Official Course Description
The study of genocide is by now widespread and sophisticated. Over the last decades, the field evolved from a principled focus on the historical and legal dimensions of the Holocaust to a much broader subject area. Today, this includes the study of a wide array of cases and periods; analytic angles from political science, to anthropology and neuroscience; as well as different types of research methodologies. Yet, genocide remains a phenomenon that everybody seems to intuitively understand, but that has proven to be notoriously hard to disentangle in all its empirical manifestations.
Particularly the relationship between International Relations scholarship and genocide is characterised by such an unease, with many approaches focussing entirely on international law to understand genocide or on explanations favouring national interests as the main variables to explain interventions. In contrast to these approaches, there are cases in which interventions took place in spite of international law outlawing them (e.g. NATOs intervention in Kosovo) and cases in which non-governmental actors drove governments to divert attention and resources to areas in which national interests were not immanently threatened (e.g. the US involvement in Darfur).
This course aims at disentangling some of the diverse political issues surrounding genocide and humanitarian intervention. Intended as an introduction for students with basic knowledge of International Relations, but without prior knowledge of the politics of genocide, the course will teach students the basic legal and political ramifications of genocide (e.g. what is its position in international law? Which obligations does that entail for a state actors?). Additionally, the course will treat international practices in relation to genocide as a case study to understand and theorize humanitarian intervention as a key issue for International Relations (What do International Relations theories say about humanitarian intervention? What distinguishes their explanations? How do they measure against the existing practice of humanitarian intervention?).
Having completed the course, students will:
- Know central concepts of genocide, humanitarian intervention and related international law
- Be familiar with the most important cases of intervention in cases of genocide
- Have a basic understanding of International Relations theories contributions to understanding humanitarian intervention
- Have intense knowledge of a case of genocide of their choice.
- Navigate and critically access large bodies of literature in relation to specific questions or problems they are working on
- Have acquired experiences in group work in problem-solving situations
- Have acquired (group) presentation experience.
Course Structure:
The seminar is an introductory masters seminar for students in Political Science/International Relations. The seminar will be taught in 14 classes of 2 hours. In the first sessions of the course, teaching will prevail but active class participation of students is required. For these sessions, students are required to carefully read all assigned literature and prepare two short response papers (see instructions below).
In the remaining part of the course, each student will give one oral presentation of 15-20 minutes in class (20-30 minutes if held with as a group). The presentations will be related to the session topics/cases and will have to focus on a research question of their choice. Depending on the size of the class, presentations can be done in pairs and the books to be reviewed will be assigned at the beginning of the course.
The study of genocide is by now widespread and sophisticated. Over the last decades, the field evolved from a principled focus on the historical and legal dimensions of the Holocaust to a much broader subject area. Today, this includes the study of a wide array of cases and periods; analytic angles from political science, to anthropology and neuroscience; as well as different types of research methodologies. Yet, genocide remains a phenomenon that everybody seems to intuitively understand, but that has proven to be notoriously hard to disentangle in all its empirical manifestations.
Particularly the relationship between International Relations scholarship and genocide is characterised by such an unease, with many approaches focussing entirely on international law to understand genocide or on explanations favouring national interests as the main variables to explain interventions. In contrast to these approaches, there are cases in which interventions took place in spite of international law outlawing them (e.g. NATOs intervention in Kosovo) and cases in which non-governmental actors drove governments to divert attention and resources to areas in which national interests were not immanently threatened (e.g. the US involvement in Darfur).
This course aims at disentangling some of the diverse political issues surrounding genocide and humanitarian intervention. Intended as an introduction for students with basic knowledge of International Relations, but without prior knowledge of the politics of genocide, the course will teach students the basic legal and political ramifications of genocide (e.g. what is its position in international law? Which obligations does that entail for a state actors?). Additionally, the course will treat international practices in relation to genocide as a case study to understand and theorize humanitarian intervention as a key issue for International Relations (What do International Relations theories say about humanitarian intervention? What distinguishes their explanations? How do they measure against the existing practice of humanitarian intervention?).
Having completed the course, students will:
- Know central concepts of genocide, humanitarian intervention and related international law
- Be familiar with the most important cases of intervention in cases of genocide
- Have a basic understanding of International Relations theories contributions to understanding humanitarian intervention
- Have intense knowledge of a case of genocide of their choice.
- Navigate and critically access large bodies of literature in relation to specific questions or problems they are working on
- Have acquired experiences in group work in problem-solving situations
- Have acquired (group) presentation experience.
Course Structure:
The seminar is an introductory masters seminar for students in Political Science/International Relations. The seminar will be taught in 14 classes of 2 hours. In the first sessions of the course, teaching will prevail but active class participation of students is required. For these sessions, students are required to carefully read all assigned literature and prepare two short response papers (see instructions below).
In the remaining part of the course, each student will give one oral presentation of 15-20 minutes in class (20-30 minutes if held with as a group). The presentations will be related to the session topics/cases and will have to focus on a research question of their choice. Depending on the size of the class, presentations can be done in pairs and the books to be reviewed will be assigned at the beginning of the course.
Semester: ST 2019