromm’s views on disintegration of love and faith in Western society in The Art of Loving. At the beginning of the book, it seems that the Positron Project, a futuristic prison, will offer an escape from post-apocalyptic misery to Stan and Charmaine, a young couple, hit by an economic collapse. However, the suburban paradise, at first glance, has gradually been exposed as a bleak and threatening place where people are kept in cramped conditions under constant monitoring and registration of data. As our analysis will reveal, the town of Consilience is the morbid urban realm where control is enforced through various mechanisms used to create “productive” and “subjected” bodies. In such a system, where the management has enticed the participants to take part in the project by offering material comforts, love has no (economic) value. The circumstances in the alienating location in the mentioned novel might be interpreted as a cautionary tale about relations of power in the current society and the world in the near future. In a metaphorical way, the author of The Heart Goes Last alerts to the problems by which mankind as a whole might be afflicted - the potential for abuses of power, treating people as commodities and the disintegration of real values.

dystopian fiction, the panopticon, human values, love, The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood

M51

Anali Filološkog fakulteta

Aspects of a Minor Literature in Katherine Mansfield’s New Zealand Stories

Parezanović Tijana, Ćuk Maja

https://anali.fil.bg.ac.rs/index.php/anali/sr_Cyrl/article/view/analiff-2024-36-1-16

While Katherine Mansfield spent the most important years of her career – approximately the 1910s – at the centre of the flourishing modernist movement, she still produced several stories which are set in her native New Zealand. Observing Mansfield as an author who was at the time in many ways on the margins of English literature, this paper approaches her New Zealand stories from the theoretical framework offered by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of a ‘minor literature’. Our analysis of eleven short stories identifies those elements that arguably contribute to describing these New Zealand stories as a minor literature. The identified elements, which are illustrated with numerous examples, include onomatopoeic effects of the texts, narrative ruptures/gaps, the intrusion of dreamwork or oneiric states in the narrative discourse, the imagery and perspective of children and animals, and frequent use of (unattributed) free indirect discourse. The combination of these elements deterritorializes the language of Mansfield’s New Zealand stories and endows them with a political and collective value, as well as the revolutionary literary impulse, thus making them a proper example of a minor literature.

Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand stories, minor literature, deterritorialization, onomatopoeia, narrative ruptures, oneirism, children, free indirect discourse

M24

Zbornik radova o Ketrin Mensfild (ur. Svetlana Tomić)

„Konstrukcija identiteta i psihologija represije u pripovetkama Ketrin Mensfild i Alis Manro: ’Sreća’ ili ’Previše sreće’?“

Ćuk Maja

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Oslanjajući se na viđenja Kejt Milet i osnovne postavke psihologije represije, u radu se analiziraju koncepti koji se provlače kako kroz pripovetku Ketrin Mensfild „Sreća“, tako i kroz delo Alis Manro „Previše sreće“. Cilj rada je da osvetli na koji način pomenute autorke pišu o konstrukciji identiteta i mogućnosti da žene iskažu svoje potencijale i zadovolje potrebe u kontekstu represivne patrijarhalne ideologije. Zanimljivo je da, uprkos tome što nastoje da se povinuju društvenim načelima, glavne protagonistkinje u pomenutim pričama bivaju doživljavane kao osobe čudnovate prirode, koje su i pored ogromnog truda nedorasle određenim društvenim ulogama. Nažalost, one same učestvuju u tom narativu, ubeđujući sebe da im određena pozicija odgovara i da su srećne.

konstrukcija identiteta, internalizovana represija, patrijarhalna ideologija, koncept sreće, Ketrin Mensfild, Alis Manro

M45

Reči: časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu

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Urednice: Maja Ćuk i Melina Nikolić

https://www.reci.rs/index.php/Reci/issue/view/9

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M55

Filološki pregled

„Konstrukcija ženskog identiteta i psihologija represije u pripovetkama ‘Dimenzije’, ‘Venlok Edž’ i ‘Previše sreće’“

Ćuk Maja, Panajotović Artea

https://fpregled.fil.bg.ac.rs/pdf/2022_2.pdf

Cilj rada je da osvetli način na koji Alis Manro istražuje uticaj ustaljenih društvenih obrazaca i praksi na položaj i psihologiju žena kako u prošlosti, tako i u savremeno doba. Oslanjajući se prevashodno na feministička viđenja Kejt Milet i osnovne postavke psihologije represije, analiziramo konstrukciju ženskog identiteta u pričama „Dimenzije”, „Venlok Edž” i „Previše sreće” iz zbirke Previše sreće, u kojima se socio-kulturni i psihološki aspekti represivne patrijarhalne ideologije višestruko prepliću. U prve dve priče protagonistkinje su prinuđene da prihvate svoje dodeljene uloge i ponašaju se onako kako kulturološki kodeksi patrijarhata nalažu. Izvesno odstupanje od konstruisane rodne uloge koju društvo nameće ženama vidljivo je u liku Sofije Kovaljevski u pripoveci „Previše sreće”, iako ni ona ne uspeva da se ostvari u celosti kao osoba.

ženski identitet, internalizovana represija, patrijarhalna ideologija, Kejt Milet

M51

Reči: časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu

Upotreba književnih sadržaja u nastavi stranih jezika

Panajotović Artea, Parezanović Tijana, Ćuk Maja

https://scindeks.ceon.rs/Article.aspx?artid=1821-06862215011P

Oslanjajući se na komunikativni pristup, u ovom radu istražujemo vezu između književnosti i metodike nastave s ciljem da ukažemo na mogućnosti primene književnih sadržaja u nastavi stranih jezika. Posle razmatranja mesta književnosti u nastavi stranih jezika i osnovnih argumenata za i protiv njene upotrebe, usredsređujemo se na iskustva s programom stručnog usavršavanja „Upotreba književnih sadržaja u nastavi engleskog jezika“ pri Zavodu za unapređivanje obrazovanja i vaspitanja Republike Srbije, koji je osmišljen na osnovu metodičkih istraživanja i nastavnog iskustva autorki. Na seminaru je nastavnicima engleskog jezika u osnovnim i srednjim školama kroz praktične primere predstavljeno u kojim se sve oblastima nastave jezika i na koji način može primeniti književnost, pri čemu je posebna pažnja posvećena kriterijumima za izbor tekstova i pratećim aktivnostima. Praksa je pokazala da nije teško spojiti klasične aktivnosti koje se koriste u komunikativnom pristupu s književnim predlošcima. Na kraju rada se osvrćemo na povratne informacije polaznika seminara i moguće pravce daljeg razvoja ovog projekta.

primenjena književnost, metodika nastave, nastava engleskog jezika, komunikativni pristup

M52

Reči: časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu

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Urednice: Melina Nikolić i Maja Ćuk

https://www.reci.rs/index.php/Reci/issue/view/8

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M55