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History 135 Syllabus
Syllabi for History courses might also be available at the
History
Department Web Site.
Modern Genocide and Other Crimes Against
Humanity
Fall 2005 HIS 135 (K)
Professor Omer
Bartov Office Hours: Tuesdays
1-2:30pm Green House
Teaching Assistants (see tab): Chris
Barthel, Lauren Faulkner, Lauren Jones, Adam Webster
This course explores the emergence,
evolution, varieties, underlying causes, and means of confronting and
coming to terms with genocide and other crimes against humanity in the
twentieth century. We will discuss the emergence of genocide and the
subsequent conceptualization of this phenomenon; manifestations of
colonial genocide; the mass murder of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire;
the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and the mass murder of the handicapped and
the Gypsies; instances of communist-induced genocide, with an emphasis on
the case of Cambodia; and the recent genocide in Rwanda. We will then
examine cases of war crimes by the Japanese and German military in World
War II; mass crimes perpetrated by the Soviet regime against its own
citizens; and the emergence and conceptualization of “ethnic cleansing,”
with a special emphasis on the case of the former Yugoslavia. From there
we will move on to more general interpretations of the genocide and other
crimes against humanity, and discuss the manner in which they can be
confronted through retribution, restitution, and other instruments of
justice. Finally we will examine the rise of the new global terrorism, and
discuss the relationship between this type of potentially devastating
violence, state-terror and crimes, and the role of the international
community.
The course web site address is
http://www.brown.edu/Courses/HI0135/. These web pages are an
integral part of the course and you are encouraged to visit them for each
week's topic. Each of the web sites listed below is also available
through a link on the course web site which can be found on the
"Weekly Topics" page.
Required
Reading:
For
purchase:
Anne Applebaum, Gulag, A History
Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third
Reich
Doris
Bergen, War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust
Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of
Terror
Iris Chang,
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
Robert
Gellately and Ben Kiernan, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder
in Historical Perspective
Gary Jonathan Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War
Crimes Tribunals
Norman N.
Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century
Europe
Samantha
Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide
Extra
Reading (one of the following) for paper:
Adam
Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost
Fergal
Keane, Season of Blood
Primo Levi,
Survival in Auschwitz
Week 1: The Invention of Genocide
Power, 1-85
9/6 Lecture: Introduction
9/8
Lecture: Legislating genocide
"Universal Declaration
of Human Rights"
UN General Assembly Resolution on Genocide
Press Release on the Declaration's 50th Anniversary
The Right to Life: Speech by Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights
Week 2: Colonial Genocide: Killing Indigenous Peoples
9/15 Lecture: The genocide of the Herero
Kipling's
"White Man's Burden"
Pear's
Soap Ad
Political Cartoons
Colonial Maps
Week 3: Imperial Genocide:
The Ottoman Mass Murder of the Armenians
Winter: in Gellately & Kiernan, 189-213; Naimark, 17-42.
9/20 Lecture: The Armenian genocide
9/22 TA Lecture: The Great War and genocide
Video clip: Jay Winter, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
(1998)
"Report on the Treatment of Armenian Children in Trebizond"
"Report on the Deportation of Armenians from Zeitun"
Images of ad campaign for
Armenian relief
Map of Armenian
Genocide
Guenter Lewy, Revisiting the Armenian Genocide
Official Turkish position: Armenian Allegations of Genocide
Sample
Archival Documents on the Armenian Genocide
Taner Akçam, Anatomy of a Crime
PDF
For contemporary press coverage see Richard
Kloian, The Armenian Genocide:
News Accounts From
The American Press: 1915-1922
Week 4: Nazi Genocide: The Extermination of the
Handicapped, Gypsies, and Jews
Bergen, the whole book
9/27 Lecture: Nazi policies of sterilization,
"euthanasia," and cleansing the "asocials"
Video clip: Michael Burleigh, Selling Murder (1993)
Nazi Perpetrator
Testimony (Excerpts)
Maps of the Nazi
Genocide
Gypsy
marriage customs
Occupations
Beliefs
Excerpt
from Charlotte Delbo's Days and Memory (handout)
Letters, diary extracts
Article on the
history of mental illness and its treatment in America
Excerpt
from Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors
The protest of Bishop von Galen
Stanley
Milgram: Perils of Obedience
The
Zimbardo experiment
Week 5: Communist Genocide: Cambodia
Power, 87-154; Kissi: in Gellately & Kiernan, 307-23.
10/4 Lecture: The origins of genocide in
Cambodia
10/6 Lecture: The
Cambodian genocide in perspective
Khmer Rouge Suspects Feel
Pressure Is Building for Trial (New York Times)
Map of Cambodian
Genocide
Images of Exhumations from
Cambodia's Killing Fields
Ben Kiernan: The Cambodian Genocide and Imperial Culture
Cambodian
Genocide Program
Gregory Stanton:
Blue Scarves and Yellow Stars
Khmer
Rouge Biographical Questionnaire
Week 6: African Genocide: Rwanda
Power, 155-69, 329-89; Melson: in Gellately & Kiernan,
325-38
10/11 Lecture:
Colonial origins and genocide in Rwanda (Midterms handed out)
"The Girl Who Refused to Die"
"When Good
Men Do Nothing."
Map of Rwandan Genocide
10/13 Yom Kippur: No Class
Week 7: War Crimes: Japan
Chang, whole book; McCormack: in Gellately & Kiernan, 265-86
10/18 Two Guest
Lectures: Vital Akimana, survivor of the genocide in Rwanda
& Adam Jones, Gender & genocide (Midterms due back)
There will also be a campus screening of the film "Sometimes in
April" on the genocide in Rwanda
followed by Q&A with Akimana, time TBA
10/20 TA Lecture: The "Rape
of Nanjing," image and propaganda
Propaganda
film clip: Frank Capra, Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945)
Excerpt
from John Dower's War Without Mercy (handout)
"Categories of War Crimes"
Adam Jones on
Nanjing and gendercide
Week 8: War Crimes: Germany and Italy
Bartov, whole book
10/25 Lecture:
Conceptualizing and practicing the "war of extermination"
Film clip: Eder & Kufus, Mein Krieg (1991)
Film clip: Ruth Beckermann, East of War (1996)
10/27 Guest Lecture:
Simon
Levis Sullam,
Imperialism,
Antisemitism and genocide in Fascist Italy
Week 9: Mass Crimes in the Soviet Union
11/3 Lecture:
The Gulag
Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" 1956 (excerpts)
Map of Soviet
Gulag System
Pictures of
Ukrainian Famine Victims
Week 10: The Invention of “Ethnic Cleansing” and the former
Yugoslavia
Power, 248-327, 391-473; Naimark,1-16, 42-56, 139-84
11/8 Lecture:
Population policies and ethnic cleansing in context
BBC film
clip: The Nazis (1997)
11/10 Lecture: Bosnia and
Kosovo
"Mass
Graves" in Yugoslavia
Biljana
Plavšić on "defective gene" among Muslims
Week 11: Interpretations of Genocide
Kiernan, Weitz, Bartov: in Gellately & Kiernan,
29-96.
11/15 Lecture:
Theories and definitions
Video clip: Stopping Genocide: Darfur (2004)
William
Schabas, The Genocide Convention at Fifty
Nicholas D. Kristof speaks with Romeo Dallaire
11/17 Guest
Lecture: Andrew
Loewenstein, Report on the genocide in
Darfur
Week 12: Genocide and Justice
Bass, whole book; Power, 475-516
11/22 Lecture: Precedents and international tribunals
since 1945
Video clip: Nuremberg (2000)
Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court
UN on the
establishment of ICC
Assignment: recent reports and opinions on genocide and justice
11/24
Thanksgiving: no class
Week 13: The
Dilemma of Global Terrorism
Ignatieff, whole book
11/29 Lecture: Totalitarianism and global terrorism
EXTRA READING PAPER DUE BACK
12/1
Guest Lecture:
Doug Burgess, Pirates, terrorists and a new International law
Week 14:
Continuity and Change: Again Never Again
Revision of material
12/6
Lecture: Ethics, survival, memory, and representation
Video
Clip: Alain Resnais, Night and Fog (1955)
Excerpt from Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the
Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
PDF
Excerpt from Jan Gross, Neighbors
PDF
Excerpt from Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved
PDF
The works of David Olere
FINAL EXAM HANDED OUT -- DUE BACK 12/13
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