Personal Politics and Teaching
Genocide Studies
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Dr Sadiah Qureshi, University of Birmingham
HEA Workshop, 19 February 2014
GENOCIDE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY
PERSPECTIVE
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INTRODUCTIONS, ISSUES AND
DEFINITIONS
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The First Genocide of the Twentieth
Century
THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, 1915–1917
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Imperial Violence and Indigenous
Peoples
Settler Colonialism and Genocide
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Genocide and the Nazis
The Question of Holocaust Uniqueness
Prosecuting and Denying Genocide
Rwanda and Gacaca Courts
THE ANTHROPOLOGY AND
PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE
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The Fall of Yugoslavia
Rape and Sexual Violence
PROSECUTING GENOCIDE, THE
‘MODERN CRIME’
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Raphael Lemkin and Establishing
Genocide as an International Crime
The ‘Modern’ Crime
BOSNIA AND KOSOVO, 1991–1995
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Christians in the Ottoman Empire
WORLD WAR II AND THE
HOLOCAUST
LEMKIN AND THE UN CONVENTION
OF 1948
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THE HERERO AND NAMA IN GERMAN
SOUTH WEST AFRICA, 1904–1908
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Introduction to Genocide Studies
What is Genocide?
IMPERIAL EXPANSION AND SETTLER
COLONIALISM
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The Genocidal Continuum
INTERVENTION AND PREVENTION
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The Politics of Humanitarian
Intervention
Central questions for the course
1. How has genocide been defined from Lemkin onwards?
2. What are the conceptual issues associated with defining genocide and how
does this relate to different human groups, e.g. religious, racial, ethnic, national
and political?
3. What are the major features, ambiguities, and controversial aspects of the 1948
UN Genocide Convention?
4. In which historical, social and political contexts has genocide occurred e.g. the
rise of nation states, the dissolution of empires and/or ongoing wars? Is it
possible to compare meaningfully across these diverse contexts or are all
genocides unique?
5. How does genocide relate to other forms of mass violence and everyday acts
of violence?
6. In what ways is genocide gendered?
7. How have efforts to bring génocidaires to justice varied between local,
national and international contexts?
8. Can we know when genocide is likely to occur and on what grounds can
humanitarian intervention be considered?
Defining Genocide: The UN Convention
The crime of genocide is defined in international law in the Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
‘Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring
about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.’