Thomas EmmertEmeriti

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Tom Emmert retired from the the Gustavus History Department after 38 years of teaching at Gustavus.  He joined the department in 1973. A native of Minnesota, Tom developed his passion for history and Eastern Europe while a student at St. Olaf College. He studied in Yugoslavia and at Oxford University as an undergraduate and the rest, as they say, is history. He enjoyed six years of graduate education at Stanford University, where he felt very privileged to work with the eminent Balkanist, Wayne S. Vucinich. Trained as a specialist in medieval Serbia, Emmert prepared his doctoral dissertation in Belgrade as a Fulbright Scholar under the tutelage of the leading Serbian medievalist, Sima Cirkovic. At Gustavus, Tom taught the European history survey, as well as courses on both Imperial and modern Russia, the Ottoman Empire, 19th century European intellectual and cultural movements, and Balkan nationalism. He is best known for the following publications: Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389 (New York, NY: East European Monographs, 1990); Kosovo: Legacy of a Medieval Battle (Minneapolis, MN: Mediterranean Monographs, 1991), editor with W.S.Vucinich; Conflict in Southeastern Europe at the End of the Twentieth Century: A 'Scholars' Initiative Assesses Some of the Controversies (London:Routledge, 2006), editor with Charles Ingrao; Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2nd ed., 2013), editor with Charles Ingrao (Bosnian edition:Suočavanje s Jugoslavenskim Kontroverzama (Sarajevo, 2010)).

Tom loves travel, music, gardening, good food, and great conversation. During his years at Gustavus he  directed two semester-long programs in Zagreb, Croatia and two others in Wittenberg and Berlin, Germany. He enjoyed directing Gustavus' first official alumni travel program in September, 2013 to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest.  In 2014 he will be study leader for Smithsonian travel programs in Central Europe and the Adriatic. 

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