Content
This course is an exploration of violence, trauma, and memory as manifested in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and nationalism. Close attention will be given to the complex ethical, theoretical and conceptual problems of studying violence and trauma by reading empirical studies and comparative analyses.   

The course consists of three parts. In Part I students will learn how human beings may suddenly turn on one another in a genocidal way. The anthropologist Inga Clendinnen demonstrates in Reading the Holocaust how the extermination of the European Jews was replete with cultural meaning. Part IIfocuses on cultural meanings associated with nationalism and ethnic cleansing as illustrated by the book Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney and articles about Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Part IIIdemonstrates how large-scale violence is never confined to one social domain but unfolds on multiple planes and in several social dimensions. Violence and trauma occur as much on the collective as the individual level, and are recollected in personal and collective memory.

Format
Classroom participation: One weekly meeting consists of two forms of group discussion. In the first hour, the class will critically discuss the week’s reading assignment under the guidance of two students. In the second hour, these two students will begin with a fifteen-minute introduction to a current political conflict, and then lead a group discussion about the relevance of the week’s readings to that conflict. The students are at liberty to organize the meeting in any other way they see fit as long as they engage with the literature. For example, they may hold oral presentations, show audiovisual material, raise discussion questions, simulate a trial or press conference, perform a role play with the class, hold a debate or a quiz, etc. All students are expected to have done the assigned reading by the second weekly meeting.
Term paper: Each student will write a term paper on a topic related to his or her classroom presentation. The paper is due one week after the presentation, and should be between 1750 and 2000 words long.