Sanja Nikčević

Since 2003, she has been employed in the English department (Faculty of Philosophy, Osijek), teaching courses on American and British drama, where she still works in the Ph.D. literature program.

[citation needed] Nikčević was the founder and first president (1994–2000) of the Croatian Center of ITI-UNESCO[3] where she organized numerous international events (seminars, drama colony, exchange writers and directors, presentation of theatre of other countries in Croatia and vice versa).

Plays depicting losers and failures of the American dream (from Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee and David Mamet, for example) she calls subversive.

Nikčević's book on the spread of in-yer-face theatre from its origin in 1990s Britain all over Europe, New European Drama or The Great Deception, (Zagreb, 2005) was both attacked and praised.

It has been translated into Slovak (Nova Europska drama alebo vel'ky podvod, Bratislava, 2007) and Bulgarian (Нова европейска драма или голямата измама, Ruse, 2009).

(Zagreb, 2008), deals with some less-fashionable but very important writers (Tanja Radović, Miro Gavran), genres (the comedies of Ivan Kušan or literary cabaret of Borisa Senkera) and topics (the disappearance of political drama after the fall of communism, religious plays during wartime, etc.)

Some decades are dominant in dealing with one point: the 1960s and 1970s with politics as a means for the destruction of the individual (Ivan Kušan, Ivo Brešan, Dubravko J. Bužimski, Škrabe/Mujićić/Senker), the 1980s dealing with emotions and the inner world of the hero (Miro Gavran, Lada Kaštelan, Mate Matišić), authors of the 1990s are in search of intertextuality (Ivan Vidić, Asja Srnrc Todorović, Tomislav Zajec), while the latest period is in search of the voice between these three points.

Edited: The anthologies and Nikčević's theoretical work on the topic (Plays on Homeland War of one hundred titles from cabaret till allegory, published in the journal Republika 7-8/2012.

1999: Honorary citizen of Waterford, Connecticut, USA 2000: The Order of Croatian Pleter by the President of the Republic of Croatia, for the promotion of Croatian culture 2006: New European Drama or Big Deception (2005), Award Petar Brečić, for book on theatre 2013: Theatre Criticism or Inevitable Companion (2012), Award Antun Gustav Matoš Matica Hrvatska, for best critical book