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Genocide Studies
Jewish Studies May 26, 2023

Undesirables

A Holocaust Journey to North Africa

Aomar Boum

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In the lead-up to World War II, the rising tide of fascism and antisemitism in Europe foreshadowed Hitler's genocidal campaign against Jews. But the horrors of the Holocaust were not …

Genocide Studies

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Interviews with scholars of genocide about their new books.

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Jewish Studies May 20, 2023

Flights of Spirit

Elly Gotz

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Today I talked to Elly Gotz, author of the memoir Flights of Spirit (Azrieli Foundation, 2018). Sixteen-year-old Elly Gotz hides with his family in an underground bunker in the Kovno ghetto in …
Jewish Studies May 19, 2023

Romania and the Holocaust

Events, Contexts, Aftermath

Simon Geissbühler

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
From summer 1941 onwards, Romania actively pursued at its own initiative the mass killing of Jews in the territories it controlled. 1941 saw 13,000 Jewish residents of the Romanian city …
Genocide Studies May 17, 2023

Never Again

Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust

Andrew I. Port

Hosted by Kelly McFall
As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a …
Genocide Studies May 14, 2023

The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World

Nerina Weiss. Erella Grassiani, and Linda Green

Hosted by Christopher Davey
Nerina Weiss. Erella Grassiani, and Linda Green's book The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World (Routledge, 2022) focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts …
Genocide Studies May 12, 2023

Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century

Bedross Der Matossian

Hosted by Roberto Mazza
Throughout the twenty-first century, genocide denial has evolved and adapted with new strategies to augment and complement established modes of denial. In addition to outright negation, denial of genocide encompasses …
Human Rights May 3, 2023

Testimony

Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone

Shanee Stepakoff

Hosted by Rine Vieth
Content note: This episode contains discussions of violence, including rape and mutilation Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, Testimony: Found Poems from the Special …
Ukrainian Studies April 29, 2023

Babyn Yar

Ukrainian Poets Respond

Research Center Coordinator Ostap Kin

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
In 2021, the world commemorates the 80th anniversary of the massacres of Jews at Babyn Yar. The present collection brings together for the first time the responses to the tragic …
Asian Review of Books April 27, 2023

I Feel No Peace

Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers

Kaamil Ahmed

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
The Rohingya population, from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are a community almost living entirely in exile, whether in refugee camps in Bangladesh, or working on boats throughout the Indian Ocean. The …
Jewish Studies April 22, 2023

Beyond the Pale

The Holocaust in the North Caucasus

Crispin Brooks and Kiril Feferman

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Crispin Brooks and Kiril Feferman's edited volume Beyond the Pale: The Holocaust in the North Caucasus (U Rochester Press, 2020) is the first book devoted exclusively to the Holocaust in the North Caucasus …
Genocide Studies April 19, 2023

Trauma and Truth

Teaching Russian Literature on the Chechen Wars

Elena Pedigo Clark

Hosted by Jeff Bachman
The collapse of the USSR was relatively bloodless. The Chechen Wars were not. A tiny nation on the edge of Russia, Chechnya brought one of the largest armies in the …
Genocide Studies April 17, 2023

The Holodomor and the Origins of the Soviet Man

Reading the Testimony of Anastasia Lysyvets

Vitalii Ogiienko

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Anastasia Lysyvets’s memoir Tell us about a happy life … (Skazhy pro shchaslyve zhyttia …), published in Kyiv in 2009 and now available for the first time in an English …
Eastern European Studies April 16, 2023

Auschwitz

A Monograph on the Human

Piotr M. A. Cywiński

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
Auschwitz is perhaps the best-known memorial site in the world. Epicenter of the Nazi extermination campaign of Europe’s Jewish population, the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp system also held over 400,000 inmates (Jews …
Genocide Studies April 11, 2023

Hypocrisy and Human Rights

Resisting Accountability for Mass Atrocities

Kate Cronin-Furman

Hosted by Kelly McFall
Hypocrisy and Human Rights: Resisting Accountability for Mass Atrocities (Cornell University Press, 2022) examines what human rights pressure does when it does not work. Repressive states with absolutely no intention …
Jewish Studies April 7, 2023

The Atrocity of Hunger

Starvation in the Warsaw, Lodz and Krakow Ghettos during World War II

Helene J. Sinnreich

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
During World War II, the Germans put the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland into ghettos which restricted their movement and, most crucially for their survival, access to food. The Germans saw …
Ukrainian Studies April 7, 2023

The Voices of Babyn Yar

Marianna Kiyanovska

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Today I talked to the translators of Marianna Kiyanovska's The Voices of Babyn Yar (HURI, 2022), Max Rosochinsky and  Oksana Maksymchuk. With this collection of stirring poems the award-winning Ukrainian poet honors the …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel April 6, 2023

The Pope at War

The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

David I. Kertzer

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those …
Genocide Studies April 2, 2023

Still Life with Bones

Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains

Alexa Hagerty

Hosted by Kelly McFall
In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks …
Eastern European Studies April 2, 2023

Rain of Ash

Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust

Ari Joskowicz

Hosted by Vladislav Lilic
Dr. Ari Joskowicz, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Rain of Ash: Roma, Jews, and the Holocaust (Princeton University Press, 2023). Jews and Roma …
Genocide Studies March 29, 2023

Perpetrators

Encountering Humanity's Dark Side

Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Alex Hinton

Hosted by Jeff Bachman
Perpetrators of mass violence are commonly regarded as evil. Their violent nature is believed to make them commit heinous crimes as members of state agencies, insurgencies, terrorist organizations, or racist …