13206

SoSe 14: Genocide and the Holocaust in Modern History

Lasse Heerten

Comments

Historians have devoted substantial energy to the study of the Nazi mass murder of European Jews. In recent decades, studies of other "genocides" in modern (and in some cases pre-modern) history have supplemented this interest. Colonial and postcolonial conflicts in particular, such as those in German Southwest Africa or Cambodia, have sparked scholarly interest and questions about their possible genocidal nature, alongside with cases of mass violence in the contexts of war, imperial dissolution, and the formation of nation-states; one of the most prominent examples for the latter case are the Ottoman massacres against Armenians during World War I. In this class, we will approach the subject by focusing on the evolution of genocide as a concept and as a historical phenomenon since the late 19th century. It will approach the conflicts named above as well as others from a comparative perspective. It will furthermore deal with the question of how the rise of Holocaust memory has changed the understanding of mass crimes, civil wars or humanitarian crises in recent decades. close

Suggested reading

Recommended Reading: Donal Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010. Robert Gellately, (ed.), The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press 2003. Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World, Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press 2010. Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, Boston/New York 2000 [1999]. Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2009. Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2003. close

12 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Mon, 16:00 - 18:00 12 Class schedule

Mon, 2014-04-14 16:00 - 18:00

Lecturers:
Lasse Heerten