Studying memory, in its collective and performative forms, has been at the centre of scholarly interest for a couple of decades, argues Muller-Suleymanova (2024) in Remembering and dealing with violent past: diasporic experiences and transnational dimensions, the Introduction to a recent Special Issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies. The special issue brings together eight new contributions to this field, examining the cases of Bosnian, Chechen, Kurdish, Lebanese, Rwandan, and Ukrainian diasporas settling in countries of Western Europe and North America. The individual articles look at how diasporic communities come to terms with memories of a violent past and how these legacies affect their integration in the host states.
The largest community of Bosnians outside of BiH, over 60,000 people, is in the United States, in St. Louis, MO., which I have written about when reviewing Bosnian St. Louis: Between Two Worlds by Patrick McCarthy and Akif Cogo. March 1, 2024-BiH’s Independence Day is also the second birthday of the Center for Bosnian Studies at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, MO, USA. On this occasion, I interview the Center’s Director, Anna Karamehic-Oates and Ben Moore, the man who started it all.
How it all began
Ben Moore: It all began on November 1, 2006. We did our first oral history of a genocide survivor from Prijedor, a man whose name was Rešad Kulenović and who has since passed away. It was for the purposes of an exhibit that we had at the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center that focused on survivors from Prijedor. When I say we, it was a group of us, my colleague, Dr. Jack Luzkow, who was a history professor and genocide studies scholar at Fontbonne. Then there was Amir Karadžić, a man from the community, and Patrick McCarthy who’s well-known in the community as an activist and a leader. We were just so moved by these interviews that we determined that we would continue to do them. We also were involving students because the interviews were done in the context of a course about Bosnia. I should add that I’m an odd person to have been involved in this, because my background was 17th Century English Literature, which is a bit far removed from the subject at hand. I had some great teachers along the way. I’ve always considered myself more of a facilitator in this endeavour rather than the expert. I position myself as a student, rather than as the authority. We continued with this work for several years and around 2008, 2009, we began to conceive the idea of the Center for Bosnian Studies. It’s been a long time coming because of the need to get an institutional basis, primarily the funding for it. So, that’s one of the reasons we have gone about a decade from the first inkling to actually being able to open the Center. But I think that we began operating as a Center long before we declared ourselves a Center. We’d been amassing for more than a decade, not only the oral histories, but also secondary sources of various kinds and primary sources, including Bosnian diaspora newspapers, and other publications, letters, artefacts, other things that really we’re holding on behalf of the community for future generations and for scholars and researchers in the more immediate sense.
Adna Karamehić-Oates: I would just like to underscore Ben’s role in this project, particularly in those few, first years, from what I have heard from everybody. Ben did all this very much in cooperation with the community in St. Louis. It was not an external thing. It was very much about making himself familiar to the community and doing it alongside them, with their approval. So, the Bosnia Memory Project was the foundation for the Center.
Working with high school students
Adna: Actually, collecting the oral histories was how the Bosnian Memory Project started. But, talking about the very beginning also takes us to a course taught by Ben Moore, Dr. Lutzkow and others at Fontbonne University. This was a college-level course on genocide and immigration to St. Louis. Around that time was when the first course in high schools started in St. Louis. These are high schools with large Bosnian diaspora populations, high concentrations of Bosnian-American students.
Ben: One of the ways we’ve tried to set down deeper roots in the community here is by working through high schools that have large Bosnian populations. And there are four that we’ve worked with so far. The students in those courses who were involved in the project take a class about Bosnian history and culture. In the context of the class they record oral histories of elders in the community, including their parents and grandparents, their aunts and uncles and so forth, here in St. Louis.
Bosnian Studies
Adna: For me, Bosnian Studies is the study and understanding of Bosnian history, the culture, and the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A big part of that obviously includes the legacy of the war, but it goes far beyond. It includes our prewar history and our multiethnic background, and the cultural identity of Bosnia that the war threatened and also was that dividing moment in time. So, it’s absolutely not a post-1995 Bosnian Studies, but much broader. Also, the question of our hybrid identities in the United States and elsewhere is central, especially for the younger generation. BiH diaspora scholars have had such an important role in the spread of Bosnian Studies.
Ben: I might just add that it’s interdisciplinary and that while it’s not only a post-1995 endeavor, it is in some ways seeded by the fact that there are so many Bosnians living in the diaspora, who have reached a kind of critical age where they are, those who have gone into academic fields, writing and reflecting on the experience of forced displacement and everything that came before that. One of the reasons that I think Bosnian Studies exists is because the Bosnian diaspora has made it of interest to people in various institutions around the world. I don’t know if we would have Bosnian studies if we didn’t have a Bosnian diaspora. It is also very much a transnational endeavor. Bosnian Studies exists in a transnational field. It exists in the space between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the diaspora and the dialogue that is developed between these two places. What I mean by “place” isn’t just a geographical place. I mean it also as an emotional place and an academic place. So, it’s dialogic in that sense and transnational.
Transnational Space
Adna: One of our ambitions is to help bridge the transnational space and create relationships between the Center and other institutions within Bosnia and outside it, so that we can have a common exchange of knowledge and materials. For example, the Srebrenica Memorial Center in Bosnia is a natural partner for us. Even though our use of materials is different, our missions and goals are very much aligned. We aim to establish relations with other academic institutions that are maybe not focused on Bosnia, but are concerned with the general ideas of memorialization, oral history, and the preservation of culture and identity in diaspora.
Ben: We have an informal Advisory Board that consists of scholars at a number of institutions, including Hariz Halilovich at RMIT, and Amila Buturović at York University. I visited the International University of Sarajevo a number of times and we have formed alliances. We have established informal agreements with a number of advanced scholars in the field. For example, we had Hasan Nuhanović on campus, as we have had Hariz and Amila. Those relationships are certainly avenues that we want to expand and solidify as we develop further in the next few years. I think it’s necessary for us to have all those connections if we are going to remain a center that’s truly transnational and it’s necessary if we are going to extend our understanding of the Bosnian diaspora beyond the community here in St. Louis.
Local Outreach
Adna: I would like to add that our relationships are beyond the transnational ones. We are active within St. Louis itself, because that is the primary place from which the center has drawn its work and where it got started. Establishing relationships within St. Louis, for example, with the Missouri History Museum is of major importance to us. We have also worked together with the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the Chicago-based Genocide Center. It’s really a ladder of connections. These are connections within our institutions and communities in and around St. Louis. Then, the next step on the ladder are organizations within the United States. Our oral history project cannot be limited to just the St. Louis community. We want to be a center to collect oral histories of different Bosnian communities around the United States.
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. Her co-edited book (with Dr. Dženeta Karabegović) Bosnian Studies: Perspectives from an emerging field was published by University of Missouri Press in 2023.
Benjamin Moore, Ph.D. retired from Fontbonne University in 2021 but remains active as 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(University of Missouri Press, 2021). In 2006, Dr. Moore co-founded the Bosnia Memory Project, dedicated to documenting the experiences of Bosnian genocide survivors living in St. Louis. He also helped to develop the traveling exhibit Prijedor: Lives from the Bosnian Genocide, which has been shown at twenty-one locations throughout the U.S. In 2016, Dr. Moore’s work was recognized with a $100,000 matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which helped to fund the transition of the Bosnia Memory Project to the Center for Bosnian Studies.