Would a Genocide by Any Other Name Smell as Foul?

Catalog description

This class will look at the term genocide and its contested meanings in a range of historical contexts. Drawing from scholars in multiple disciplines we will unpack the work the term does, in relation to questions of human of the field of genocide studies (including its critique),rights, law, memory, land and race. Each week we will deepen our understanding through a focus on contexts where the use of the term genocide is common, even if contested (such as charges of settler colonial genocide against indigenous people in North America and against the Herero and Nama people of Namibia), as well as contexts where the charges of genocide may be less recognized (such as the killings in Indonesia in 1965 and in the Great Famine of Ireland in the mid-1800s). We will examine legal instruments (such as the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide), read scholarship (authors such as Patrick Wolf, Hannah Arendt, Mahmoud Mamdani and Jessica Whyte), and watch films (such as the Zone of Interest) and sessions of the ongoing International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa against Israel on the threat of genocide in Gaza.