Advancing Genocide Studies

This year, as I have often remarked on here for some time now, marks the centenary of the Armenian Genocide. Next month we will see a scholarly collection from an author whose earlier work on children and genocide was noted here: Samuel Totten, ed.,  Advancing Genocide Studies: Personal Accounts and Insights from Scholars in the Field (Transaction Publishers, 2015),247pp.

About this book we are told:

Advancing Genocide Studies follows in the footsteps of the editor’s earlier volume, Pioneers of Genocide Studies. Here a new generation of scholars presents personal essays that reveal their motivation to study genocide, the passion that drives them to continue its study, their primary scholarly interests and efforts, and their perspective on the field as it currently stands.

The contributors come from diverse backgrounds, numerous different nations and various disciplines: Kjell Anderson (The Netherlands, criminology); Yair Auron (Israel, history and education); Taner Akcam (Turkey and United States, history and sociology); Alexander Alvarez (United States, criminology); Gerry Caplan (Canada, history); Craig Etcheson (United States, international relations); Maureen Hiebert (Canada, political science); Adam Jones (Canada, political science); Henry Theriault (United States, philosophy); Samuel Totten (United States, history and political science); and Ugor Ungor (The Netherlands, history and sociology).

All the contributors are well known in the field of genocide studies, and all have made important contributions to this area. Variously, they have done important theoretical work, produced new findings vis-à-vis old cases of genocide, and are pursuing new issues and topics within the field of genocide studies. Many have worked “on the ground“ and bring a sense of immediacy to various crises.

Children and Grandchildren of the Armenian Genocide and Other Atrocities

Transactions Publishers recently sent me their 2014 catalogue and in there we find several books of interest for release next year beginning, in February, with Samuel Totten, ed., Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide (Transaction, 2014), 225pp. Totten is the author of numerous other studies on genocide. This particular book looks at several genocides, including the Armenian, as the publisher notes in this blurb:

Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide examines why and how children were mistreated during genocides in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Among the cases examined are the Australian Aboriginals, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Mayans in Guatemala, the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and the genocide in Darfur. Two additional chapters examine the issues of sexual and gender-based violence against children and the phenomenon of child soldiers.

Following an introduction by Samuel Totten, the essays include: "Australia’s Aboriginal Children"; "Hell is for Children"; "Children: The Most Vulnerable Victims of the Armenian Genocide"; "Children and the Holocaust"; "The Fate of Mentally and Physically Disabled Children in Nazi Germany"; "The Plight and Fate of Children vis-à-vis the Guatemalan Genocide"; "The Plight of Children During and Following the 1994 Rwandan Genocide"; "Darfur Genocide"; "Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Children during Genocide"; and, "Child Soldiers." Contributors include: Colin Tatz, Henry C. Theriault, Asya Darbinyan, Rubina Peroomian, Jeffrey Blutinger, Amanda Grzyb, Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Sara Demir, Hannibal Travis, and Samuel Totten.

The editor and several of the contributors have personally investigated and witnessed the aftermath of genocidal campaigns.

And then, next summer, on a similar but more tightly focused theme we have a book co-authored by two Turkey-based scholars, Ayşe Gül Altınay and Fethiye  Çetin, The Grandchildren: The Hidden Legacy of 'Lost' Armenians in Turkey,trans. Maureen Freely  (Transaction, July 2014), 215pp.

About this book we are told:

The Grandchildren is a collection of intimate, harrowing testimonies by grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Turkey’s "forgotten Armenians"—the orphans adopted and Islamized by Muslims after the Armenian genocide. Through them we learn of the tortuous routes by which they came to terms with the painful stories of their grandparents and their own identity. The postscript offers a historical overview of the silence about Islamized Armenians in most histories of the genocide.

When Fethiye Çetin first published her groundbreaking memoir in Turkey, My Grandmother, she spoke of her grandmother’s hidden Armenian identity. The book sparked a conversation among Turks about the fate of the Ottoman Armenians in Anatolia in 1915. This resulted in an explosion of debate on Islamized Armenians and their legacy in contemporary Muslim families.

The Grandchildren (translated from Turkish) is a follow-up to My Grandmother, and is an important contribution to understanding survival during atrocity. As witnesses to a dark chapter of history, the grandchildren of these survivors cast new light on the workings of memory in coming to terms with difficult pasts.