I am a professor of literature and researcher of women writers at the University of Nova Gorica in Slovenia. I grew up in Yugoslavia in the communist and socialist society where the equality of women was written in the constitution. My grandmother and my mother were employed and I could study what I wanted, so I chose Comparative Literature, German and Dramaturgy at the University of Ljubljana. I had some female professors but they were mostly assistant professors or language teachers at the Department of German studies. That was kind of a strange experience because all my female teachers at the grammar school had been women. I was wondering why there was none of them at the comparative literature and dramaturgy departments. Perhaps they were not so clever as my distinguished male professors? However, there was one full professor at the Department of German studies and she lectured about women writers. That was also something that I would not experience at other study programs.  Listening to her, a new world opened to me. My MA thesis in Comparative Literature and in German were about women writers and I was among the first students at the doctoral programme in Women Studies and Feminist literature at the University of Ljubljana. Slowly, I began to realize how little I know about women writers and how enriching and inspiring the study of their writings can be, not just on professional level but also in my private life. Through my studying of women writers, I became more self-confident;  I suddenly realized how rich, diverse and also complex the female literary tradition is. In the recent two decades, I have tried to pass on this experience to my students and anybody who wants to listen to me.

In my academic career I have taught the following courses on gender and women writers –  University of Nova Gorica, 2005-2020: courses in Gender in the Age of Modernity, Representations of Gender in Slovenian literature, and European Women Writers. I was a visiting professor at the University of Vienna during the Spring semester of 2016. I taught the course titled Gender in Slavic Cultures (Department for Slavic Studies). Moreover, I taught a course at the University of Ljubljana in the Spring semester of 2009, namely the  course Female discourses in German Literature at the Turn of the Century (Department for German Studies).

I wrote numerous articles about women writers, a monograph Written with her pen: a deviation of early Slovene female writers from the paradigm of national literature which was awarded with the state’s Zois award for achievements in the field of scientific research and development.

Since 2005, I have worked also as an editor of the critical edition of the collected works of Slovenian/Croatian writer Zofka Kveder.

I strongly believe that teaching and learning about women writers can enrich and empower us.