Held on November 18, 2015
In this event, Ms. Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic and Dr. Amy Traver, Professor of Sociology at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, discussed how war can produce multiple girlhoods in a single life. Ms. Dervisevic-Cesic read from her memoir, The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet, which documents her experience growing up in Bosnia and Herzegovina before and during the 1992-1995 civil war. Dr. Traver draws on her girls’ studies research, as well as her previous position as Co-Chair of the Girls’ Studies Caucus of the National Women’s Studies Association, to offer commentary and context.
Dr. Amy Traver is Professor of Sociology at Queensborough Community College, CUNY. Her research interests include student success and experiential pedagogies in community college contexts, as well as intersections of race/ethnicity and gender in American family life. Her most recent publications in these areas include articles in Teaching Sociology, Internet and Higher Education (with Volchok, Bidjerano, and Shea), Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Focus, and International Journal of Sociology of the Family. She is also the co-editor (with Perel Katz) of Service-Learning at the American Community College (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), an edited volume reviewed as a “must read” that “suggests a strategy for reconsidering the priorities and practices of higher education.” Traver is a graduate of Colgate University (B.A., 1997), Harvard University (Ed.M., 1999), and the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Ph.D., 2008).
Ms. Jasmina Dervisevic-Cesic is the author of The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet, which documents her life during the Bosnian genocide. During the genocide, she lost her husband, two brothers, uncle, grandmother, and countless friends, as well as her right arm. She was the first Bosnian refugee granted permission to seek medical care in America. Over twenty years later, Jasmina still calls the Boston area home. She has a degree in business administration, runs her own real estate company, and is a licensed insurance agent. A happily remarried mother of two children, Jasmina is a frequent guest speaker at schools and community events where she shares her story.
The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet by 
To End a War by 
Bosnia by The Death of Yugoslavia. Dir. Norma Percy. BBC, 1995. DVD
Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave. Dir. Ademir. WNET Channel 13, 2000. DVD.