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
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, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures
Associate Professor, Women & Gender in Global Perspectives
Associate Professor, Russian, East European and Eurasian Center
Associate Professor, European Union Center
Associate Professor, Center for Global Studies
Honors & Awards
2016-2017 LAS Study in a Second Discipline, Law
LAS Conrad Humanities Scholar
Highlighted Publications
Greenberg, J. R. (2014). After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia. Stanford University Press.
Recent Publications
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.
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. Volume 47, Issue 4.
2017 (With Ivana Spasić) Beyond East and West: Solidarity politics and the absent/present state in the Balkans. 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.
2010 “There’s nothing anyone can do about it”: Participation, Apathy and “Successful” Democratic Transition in Postsocialist Serbia,” Slavic Review, (69)1.
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/project/155781/version/V1/view
https://auerdatascience.shinyapps.io/shiny_app/