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The quarter-century that has passed since the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has seen an outpouring of scholarly research into Bosnian history, politics, and culture. Some scholars have sought to redress genocide and human rights violations, many of which have gone unpunished by local and international courts. Others have documented the multiethnic “common life” that characterized Bosnian culture and history prior to the rise of ethno-nationalism in the 1980s. Still others have studied the implications of forced displacement for Bosnians of all ethnicities, many of whom have formed diaspora communities in Europe, Australia, and North America. As scholars have continued these conversations across national and disciplinary boundaries, they have formed a new field of academic inquiry that we call Bosnian studies.

This pre-recorded panel discussion is intended for laypeople and academicians with some prior knowledge about the Bosnian war and genocide. It will consider the ways that scholars in a variety of academic disciplines have contributed to the emerging field of Bosnian studies or deployed scholarship in the pursuit of justice. Of special interest are the contributions of scholars from Bosnia-Herzegovina who now live in diaspora. Also of interest are the ways that scholarship provides an avenue for reckoning with the current vexed cultural and political situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where ethnic tensions persist and where past injustices continue to shape political structures and social institutions.

Moderated by Ben Moore.

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Panelists

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Amila Buturović is a professor in the humanities department at York University in Toronto. Her research interests span the intersections of religion, culture, and identity, especially in the context of Islamic societies. She is interested in the theories and practices of translation and polyglossia and has written on that subject in relation to Arabo-Islamic Spain and the Ottoman Balkans. Her publications include many articles and essays on these varied subjects. She is the author of Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombstones, Landscape, and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar (Springer, 2002), and a co-editor, with Irvin C. Schick, of Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History (Tauris, 2007). Her monograph, Carved in Stone, Etched in Memory: Death, Tombstones and Commemoration in Bosnian Islam (Ashgate, 2015) concerns the spaces and culture of death in Bosnia, specifically the questions of continuity and discontinuity in the eschatological sensibilities, epigraphic texts, and commemorative practices. She has also written several essays and articles on the subject of death in Islamic cultural and intellectual history.

Dr. Buturović's current research examines the culture of health and medical market in Ottoman Bosnia, focusing on the interconfessional transmission of medical knowledge and manuals, amulets and talismanic practices, and herbalism.

A Board member of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Butorović holds a doctorate in Islamic Studies from McGill University.

Dženeta Karabegović is based in the Division of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Salzburg. She holds a Ph.D. in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick (2017) where she worked on an ERC funded project, Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty. This semester she is also a Think Višegrad Fellow at the Institute for International Relations in Prague. Her wider research interests and academic publications are rooted in international relations and political sociology with a particular focus on transnationalism, diaspora, migration, human rights, transitional justice, foreign policy, and the Balkans. She has done consulting work with local and international organizations focused on diasporas and development, returnees, social inclusion, civil society, education, and countering extremism and has collaborated with the Post-Conflict Research Center for multiple years. She also currently serves as the Program Co-Chair for the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA).

Dr. Karabegović was an Assistant Professor at International Burch University in Sarajevo, Lecturer at the Sarajevo School for Science and Technology, a Guest Researcher at Mid-Sweden University’s Forum for Gender Studies and a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Previously, she was a U.S. Fulbright Fellow at the Hugo Valentin Centre at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Her academic work has been published in multiple peer-reviewed academic journals, and she has a co-edited volume (with Jasmin Hasić) on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s foreign policy since independence (Palgrave 2019) and a co-edited volume (with Maria Koinova) on diasporas and transitional justice (Routledge 2020).

Adna Karamehić-Oates is the Director of the Center for Bosnian Studies at Fontbonne University. She spent eleven years at the Open Society Foundations in Washington D.C., in program management as well as advocacy roles focusing on central/eastern Europe. She also served for seven years as Vice President and Treasurer for the Advisory Council for Bosnia-Herzegovina, an advocacy organization based in Washington D.C.

Dr. Karamehic-Oates holds a Ph.D. in Globalization and Governance from Virginia Tech University, where her dissertation focused on reconceptions of 'home' and identity within the post-war Bosnian diaspora in the United States. At Fontbonne, she has taught courses for the major in Global Studies, including a course on the Bosnian diaspora. As Associate Director of the Bosnia Memory Project, she has recorded oral histories, arranged events, assisted with collection development, and helped to develop the Center’s new website. Her article on becoming a Bosnian-American recently appeared in the Washington University Global Studies Law Review.

David Pettigrew is a Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, in New Haven, where he also created and teaches a course on Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the Yale University Genocide Studies Program and serves on the Board of the Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center in Chicago, as well as on boards of other organizations. Dr. Pettigrew lectures and writes about the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His article, "Mandate Interrupted: The Problematic Legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” appeared recently in the Washington University Global Studies Law Review.

Dr. Pettigrew accompanied the government exhumation team to the Drina river near Višegrad in 2010 to bear witness to the exhumation of the victims and to the truth of the genocide. He served in 2012 as a credentialed international observer for the local elections in Srebrenica. In 2013-14, he wrote open letters and op-ed essays to try to save from destruction the Pionirska street house in Višegrad—the only memorial for the fifty-nine women and children who were burned alive in 1992. In 2017, he served as a consultant for the completion of the first comprehensive educational museum about the Srebrenica genocide that was installed in the Srebrenica Memorial Center. Over the years he has written open letters to the High Representative and other international officials to advocate for the implementation of laws against genocide denial and against the glorification of war criminals in Bosnia.

Benjamin Moore holds a doctorate in English from the University of Iowa (1992). He has taught at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Missouri since 1994, where he has also served as department chair and Interim Academic Vice President; he currently serves as Associate Professor of English and Senior Researcher for the Center for Bosnian Studies. He is the author of The Names of John Gergen: Immigrant Identities in Early Twentieth-Century St. Louis (Missouri, 2021).

In 2006 Dr. Moore co-founded, with Dr. Jack Luzkow, the Bosnia Memory Project, which is dedicated to fostering an understanding of St. Louis’s Bosnian refugee community and to preserving the memory of Bosnian genocide survivors by recording oral histories and collecting artifacts and documents. In 2013, the Bosnia Memory Project received a Focus St. Louis What’s Right with the Region Award for Improving Racial Equality & Social Justice. Dr. Moore, who speaks frequently about the Bosnian diaspora, helped to develop the traveling exhibit Prijedor: Lives from the Bosnian Genocide, which has been shown at twenty-one locations throughout the U.S., including Capitol Hill. In 2016, Dr. Moore’s work was recognized with a $100,000 matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has helped to fund the transition of the Bosnia Memory Project to a Center for Bosnian Studies.

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Panel Discussion

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11-21-2020 12:00 PM

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Nov 21st, 12:00 PM

Bosnian Studies: Scholars' Perspectives on an Emerging Field

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The quarter-century that has passed since the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina has seen an outpouring of scholarly research into Bosnian history, politics, and culture. Some scholars have sought to redress genocide and human rights violations, many of which have gone unpunished by local and international courts. Others have documented the multiethnic “common life” that characterized Bosnian culture and history prior to the rise of ethno-nationalism in the 1980s. Still others have studied the implications of forced displacement for Bosnians of all ethnicities, many of whom have formed diaspora communities in Europe, Australia, and North America. As scholars have continued these conversations across national and disciplinary boundaries, they have formed a new field of academic inquiry that we call Bosnian studies.

This pre-recorded panel discussion is intended for laypeople and academicians with some prior knowledge about the Bosnian war and genocide. It will consider the ways that scholars in a variety of academic disciplines have contributed to the emerging field of Bosnian studies or deployed scholarship in the pursuit of justice. Of special interest are the contributions of scholars from Bosnia-Herzegovina who now live in diaspora. Also of interest are the ways that scholarship provides an avenue for reckoning with the current vexed cultural and political situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where ethnic tensions persist and where past injustices continue to shape political structures and social institutions.

Moderated by Ben Moore.

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