Archive: Nov 2014

The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature

Edited by Jenni Adams

The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature is a comprehensive reference resource including a wealth of critical material on a diverse range of topics within the literary study of Holocaust writing. At its centre is a series of specially commissioned essays by leading scholars within the field: these address genre-specific issues such as the question of biographical and historical truth in Holocaust testimony, as well as broader topics including the politics of Holocaust representation and the validity of comparative approaches to the Holocaust in literature and criticism.

A Conversation with Gabriel Gatti (Professor of Sociology, University of the Basque Country, Spain)

Due in large part to humanitarian law and transitional justice, the categories of detained-disappeared and forced disappearance are today well established – so much so that in some places like Argentina and Uruguay an intense social life has taken shape around them and in their wake. Victims mix with institutions, laws, and professionals (forensic anthropologists, social scientists, jurists, psychologists, artists, archivists, and writers), occupying intersecting positions and doing so with varied narratives, from the epic and heroic to the tragic and traumatic. Based on extensive fieldwork in Argentina and Uruguay, Gatti analyzes these worlds in an attempt to understand how one inhabits the categories that international law has constructed to mark, judge, think about, and repair horror.

Gabriel Gatti is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. His research and teaching focus on contemporary forms of identity, in particular those constituted in situations of social catastrophe, rupture, and fracture. He is the author of Identidades débiles, Identidades desaparecidas, Les nouveaux répères de l’identité collective en Europe, and Basque society. His latest work, Surviving Forced Disappearance in Argentina and Uruguay: Identity and Meaningwas published in august of 2014. He is also a main researcher behind the Mundo(s) de victimas (World(s) of victims) a study of four cases that deal with the construction of the “victim” category in contemporary Spain.

Professor Gatti’s visit is part of the Reframing Mass Violence Collaborative Series. Sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study, the Human Rights Program, the Department of Sociology, the Department of Political Science and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.

When the National Football League’s Washington Redskins franchise traveled to the University’s TCF Stadium to play the Vikings, they brought with them a considerable amount of controversy. It has been difficult to avoid the debate surrounding the Washington team and their controversial moniker. This is not solely a Minnesota phenomenon; nearly all of the team’s away games have seen a significant amount of protest by both sides. The use of the redskin name has pitted advocates of a change to a more inclusive name against supporters of the football team and their more than eighty year history.  While fans of the franchise argue that the name does not reflect any racism, it is important to understand the origins of the term redskin and how it fits into the wider context of the Native American genocide.

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One of the lasting effects of the genocide in Rwanda is that all African conflicts are always compared to Rwanda. The metric always seems to be whether or not they will be as bad as Rwanda if intervention does not occur. Rwanda has become a sign of guilt, a reminder that we as humanity did nothing to stop one of the more atrocious and rapid killings of peoples in an African country. Of course this ignores that the Democratic Republic of Congo has been embroiled in some variation of the same conflict for as almost as long as I’ve been alive (and I’m somewhat old enough to remember images of the late Mandela walking free from Robben Island holding Winnie Madikizela’s hand).

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