Genocide

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course examines such violent forms of identity politics as ethnic cleansing and genocide in an international and historical perspective. The program covers the genocides in Europe against the Jews and Roma, in Armenia, the Balkans, the Ukraine, Cambodia, Rwanda, and the Darfur region. Ethnopolitics has been crucial in shaping politics and societies in recent time. It is frequently at the heart of disputes of international importance. This course covers different forms of identity politics including ethnopolitics, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, as manifested in the 20th and 21st centuries. We consider the politics of identity within the historical perspective, and also set in the international context. The program covers the Nazi and Communist genocides, European ethnic cleansing, and genocide including the cases of Armenia, Balkans, Ukraine, the Roma, Cambodia, Rwanda, and the Darfur region. Other specific current case studies of genocide may be analyzed. Conceptualizations, theories, and the scholarly debate related to genocide as a political phenomenon are covered in a comparative way. Investigation of genocide across regions and time periods will be combined with the review of the debate about genocide's definition, its development in these two centuries, patterns characterizing its occurrence, and hypothesized causes (whose identification can be controversial and difficult given the long historical run-up between causal agents and eventual ethnic hostilities). Genocide is also analyzed as an international crime, together with the range of legal actions and human rights instruments presently addressing it. A major objective is to examine the causes of genocide and how genocide might be prevented.