The Twentieth Century was considered, by many scholars who study political violence, “the century of genocide” with the Holocaust as the epitome of industrial and mechanical violence. Yet there were many genocides before and after that.

The question rises “what is genocide”? How does it differ from other forms of collective violence? What triggers genocide? Why are the acts during genocide so gruesome? What is the cultural of genocide? What are the consequences of its legal definition? Why do people perpetuate genocide?

These and more questions will be answered during this course. We will thereby not only look at familiar cases of genocide, like the Holocaust, Rwanda and Srebenica, but also “hidden” and unknown genocides and the mass atrocities happening right now in South Sudan, Central Africa and Syria/ North Iraq. This course will give you an analytical model to understand and study genocide and measure proper interventions.

Programme description

The summer course ‘Hidden Genocides’ will exist of lecturers, seminars, international guest lecturers specialised in genocide, analysing documentaries and eye witness accounts, discussions and having excursions to various places.

For a more details, please see the webpage on programme description.

Course objectives

After this course the student is able to:

• Understand and analyse the consequences of the legal definition of genocide both from a historical, legal and social scientific point of view
• Compare and analyse known and unknown genocides both for its specific elements as the commonalities that occurs during genocide
• Understand and analyse the behavior and the social imaginaire of the perpetrators of genocide
• Describe known and unknown cases of genocide
• Understand, analyse and compare the aftermath of genocide; both in its legal consequences as in it social, political, psychological and economic consequences
• Understand, describe and analyse the complex relationship between ideology, perpetrators, bystanders and victims.