Why Did They Kill? Interpreting Genocide and Its Perpetrators ONLINE

One of the defining features of the twentieth century was the repeated use of genocide and other forms of one-sided mass violence by states against internal and external populations. In this lecture course, we will explore these phenomena from theoretical and historical perspectives, with particular attention to the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the mass atrocities carried out by maximalist Communist regimes (e.g., Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia), and the “ethnic cleansings” and genocides of the post-Cold War era (e.g., in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda). While the experience of victims will be of central concern, we will also examine the experience and motivations of perpetrators, the explicit and implicit goals of regimes that resort to one-sided mass violence, and the response -- or lack of response -- by members of the international community.