2009 Courses

Courses for January Term 2009

HIST 403: Why Did They Kill? Understanding Perpetrators of Genocide [3]

Jeffrey Rossman, Associate Professor

The twentieth century was characterized by repeated episodes of one-sided, state-sponsored mass killing.  When such killing targets ethnic, religious, or national groups - as it did in Anatolia during World War I (the Armenians), in Europe during World War II (the Jews, the Roma and Sinti), and in Rwanda in 1994 (the Tutsis) - it is known under international law as genocide.  In this intensive reading and discussion course, we will engage a rich body of primary sources from twentieth-century genocides, key works of scholarship from the disciplines of social psychology, anthropology, political science, and history, and relevant documentary and fiction films in an effort to understand the complex but tragically recurring process whereby ordinary people - people like you and me - are transformed in specific historical circumstances into genocidal killers.  Possible readings include:  J. Waller, "Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing"; B. Valentino, "Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century"; H. Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil"; R. Petersen, "Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, & Resentment in 20th-Century E. Europe"; C. Browning, "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland"; D. de Mildt, "In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide"; J. Gross, "Neighbors"; A. Hinton, "Why Did They Kill?  Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide"; L. A. Fujii, "Killing Neighbors: The Social Dimensions of Genocide in Rwanda."  Possible films include:  "The Wannsee Conference"; "Obedience" [on the Milgram experiment]; "Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment"; "The Ghosts of Rwanda"; and "The Trial of Adolf Eichmann."