Fall 2005
Feminist Perspectives on Genocide WSDB 498k/2/AA Seminar
Fall 2005 - MON 18:00-8:15

Simone de Beauvoir Institute
Concordia University

Instructor: Karin Doerr

Course Description:

This multi-disciplinary seminar will examine the legacy of
twentieth-century genocides and related atrocities, such as massacres,
mass rapes, colonial conflicts, and other gendered killings from a
feminist perspective. It will build on the assumption that the experiences
of women in life threatening situations were often different from men's
due to gender, class, culture, and material conditions.

The course will discuss the principle themes in genocide studies and focus
on recent feminist perspectives of genocide, on texts on ethics, aspects
of war and violence, societal and cultural discrimination, and
moral/philosophical questions about human conduct in extreme situations.
We will also review gendered responses as well as address post-genocidal
effects such as trauma, persistent memory, giving testimony, and mending
the injured spirit on both a micro- and meta-historical level. The course
will also mention commemoration and such difficult responses as
forgiveness and reconciliation.

An important part of this seminar will be female survivors' autobiography
and biography and the idea of the researcher becoming a witness.

Finally, we shall explore the problematic of the continued neglect of
women's issues in mainstream genocide research and teaching. In view of
the hatred and brutality generated by and in genocide and genocidal
conflicts, we strive to overcome the dualism of gendered ethical and
social divisions.