THE RHETORIC OF MASS ATROCITY

Catalog description

This course examines how the relationship between language and power is manifest in mass atrocity. Using select cases studies and relevant theoretical concepts, the course interrogates the ways racial, ethnic, and national identities are rhetorically (re)constituted, performed and policed, as well as the profound role of rhetoric in priming a given public for various degrees of acquiescence to state-sponsored mass violence, and the role of rhetoric in the aftermath of mass atrocity - be it justice, commemoration, reconciliation, or silence - to actuate accountability and create public memory of these events.