Undergraduate Course: Genocide in the Modern World: theories and case studies (HIST10368)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Credits | 40 |
| Home subject area | History |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | This course seeks to establish an historical understanding of genocide, informed by the theoretical and multi-disciplinary approaches that have so shaped the field of genocide studies. The cases are largely chosen from the record of modern history (primarily the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) but since the course is comparative, it will also include reflection on selected cases from earlier centuries pursuant to reflection on the question of whether genocide is a quintessentially modern phenomenon. Students will emerge from the course being able to think comparatively and conceptually about genocide as well as about individual cases of it and connections between different cases. They will interrogate the utility and problems of the very concept itself. They will also study responses to genocide in the form of 'humanitarian intervention' and war crimes trials. The cases will be drawn from across the world: Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Australasia, with perpetrators ranging from imperialist powers to fascists, communists, nation-state builders, 'developmentalists' and counter-insurgency fighters, and 'enablers' ranging from structural features of the international political economy to regional and world powers and the contours of the Cold War. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass or passes in 40 credits of first level historical courses or equivalent and a pass or passes in 40 credits of second level historical courses or equivalent.
Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Secretary to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 503783).
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| Additional Costs | No |
Course Delivery Information
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| Delivery period: 2013/14 Full Year, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Learn enabled: Yes |
Quota: 15 |
Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
16/09/2013 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
400
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 44,
Summative Assessment Hours 4,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
344 )
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| Additional Notes |
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| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Written Exam
67 %,
Coursework
33 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours:Minutes |
|
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| Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May) | Paper I | 2:00 | | | | Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May) | Paper II | 2:00 | | |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students who complete the course successfully will have demonstrated by way of written coursework as well as participation in seminar discussion:
- knowledge and understanding of key patterns, events, concepts and themes in the modern history of genocide and related atrocities, including responses to those events
- an ability to distinguish critically between the particular and the general
- an ability to develop the tools for broader comparative analysis
- an ability to research for appropriate materials and weigh up the merits of pieces of historical evidence
- an ability to develop and sustain coherent intellectual argument
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Assessment Information
Coursework 33%: one 3,000 word essay each semester on either general themes in genocide studies or a specific case-based question
Exam 67%: two x 2-hour papers, comprising questions on general themes and patterns in genocide studies and particular case-based questions
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Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
Weeks:
1: Introduction: the concept of genocide - interdisciplinary perspectives
2: Is genocide a particularly modern phenomenon?
3: What is 'ethnic cleansing'?
4: Can there be genocide committed against political groups?
5: Can famines be genocidal?
6: What is the relationship between colonialism and genocide?
7: What is the relationship between nation(-state) building and genocide?
8:Settler genocide in North and South America
9: Genocide and its aftermaths in Australasia
10: Tsarist and Soviet policies of mass deportation compared
11: The genocide of the Herero and Nama in the context of other fin de siecle colonial crimes
12: The Armenian genocide and the end of the Ottoman empire
13: The Holocaust and other Nazi genocides
14: Genocide in Postcolonial Asia: Cambodia and Indonesia
15: Genocide and the secession question in Asia: East Pakistan, East Timor, West Papua
16: The Rwandan genocide and the wider context of extreme violence in the Great Lakes Region
17: Post-communist Yugoslavia
18: National Security Doctrine in Latin America and the genocide question
19: The Role of the United Nations
20: 'Humanitarian Intervention'
21: The point of Prosecution
22: Retrospective and Prospective: the relationship between the international political economy, states, their populations, and environmental degradation
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| Transferable skills |
- enhanced abilities in research, critical thinking, weighing up of arguments and evidence
- production of innovative research pieces that adhere to bibliographical convention
- skills in presenting information and arguments to fellow students / lecturer in class
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| Reading list |
Donald Bloxham and A Dirk Moses (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Dan Stone (ed.) The Historiography of Genocide (Palgrave, 2008)
Adam Jones, Genocide, A Comprehensive Introduction, (2nd edition, London, Routledge, 2010)
Mark Levene, The Meaning of Genocide (Tauris, 2005)
Leo Kuper, Genocide, Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (London, 1981) :
Alain Destexhe, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (London, West Haven CT, 1995)
Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide, Analyses and Case Studies (Yale, 1990)
Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide, Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton and Oxford, 2003)
RC Ben Kiernan and Robert Gellately, eds., The Spectre of Genocide : Mass Murder in
Historical Perspective (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy, Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (CUP, 2005)
A.L. Hinton, Genocide, An Anthropological Reader (Oxford, 2001)
idem., Annihilating Difference, The Anthropology of Genocide (University of California Press, 2002)
Samuel Totton and Paul Bartrop, The Genocide Studies Reader(Routledge, 2009).
Manus Midlarsky, The Killing Trap, Genocide in the 20th Century (CUP, 2005)
Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions, Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th century (Cornell UP, 2004)
Gil Eliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (Penguin, 1972)
Irving Louis Horowitz, Taking Lives, Genocide and State Power (1997)
Israel Charny, Genocide, A Critical Bibliographic Review , 3 volumes(1988 -1994)
Antony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (1985)
Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, ¿Victims of the State: Genocides, Politicides and Group Repression from 1945 to 1995,¿ in Albert J. Jongman, ed., Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Consequences (1996). Also Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (1994)
Helen Fein, ¿Accounting for Genocide since 1945: Theories and some Findings¿ International Journal on Group Rights 1(1993) 79-106. (ML copy)
Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil, A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale, 2007)
A. Dirk Moses ed., Empire, Colony, Genocide, Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History (Berghahn, 2008)
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| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Genocide Modern |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Donald Bloxham
Tel: (0131 6)50 3757
Email: donald.bloxham@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Clare Guymer
Tel: (0131 6)50 4030
Email: clare.guymer@ed.ac.uk |
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