Faith Communities: Fostering Civll Society in Post-Conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina?

This talk considers the relationship between religious communities, government, and others sectors of society in BiH and whether, contrary to received opinion, they may actually contribute to the growth of civil society.

Cynthia Simmons is Professor of Slavic Studies at Boston College. She specializes in gender/culture studies and literary theory, focused on the former Yugoslavia and Russia. Her publications include Women Engaged/Engaged Art in Postwar Bosnia: Reconciliation, Recovery, and Civil Society, “Women on the Home Front and Cultural Preservation in the National Museum of Sarajevo (1992-1995),” “A Multicultural, Multiethnic, and Multiconfessional Bosnia: Myth and Reality,” and Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose (with Nina Perlina).