Cutting-edge in its scope and approach, this unique volume offers first-person accounts of modern genocides to enable readers to more fully examine genocidal experiences and better understand the horror of such events. From the atrocities of the Holocaust to the ongoing horrors in Darfur, genocide has been a gruesome and all-too-prominent fixture of modern history. There is no better way to examine and understand these events than through the accounts of those involved. This unique collection of primary sources features 50 documents, some of which have never before been made public. These firsthand accounts—diary entries, memoirs, oral testimony, original interviews, and more—illuminate 10 genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries as they were experienced by victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. The book begins with the Herero Genocide (1904–1907) and ends with a consideration of the atrocities in Darfur. Each of the 50 documents features a brief introduction that provides basic and essential information such as who created it as well as when, where, and why. The work concludes with an analysis comprised of scholarly commentary, additional contextual information, and a list of questions that will serve as a springboard for student discussion of history and of the nature of survival in the face of evil.

Genocide: The Basics is an engaging introduction to the study of a controversial and widely debated topic. This concise and comprehensive book explores key questions such as; how successful have efforts been in the prevention of genocide? How prevalent has genocide been throughout history? and how has the concept been defined? Real world case studies address significant issues including: The killing of indigenous peoples by colonial powers The Holocaust and the question of "uniqueness" Peacekeeping efforts in the 1990s Legal attempts to create a genocide-free world With suggestions for further reading, discussion questions at the end of each chapter and a glossary of key terms, Genocide: The Basics is the ideal starting point for students approaching the topic for the first time.

The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic ones for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of citizens in an attempt to preserve “Turkey for the Turks,” setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide in pursuit of political ends while largely escaping accountability. While this brutal history is most widely known in the case of the Armenian genocide, few appreciate the extent to which the Empire’s Assyrian and Greek subjects suffered and died under similar policies. This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition.

Originally published: Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, c2011.

An indispensable resource for those interested in the scourge of mass murder and genocide in the 20th and 21st centuries, this book analyzes modern and contemporary controversies and issues to help readers to understand genocide in all its complexity. This vital reference work looks at current areas of debate in genocide studies to provide insights into what a genocide is, why genocides occur, and what the consequences are once a genocide is recognized as such. It also illuminates how and why rational people can view the same set of circumstances as genocide or not, and how it might be possible in the future to alleviate or even prevent genocide. Dozens of accomplished scholars provide perceptive insights into the controversies and issues that dominate genocide discussions. The book is organized into five parts. The first considers how genocide is defined, while the second covers the pre-1945 period as it includes such controversial topics as the American Indian Wars, Australian Aborigines, Irish Potato Famine, Armenian Genocide, Ukrainian Starvation, and Holocaust. A Cold War section examines genocidal violence in Cambodia, East Timor, and Guatemala and against the Kurds; a post-Cold War period section covers Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and the Rohingya in Myanmar. The final part concerns such issues as genocide prevention, humanitarian intervention, and the role of military personnel as perpetrators of genocide.

This reader demands that we understand diversity and multiculturalism by identifying the ways in which curriculum has been written and taught, and by redefining the field with an equitable lens, freeing it from the dominant cultural curriculum. The book problematizes the issue of whiteness, for instance, as not being the opposite of blackness or «person-of-colorness», but rather a meta-description for our dominant culture. Issues are also addressed that are usually left out of the discussion about diversity and multiculturalism: this reader includes essays on physical diversity, geographic diversity, and difference in sexualities. This is the quintessential collection of work by critical scholars committed to redefining the conversation on multiculturalism and diversity.

The essays, which were originally published in The New England Quarterly: A Historical Review of New England Life and Letters, consider a wide range of areas in Native American-white relations: from Abenaki territory in northern Maine to Pequot lands in southern Connecticut; from profitable commerce to devastating warfare; from religious persuasion to labor exploitation; from cultural mixing to non-violent resistance; from literary representation to political argumentation. A comprehensive and insightful introduction by the editor places the richly diverse topics and perspectives within the broader context of New England ethnohistory. Most of the authors have added postscripts to their original essays commenting on recent scholarship and interpretations.

This book brings together contributions by thirty scholars of journalism and history who look at what was reported about the Holocaust in the press of more than a dozen countries and languages. The studies examine the news media in America, England, and the Soviet Union, in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, in the Vatican, in occupied countries like Romania, Hungary, Greece, and Poland, and in Palestine under the British Mandate. By and large, the news media in the Allied countries neglected the story, while those in Nazi-dominated countries treated news related to the Holocaust in a wholly tendentious way. Thus the press, for a variety of reasons, did not cover the Holocaust, one of the central events of the twentieth century. As this book thoroughly demonstrates, it was perhaps the greatest ethical, professional, and political failure of the news media during World War II. If the press had been more responsible, and had informed the public in the West early enough and thoroughly enough, the history of the Holocaust might have been different and millions of victims might have survived. Published in association with Yeshiva University Press.

Encountering Nazi Tourism Sites explores how the terrible legacy of Nazi criminality is experienced by tourists, bridging the gap between cultural criminology and tourism studies to make a significant contribution to our understanding of how Nazi criminality is evoked and invoked in the landscape of modern Germany. This study is grounded in fieldwork encounters with memorials, museums and perpetrator sites across Germany and the Netherlands, including Berlin Holocaust memorials and museums, the Anne Frank House, the Wannsee House, Wewelsburg Castle and concentration camps. At the core of this research is a respect for each site’s unique physical, architectural or curatorial form and how this enables insights into different aspects of the Holocaust. Chapters grapple with themes of authenticity, empathy, voyeurism and vicarious experience to better comprehend the possibilities and limits of affective encounters at these sites. This will be of great interest to upper level students and researchers of criminology, Holocaust studies, museology, tourism studies, memorialisation studies and the burgeoning field of ‘difficult’ heritage.

Contributions reprinted in this book highlight some of the wide ranging ways in which the issues of culture and identity can be approached in a literary text, while focusing on the ways in which cultural encounters have been changing both the world and its reflection in literature. The beginning of the twenty first century is an appropriate time to repay careful attention to these issues. Understanding how our perception of the Other changes with the concept of the world we inhabit, we want to emphasize the rising importance of fostering cultural pluralism and global understanding. Having based their research on widespread readings in academia, such as deconstruction, post-colonialism, post-modernism, new historicism, and narratology, the authors of these papers proceed by addressing the metaphor of travel as one of the strongest metaphors for the evolution of mankind, especially if considered under the light of the historically and politically imposed opposition between the progressive western and the static eastern or African societies. However, as the end of the imperialist era brought about poignant awareness of cultural relativism, as well as deconstruction of the great narrative of progress, facing the Other as an unconceptualized entity became a major moral concern of a modern traveller. It is pronounced that this concern should be textually testified to dramatize the human inability to avoid verbal appropriation of the other. The final question we seek to answer is whether the era of advanced technology and globalisation, along with a post-modern ironical attitude to hyper realities and textual transparencies, has rendered the sphere of the text the only available point of concern of contemporary literature and thought in general. ... For its argumentation strongly founded in recent literary studies and humanities in general, its interdisciplinary nature and its focus on the actual global problems of abrupt cultural change and exchange, its heightened understanding of the necessity of coexistence of differences in a changing world, its spirit of tolerance, and its international spirit in general, we assume this collection will not only attract academic literary scholars but will also appeal to the general reading public.