Second call for papers/panels

Genocide: Knowing the Past, Safeguarding the Future
3rd Global Conference on Genocide

by the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS)

Seventy years after the infamous Wannsee Conference, a landmark on the road to the attempted annihilation of European Jewry, genocide is now a crime under international law, and genocide memory and Holocaust commemoration are part of public consciousness in most parts of the world. Non- governmental organizations in particular campaign tirelessly against mass violence. And yet people across the world are continuously persecuted, expelled or killed because of their race, religion, gender or political affiliation. Collective violence organised by states or sub- state actors is endemic in many regions, and despite all its human rights rhetoric the international community mostly closes its eyes to such atrocities. It appears that prevention has failed, the “Never Again” at the end of World War II gone unheard.

The failure of the international community to develop effective mechanisms to prevent genocide finds its parallel in academia's failure to critically reflect on the state of prevention or to develop new theoretical approaches to respond to it. The International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) has chosen Genocide: Knowing the Past, Safeguarding the Future as the topic of its 3rd Global Conference on Genocide. We invite contributions that address the question of genocide and collective violence from a broad variety of perspectives, both historical and current. The conference committee particularly welcomes contributions that address the question why lessons from past genocides and acts of mass violence appear to remain ignored and, as such, ineffective. What are the (historical, anthropological, sociological, political, or philosophical) root causes of conflicts, and how do past violent conflicts and genocides affect or shape the present? We also seek contributions theorizing and attempting to understand the failure to prevent genocide by addressing the topic within the context of other disciplines, like anthropology, philosophy, political science, law, or cultural studies.

We invite suggestions for panels and papers on all aspects of the study of genocide and mass violence, past, present and future. Submissions should reach us no later than 15 December 2011. Brief abstracts (250 words per paper, panel suggestions should additionally briefly state the rationale of the panel, including short CVs and institutional affiliation; all in one Word file) should be e- mailed to the chairs of the program committee, Volker Langbehn (langbehn@sfsu.edu), and Juergen Zimmerer (juergen.zimmerer@uni- hamburg.de). Topics of particular interest would include (but are not restricted to) the following:

- Prevention
- International law and genocide
- Education and genocide prevention
- Holocaust and its representation
- Genocide in art, literature and film
- Genocide and mass culture
- Visuality and Genocide
- Colonial mass violence
- Cultural genocide and ethnocide
- Reconciliation, restitution and recognition
- Genocide denial
- Politics of apology
- Forms of remembrance and memory politics
- Climate change and mass violence
- Social origins of mass violence
- Genocide and the International Order
- Humanitarian interventions: chances and problems
- Gender and violence
- Late Ottoman population policy
- Soviet mass violence
- From Indonesia to Cambodia: genocides in Cold War Asia
- From Biafra to Darfur: mass violence in post- independence Africa

We would be grateful if you would circulate this CFP as widely as possible.

Juergen Zimmerer
President, INoGS

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zimmerer
Historisches Seminar
Universität Hamburg
Von- Melle- Park 6
20146 Hamburg
Tel. +494042838- 2591, Fax.: +494042838- 2371
E- Mail: juergen.zimmerer@uni- hamburg.de