Milica Bakić-Hayden is a Lecturer in the department of Religious Studies. Special topics of academic interest and research include cultures and societies of south-eastern Europe (the Balkans), and of South Asia (India); specifically, Eastern Christianity and religions of India, monasticism, comparative mysticism and sainthood. Dr. Bakić-Hayden did her M.A. Thesis on “Metaphysical foundations of the Sanskrit poetic theory of rasa” (University of Belgrade, Serbia), and her Dissertation on the Sanskrit and South Slavic epics: “Devastating Victory and Glorious Defeat: The Mahabharata and Kosovo in National Imaginings” (The University of Chicago). She edited and translated from English to Serbian the novels of R.K. Narayan (The English Teacher, ed., The Painter of Signs, ed./tr.). She lived and studied in India, Pune, for two years (1978-79; 1992).

Her recent papers include:

"Empires are Us: Identifying with Differences" in Images of Imperial Legacy: Modern Discourses on the Social and Cultural Impact of Ottoman and Habsburg Rule in Southeast Europe, edited by Tea Sindbaek and Maximilian Hartmuth, Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011.

"Teoloska antropologija zene: pravoslavna perspektiva" ("Theological Anthropology of Woman: An Orthodox Perspective") in I vjernice i gradjanke (Women as Believers and Citizens), edited by Zilka Spahic-Siljak and Rebeka Anic, Sarajevo: TPO Foundation, 2009

"Two Methods of Contemplation: Yoga and Hesychast Prayer," Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU (Herald of the Ethnographic Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) LV/2 (2008)

Varijacije na temu 'Balkan' [Variations on the Theme 'Balkans'], Belgrade: Filip Višnjić, 2006

"Kosovo: Reality of a Myth and Myth of Many Realities," in Serbien und Montenegro, Vienna: Österreichische Osthefte, 2006

"The Aesthetics of Theosis: Uncovering the Beauty of Image," in Aesthetics as a Religious Factor in Eastern and Western Christianity, edited by W. van den Bercken and J. Sutton, Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2006

"National Memory as Narrative Memory: The Case of Kosov" in National Memory in Southeastern Europe, edited by Maria Todorova, London: Hurst & Co., 2004

"What's so Byzantine about the Balkans?" in Balkan as Metaphor, edited by D. Bijelić and O. Savić, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2002

"Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia," Slavic Review 54 (1995)

The World on the Turtle's Back: Myths, Legends and Stories of the Iroquois, 1991 [translator]

The Painter of Signs by R.K. Narayan, 1986 [translator]