SIS Book Launch: Jeff Bachman- Genocide Studies

About the Books:

"Genocide Studies: Pathways Ahead": In recent years, the world has been shaken by numerous events that have caused and continue to cause massive human suffering, from the COVID-19 pandemic to intrastate and interstate armed conflicts. Moreover, climate change continues to plow ahead, contributing to growing tensions, population movements, and resource scarcity. Meanwhile, the methods by which groups and group life are threatened, and the means by which violence is incited and perpetrated, continue to evolve. Such divergent crises, even when they overlap or intersect, confound definition and label. This book seeks not to answer the question "What is genocide?" but rather "What is genocide studies?" When Raphael Lemkin coined the term "genocide" in 1944, he could not have foreseen what the world would look like today. Now is the time to think about current manifestations of genocide and those likely to emerge in the future.

Find more information here.

"A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities": This is the first textbook of its kind to amass cases of genocide and other mass atrocities across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries that have largely been pushed to the periphery of Genocide Studies or “forgotten” altogether.

Divided into four thematic sections – Genocide and Imperialism; War and Genocide; State Repression, Military Dictatorships, and Genocide; and Human-Caused Famine, Attrition, and Genocide – A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities covers five continents, including case studies from Biafra, Yemen, Argentina, Russia, China, and Bengal. They range from the French conquest of Algeria in the mid-nineteenth century to the Yazidi genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017, and show that at times of rising authoritarianism, military conquest, and weaponization of hunger, lines between what is war and what is genocide are increasingly blurred. By including genocides and mass atrocities that are often overlooked, this volume is crucial to the ongoing debates about whether “this atrocity or that one” amounts to genocide.

By including key points, events, terms, and critical questions throughout, this is the ideal textbook for undergraduate students who study genocide, mass atrocities, and human rights across the globe.

Find more information here.

About the Panelists:

Jeff Bachman is the author of The Politics of Genocide: From the Genocide Convention to the Responsibility to Protect and The United States and Genocide: (Re)Defining the Relationship. He is also the editor of Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations and Genocide Studies: Pathways Ahead, and co-editor of A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities. His research has also been published in Third World Quarterly, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Journal of Genocide Research, and International Studies Perspectives, among others.

Esther Brito Ruiz is an SIS PhD student, specializing in mass violence and gender. She is a contributor to Genocide Studies: Pathways Ahead and co-editor of A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities, and author of academic articles, including “Do No Harm: The Role of Humanitarian Aid and Neutrality in Protracting Civil Wars” and “The Geopolitics of Human Suffering: A Comparative Study of Media Coverage of the Conflicts in Yemen and Ukraine.”

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

American University, School of International Service, Founders Room, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, United States