Friedman elected to Macedonian Academy of Arts and Scienc

Victor Friedman, Professor in Slavic Languages & Literatures, is one of five individuals elected to the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences on April 21. He is the first U.S.-born American citizen elected to the academy since 1969 and only the second to be elected since the academy's founding in 1967. He will travel to Macedonia in August to present an inaugural lecture at a special meeting of the academy's members.

The Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences is the highest-level research institution in the Republic of Macedonia. Foreign members of the academy are usually elected on the basis of their contribution to the advancement of knowledge about Macedonia and Macedonian culture. Only 25 foreign scholars have been elected to membership since the academy's founding.

Friedman is a linguist who specializes in the structure and sociolinguistics of the languages of the Balkans and the Caucasus, with particular emphasis on Macedonian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Romani and Lak. He is the author of more than 100 articles and reviews, and his book "The Grammatical Categories of the Macedonian Indicative" was the first book published in North America on modern Macedonian.

Friedman came to Chicago in autumn 1993 from the University of North Carolina, where he was chairman of the Slavic department. He received a dual Ph.D. from Chicago in 1975 from the departments of Slavic Languages & Literatures and Linguistics.