The Croatian Emigrant Almanac has, from year to year, developed into a modern publication targeted to the heterogeneous communities of the millions of Croatian living abroad, offered in Croatia with summaries in English and Spanish. Thanks to the efforts of editor Vesna Kukavica for the past fourteen years it has also included an electronic version available on the CHF portal.
The Croatian Heritage Foundation, the real and virtual meeting place for Croatians living around the world, was the venue for the presentation, on 19 February, of the 2013 Croatian Emigrant Almanac. The Almanac is published by the Croatian Heritage Foundation and edited by our own Vesna Kukavica. This serial, specialist and popular publication celebrates its 57th edition this year, while its publisher, the CHF, is celebrating its 62nd anniversary.
On hand to present the Almanac to the many on hand were CHF director Marin Knezović, Vlado Puljiz DSc, Željka Lovrenčić DSc, Rebeka Mesarić Žabčić DSc and the volume’s editor Vesna Kukavica.
The Croatian Emigrant Almanac traditionally offers articles of diverse content and level of specialisation. This year’s issue includes thirty-six articles in eight thematic sections on 392 pages. The 2013 CHF Almanac, with summaries in English and Spanish, features sections on Signs of the Times, Croatian Philological Horizons, Bridges, A History, Heritage, Science, Spirituality and New Books. These sections offer a number of encouraging articles about the creative work our people are engaged in in overseas countries and other European countries including those with centuries-old indigenous Croatian minority communities. The editorial board, it should be noted, was particularly delighted to accept articles from junior researchers and publicists of the younger generation from the homeland and abroad such as Eni Buljubašić.
The material of this year’s edition of the CHF’s trilingual yearbook links twenty countries across four continents and features sixty photographs. The articles are penned by fifteen doctors of the social sciences from universities in the homeland and abroad, thirteen holders of master’s degrees and eight capable publicists. Along with the culture-related topics from the homeland, the latest edition of this serial publication reveals the rich treasury of Croatian creativity abroad in various fields of human endeavour—from literature to science. The Croatian Emigrant Almanac has, from year to year, developed into a modern publication targeted to the heterogeneous communities of the millions of Croatian living abroad, offered in Croatian with summaries in English and Spanish. Thanks to the efforts of editor Vesna Kukavica for the past fourteen years it has also included an electronic version available on the CHF portal.
The core themes of the Almanac focus on the cultural heritage of Our Beautiful Homeland in its European setting, recent Croatian literature in the Diaspora and the opportunities offered by modern technologies in providing teaching about the Croatian language and culture among the Croatian communities abroad. We were very pleased to be able to include an article on the CHF’s Croatians Abroad digital repository (hrID), which offers excellent content for cyber Croatian language teachers abroad. An Australian Croatian from the Dalmatian region and a professor of Croatian Studies at Macquarie University, Walter F. Lalich of Sydney, has offered a brilliant analysis of the dynamics of the Croatian language in a changing global environment and the growing Australian-Croatian transnational social space.
Our famed writers like A. Skármeta (Chile), M. Yasbincek (Australia) and M. Bodrožić (Germany) are creating effective links between diverse cultural communities. We are awed with the success of Croatian researchers who, following their education in Croatian, are developing their careers at global centres of excellence to the benefit of humanity as a whole, featured in articles by T. Rudež and J. Herak. Prominent among the thirty-five authored articles by their stylistic finesse and argumentation are those penned by long-time CHF contributors such as V. Kusin, S. Vulić, D. Barač, L. Cvikić and L. Kanajet Šimić, T. Nuić, I. Čizmić, M. Sopta, L. Budak, E. B. Depope, B. Perić, A. Glibota and G. Borić.
The Croatian Festival in France, about which E. Čandrlić writes, is considered the most ambitious presentation abroad of Croatian culture since it regained its independence—the cover of this year’s Almanac features the Croatian Apoxyomenos, seen at Paris’ Louvre by the millions that visit the world’s most frequented museum.
In the following edition of its yearbook the Croatian Heritage Foundation plans to focus on the creative work of the second and third generation of Croatian emigrants in overseas countries and the contemporary cultural practices of our emigrant communities linked by the new media.
Text by: Željka Lešić; Photos by: Snježana Radoš