Contact Information
607 S. Mathews Ave
M/C 148
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Jessica Greenberg is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to coming toUIUC, Greenberg was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and an assistant professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She recently earned a Master of Studies in Law at the College of Law, University of Illinois. She is also currently the Co-Editor of the Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR).
Research Interests
Anthropology of democracy, legal studies, youth, social movements, revolution, Serbia/Balkans, Europe, Human Rights
Research Description
My work is motivated by along-standing interest in the everyday life of social movements, as well as the hopes and disappointments that have animated democratic political activism after the Cold War. My firstbook, After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Postsocialist Serbia (Stanford 2014) chronicles the lives of student activists as they confront the possibilities and disappointments of democracy in the shadow of recent political transformation in Serbia. In exploring the everyday practices of student activists—their triumphs and frustrations—After the Revolution argues that disappointment is not a failure of democracy but a fundamental feature of how people live and practice it.
My current research builds on my long-standing interests indemocratic practice, activismand power in the context of European integration. Drawing on ethnographic field research at the European Court for Human Rights, I examine how new definitions of European belonging and democratic practice are being defined through the legal management of citizens as rights bearing subjects. I analyze how rights in practice are produced through legally-mediated battles over sovereignty as pan-European courts attempt to deal with the specter of threats to European democracy.
Education
MSL, University of Illinois, College of Law, 2017
PhD, Anthropology, University of Chicago, 2007
BA, Women's and Gender Studies, Columbia University 1997
Awards and Honors
2016-2017 LAS Study in a Second Discipline, Law
LAS Conrad Humanities Scholar
Courses Taught
515 Social Theory and Ethnography
599 Anthropology of Time and Temporality
488 Modern Europe
372 Talking Politics
199 Cultures of Law
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures
Associate Professor, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Acting Director, European Union Center
Associate Professor, European Union Center
Highlighted Publications
Greenberg, J. R. (2014). After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia. Stanford University Press.
Recent Publications
Books
2025 (September) Justice in the Balance: Democracy, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights. Stanford University Press.
2014 After the Revolution: Youth, democracy, and the politics of disappointment in Serbia. Stanford University Press. (Introduction included for review)
Articles
2024 Justice Suspended: Rethinking institutions, regimentation, and channels from a human rights perspective. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 34(1): 45-65.
2022 Disappointment. (coauthored with Sarah Muir). Annual Review of Anthropology. 51:307–23.
2021 Counterpedagogy, Sovereignty, and Migration at the European Court of Human Rights. Law and Social Inquiry. 46(2): 518-539.
2020 Law, politics, and efficacy at the European Court of Human Rights. American Ethnologist. 47(4): 417-431.
2017 Beyond East and West: Solidarity politics and the absent/present state in the Balkans. (coauthored with Ivana Spasić) Slavic Review vol. 76 (2): 315-326.
2012 Gaming the System: Semiotic Indeterminacy and Political Circulation in the New Age of Revolution. Language & Communication, (32)4: 372–385.
2011 On the Road to Normal: Negotiating Agency and State Sovereignty in Postsocialist Serbia. American Anthropologist (113)1: 88-100.
2006 ’Goodbye Serbian Kennedy:’ Zoran Djindjic and the New Democratic Masculinity. East European Politics and Societies (20)1: 126-151. (Reprinted 2013 in Irena Grudzińska- Gross and Andrzej Tymowski, eds. Eastern Europe: Women in Transition. Frankfurt: Peter Lang: 285-306.)
2006 Nationalism, Masculinity and Multicultural Citizenship in Serbia. Nationalities Papers. (34)3: 321-341.
2006 Noć Reklamozdera: Democracy, Consumption, and the Contradictions of Representation in Post-Socialist Serbia. Political and Legal Anthropology Review:
(29)2: 181-207.
Book Chapters
2021 Pedagogies of context: Language Ideology and expression rights at the European Court of Human Rights. In Stanislaw Gozdz Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo, eds. Law, Language and the Courtroom: Legal Linguistics and the Discourse of Judges. London: Routledge.
2018 Jurisdiction, Politics, and Truth- Making International Courts and the Formation of Translocal Legal Cultures In Alter, Karen, Laurence Helfer, Mikael Rask Madsen. International Court Authority. Oxford University Press.
2016 “Being and Doing Politics: Moral Ontologies and Ethical Ways of Knowing at the End of the Cold War.” In Othon Alexandrakis, ed. Impulse to Act. A New Anthropology of Resistance and Social Justice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
2007 The Old World and its New Economy: Notes on the Third Age in Western Europe Today JR Greenberg, A Muehlebach Global Ages: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy, 190-213.
Databases and Applications
Greenberg, Jessica, Krupp, Benjamin, and Auer, Stephanie . European Court of Human Rights Mapping Project. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-12-02. https://doi.org/10.3886/E155781V1 https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/…;
https://auerdatascience.shinyapps.io/shiny_app/
Essays
2022 “Compromise, Complicity and the Rule of Law.” Anthropology News, https://www.anthropology-news.org/articles/compromise-complicity-and-th…
2020 “The Road from Imagination to Politics,” (commentary on the work of Maja Petrović-Šteger). Ethnološka tribina: Journal of Croatian Ethnological Society, Vol 50, No 43.
2018 “When is Justice Done?” Cultural Anthropology “Conversations” Series https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1434-when-is-justice-done
2017 “Times of Reckoning: History, Evidence and Truth-making after Yugoslavia,” Humanity Journal. http://humanityjournal.org/blog/times-of-reckoning/
2016 “Revolution” entry for the International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Ed. Hilary Callon. New York: Wiley Blackwell.
2008 “ Reconsidering Postsocialism from the Margins of Europe: Hope, Time and Normalcy in Post-Yugoslav Societies” (Andrew Gilbert, Jessica Greenberg, Elissa Helms, Stef Jansen), Anthropology News.