Milan Vidakovic

As a consultant with the UW Center for Teaching and Learning I work with instructors across campus supporting the Center’s mission of advancing teaching excellence by way of: holding individual consultations on instructional development, conducting workshops on evidence-based teaching strategies, and contributing to campus-wide events, such as the Teaching & Learning Symposium, TA Conference, Faculty Fellows Program, and Technology Teaching Fellows Institute.

I previously taught, as a graduate instructor, courses in Japanese language, comparative literature—introduction to genres and the comparative method, and on the topics of mythical motifs in literature and animals in fiction—as well as in the Interdisciplinary Writing Program (WAC/WID), where I taught expository writing as a tool of critical thinking and engagement in disciplines such as English, cinema studies, philosophy of science, biology, bioethics, environmental studies, geography, and political science.

My research revolves around narrative, namely the intersections of orature and literature as well as of science and literature. In my doctoral project I examined functions of questions in narrative works as they transition from the oral tradition (oral genres in oral societies) to literature (after the invention of the printing press). My work has since bifurcated into examining two sides of the functionality of questions: narrative mechanisms of questioning on the one hand, and on the other the applicability of questions in narrative-based contexts such as fiction, social interactions, and teaching and learning.