Abstract
In this chapter, Drs. Aliza Atik, Kathleen Alves, and Mirna Lekić, the faculty coordinators of the 2016–2017 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)/Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC) Colloquium Series, “Fleeing Genocide: Displacement, Exile, and the Refugee,” review the unique impact of theoretical and textual approaches to the study of genocide and mass atrocity. They explore the concept of “difficult knowledge,” the notion of “critical genocide studies,” and the way in which the framing of contentious historical and contemporary narratives benefits from strategies of active listening and textual engagement.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
References
Agamben, Giorgio. 1995. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.
Bleich, Erik, Irene Bloemraad, and Els de Graauw. 2015. Migrants, Minorities, and the Media: Information, Representations, and Participation in the Public Sphere. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41 (6): 857–873.
Bond, Helen. 2008. Teaching the Holocaust in the Urban Classroom: The Need to Know. In Paths to Teaching the Holocaust, ed. Tibbi Duboys. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Britzman, Deborah P. 1998. Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning. Albany: State University of New York Press.
———. 2000. If the Story Cannot End: Deferred Action, Ambivalence, and Difficult Knowledge. In Between Hope and Despair: Pedagogy and the Remembrance of Historical Trauma, ed. Roger I. Simon, Sharon Rosenberg, and Claudia Eppert. Boston: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Esses, Victoria M., Stelian Medianu, and Andrea S. Lawson. 2013. Uncertainty, Threat, and the Role of the Media in Promoting the Dehumanization of Immigrants and Refugees. Journal of Social Issues 69 (3): 518–536.
Gatrell, Peter. 2013. The Making of the Modern Refugee. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gorden, Claire. 2014. Coming to America: The 5 Biggest Refugee Groups of the Last 20 Years. Al Jazeera America. October 14. http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2013/10/13/the-5-biggest-refugeegroupsofthelast20years.html
Haberman, Maggie. 2015. Donald Trump Questions Whether Syrian Refugees Are a ‘Trojan Horse.’ New York Times. November 16. https://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/16/trump-questions-whether-syrian-refugees-are-trojan-horse/?_r=0
Hinton, Alexander Laban. 2012. Critical Genocide Studies. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 7 (1): 4–15.
Kincheloe, Joel L. 2008. Critical Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang.
Kingsley, Patrick, and Safak Timur. 2015. Stories of 2015: How Alan Kurdi’s Death Changed the World. The Guardian. December 31. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/31/alan-kurdi-death-canada-refugee-policy-syria-boy-beach-turkey-photo
Knox, Katharine, and Tony Kushner. 1999. Refugees in an Age of Genocide: Global, National and Local Perspectives During the Twentieth Century. London: Frank Cass.
Kochavi, Arieh J. 2001. Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, The United States & Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Laub, Dori. 1992. Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening. In Testimony: Crises Of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, 57–74. New York: Routledge.
Laurent, Olivier. 2015. What the Image of Aylan Kurdi Says About the Power of Photography. Time. September 4.
Low, Bronwen E., and Emmanuelle Sonntag. 2013. Towards a Pedagogy of Listening: Teaching and Learning from Life Stories of Human Rights Violations. Curriculum Studies 45 (6): 768–789.
Lubling, Yoram. 2004. Teaching the Shoah: Philosophy and the Holocaust. In Teaching the Shoah in the Twenty-First Century: Topics and Topographies, ed. Simon P. Sibelman, 177–191. Lewsiton: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Ngai, Sianne. 2005. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Parker, Samuel. 2015. ‘Unwanted Invaders’: The Representation of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK and Australian Print Media. eSharp 23. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/id/eprint/79108
Pensiero, Karen Miller. 2015. Aylan Kurdi and the Photos That Change History. The Wall Street Journal. September 11. https://www.wsj.com/articles/aylan-kurdi-and-the-photos-that-change-history-1442002594
Pitt, Alice, and Deborah Britzman. 2003. Speculations on Qualities of Difficult Knowledge in Teaching and Learning: An Experiment in Psychoanalytic Research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16 (6): 755–756.
Rajaram, Prem Kumar, and Carl Grundy-Warr. 2004. The Irregular Migrant as Homo Sacer: Migration and Detention in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. International Migration 42 (1): 33–64.
Soguk, Nevzat. 1999. States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press.
Tharoor, Ishaan. 2015. What Americans Thought of Jewish Refugees on the Eve of World War II. The Washington Post. November 17. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/17/what-americans-thought-of-jewish-refugees-on-the-eve-of-world-war-ii/?utm_term=.bda1f8a1399f
The White House. 2017. Executive Order Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/27/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states. Accessed 20 Mar.
Totten, Samuel. 2004. Issues of Rationale: Teaching About Genocide. In Teaching About Genocide: Issues, Approaches, and Resources, ed. Samuel Totten. Greenwich: Information Age Publishing.
The UNHCR. 2016. Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2015. UNHCR. June 20.
The UNHCR. 2017. Global Trends 2015. http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/statistics/unhcrstats/576408cd7/unhcr-global-trends-2015.html. Accessed 25 Mar.
Zembylas, Michalinos. 2008. The Politics of Trauma in Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendix: 2016–2017 NEH/KHC Colloquium Series, “Fleeing Genocide: Displacement, Exile, and the Refugee”
Appendix: 2016–2017 NEH/KHC Colloquium Series, “Fleeing Genocide: Displacement, Exile, and the Refugee”
Program 1. Refuge Denied: St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Scott Miller, Author and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the USHMM
Dr. Susan Jacobowitz, Associate Professor of English, QCC
Description: Scott Miller, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the USHMM, discussed his book, co-authored with Sarah Ogilvie, on the fate of the passengers of the St. Louis ship that left Nazi Germany in 1939 only to be turned away by the US and Cuban governments upon arrival.
Program 2. “The Jacket” Exhibit
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Dr. Cary Lane, Department of Academic Literacy, QCC
Description: The exhibit centered around the stories of a very special artifact donated to the KHC: a prisoner’s “jacket” from Kaufering (Dachau), discovered to have belonged to Ben Peres, a Lithuanian Jew whose original name was Benzion Peresetzki, who emigrated to Long Island after liberation from a displaced persons camp.
Program 3. Building a Better Future: Supporting Refugee Youth to Thrive
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Sara Rowbottom, Education and Learning Manager at the International Rescue Committee
Dr. Kathleen Landy, Director of CETL, QCC
Description: Sara Rowbottom, Education and Learning Manager at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), highlighted issues relevant to educating refugees, provided information on IRC’s educational programs, and discussed the IRC Refugee Youth Summer Academy, a six-week program designed to transition newly arrived refugees into New York schools.
Program 4. Displacement, Refuge , Migration—The Context of United Nations’ Peace Operations
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Stefan Feller, Director at United Nations
Dr. Beth Counihan, Associate Professor of English, QCC
Description: Lieutenant General Stefan Feller , the Police Adviser to the United Nations who serves as a Director in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, discussed crises which cause internal and external displacement, and the challenges of reverting displacement and migration.
Program 5. A Common Thread of Uncommon Courage, Part I—From Genocide to Human Rights Activist
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Jacqueline Murekatete, Genocide Prevention and Human Rights Activist
Dr. Trevor Milton, Assistant Professor of Sociology, QCC
Description: Jacqueline Murekatete, founder of the Genocide Survivors Foundation, spoke about her own experiences as a victim of the Rwandan genocide.
Program 6. The LGBTQ Refugee Crisis
Friday, March 24, 2017
Daniel Dromm, New York City Councilman
Dr. Amy Traver, Associate Professor of Sociology, QCC
Sebastian Maguire, Esq., Legislative Director & Counsel, The New York City Council
Pamela Denzer, Client Programs Director at Immigration Equality
Description: Through personal stories of LGBTQ refugees and those who advocate for them, this program, led by Councilman Dromm , examined the challenges facing LGBTQ populations as they flee from brutality and oppression, and navigate the complicated world of exile.
Program 7. Echoes of Exile
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Description: This event featured musical testimonies of resistance, remembrance, and exile by QCC music faculty, Ensemble 365, and the QCC Jazz Ensemble.
Program 8. A Common Thread of Uncommon Courage, Part II—Girlhood, Displacement, and Resistance During the Japanese Occupation
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Dr. Kathleen Tamayo Alves , Assistant Professor of English, QCC
Dr. Aliza Atik, Assistant Professor of English, QCC
Dr. Benjamin Miller , Assistant Professor of English, QCC
Prof. Alisa Cercone, Lecturer of English, QCC
Description: Dr. Kathleen Tamayo Alves addressed displacement, victimhood, survival, and resistance through the girlhood narratives of her family’s flight from persecution during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, supplying the historical and cultural context of World War II in Asia. This program was immediately followed by a student and faculty roundtable discussion.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Atik, A., Alves, K.T., Lekić, M. (2018). Textual Approaches to Mass Atrocity Education. In: Traver, A., Leshem, D. (eds) Humanistic Pedagogy Across the Disciplines. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95025-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95025-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95024-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95025-9
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)