"Negotiating Muslim Identity through the Holocaust: Political Responses, Legal Rifts, and Cultural Repercussions in Wartime Yugoslavia"
Professional Background
Emily Greble is Assistant Professor of History at the City College of New York. She received a Ph.D. and an M.A. in East European history from Stanford University and a B.A. in history with highest honors at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. For her Diane and Howard Wohl Fellowship, Dr. Greble conducted research for her project, “Negotiating Muslim Identity through the Holocaust: Political Responses, Legal Rifts, and Cultural Repercussions in Wartime Yugoslavia.”
Dr. Greble’s publications include the manuscript A City Apart: Sarajevo in the Second World War (Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2011) and several articles, including, “When Croatia Needed Serbs: Genocide and Nationalism in Sarajevo (1941-1942)” in Slavic Review (Spring 2009), “Preispitanje Historije i Historiografije Jugoslavije tokom drugog svjetkog rata: Slučaj Sarajeva” [Rethinking History and Historiography of Yugoslavia during World War II: The Case of Sarajevo] in Zbornik radova: Revizija prošlosti na prostorima bivše Jugoslavije [Proceedings from the Conference “Revision of the Past in the Former Yugoslavia”] (2007), and “Posljednji mjeseci ratnog perioda: Sarajevska Iskustva” [The Last Months of the War: The Experience of Sarajevo] in Zbornik radova: 60 godina od završetka Drugog svjetskog rata – kako se sjećati 1945. Godine [Proceedings from the Conference “Sixty Years since the End of World War II – How to Remember 1945”] (2006). Dr. Greble is the recipient of fellowships and grants for her research, including the American Council of Learned Societies Postdoctoral Fellowship, a fellowship at the Remarque Institute, New York University, and a fellowship at the Belfer Center, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In 2007, she participated in the summer research workshop “Antisemitism and the Churches of Eastern Europe” at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is fluent in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, and has reading proficiency in French, German, and Czech.
Fellowship Research
During her tenure at the Museum, Dr. Greble studied the impact of the Holocaust on legal, cultural, and social policies in the Independent State of Croatia. She was particularly interested in how racial and discriminatory legislation changed concepts of community. For example, how did debates over the expropriation of Jewish property directly or indirectly lead different groups to collaborate or resist with the radical right? How did policies restricting Jewish marriage shape family law, as well as the ethical codes and religious practices of non-Jewish communities? Central to her analysis is how the Muslim community of Bosnia and Herzegovina responded to state-sponsored policies against Jews – the other “religious” minority in Yugoslavia. By integrating the histories of victims, bystanders, and perpetrators, her research sheds light onto the ways that the persecution and removal of Yugoslav Jews fundamentally transformed Muslims’ legal codes, cultural identity, and religious practices. While her research focused on Yugoslavia, Dr. Greble aimed to explore the theoretical implications of these questions in the broader context of Hitler’s Europe. The Museum’s archival collections from Croatia and Yugoslavia were the basis for her research.
Dr. Greble was in residence at the Mandel Center from June 1 to August 30, 2010.