Interview with Sam Grey, Fulbright Scholar

Written by Joe Eggers

This year, the University of Minnesota will be hosting Sam Grey, a Fulbright Scholar from Canada. Sam comes to campus to continue her research in the field of reconciliation, specifically in settler-colonial states. While in Minnesota, Sam will be exploring the resistance to reconciliation in Minnesota a century and a half after the Dakota conflict of 1862.

Coming from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Sam is well suited to exploring Minnesota’s relationship with its indigenous communities. Her doctoral research focuses on political theory and comparative politics, primarily from a non-western political perspective. Sam’s research interests have included, in addition to indigenous rights, gender equality, food politics and solidarity politics.  As a Canadian scholar in Minnesota, Sam is in a unique position to compare Canada’s recently completed Truth and Reconciliation process with the United States’ own attempts to understand its own relationship with its indigenous population.

For context, the CanadianTruth & Reconciliation Commission issued its final findings in June after seven years of examining the legacy of the country’s residential school programs. Unlike other Truth & Reconciliation Commissions, Canada’s held no legal power, which meant that it couldn’t offer amnesty for alleged perpetrators of abuse at the residential schools in exchange for testimony. The result was a commission that primarily focused on recording victim experiences.  Following the conclusion of hearings, the commission published an extensive report of its findings. The report outlined many of the challenges that indigenous people continue to face in Canada as a result of the residential schools and outlined a plan for reconciliation. Most famously, commissioner chair and Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin labelled the residential schoolsystem cultural genocide .

HGMV Workshop (September 30): JOE EGGERS "What’s in a Name? Exploring How We Define Genocide from Lemkin to International Law"

WEDNESDAY, September 30
4:00 PM
JOE EGGERS, Graduate Student "What’s in a Name? Exploring How We Define Genocide from Lemkin to International Law"
710 Social Sciences

Joe Eggers

In 1945, Raphael Lemkin published Axis Rule In Occupied Europe: Laws Of Occupation, Analysis Of Government, Proposals For Redress which contained the first published definition of the crime of genocide. Three years later, the newly formed United Nations passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which largely stripped much of Lemkin’s original ideas of genocide. In the 70 years since the release of Axis Rule, scholars, legal experts and advocates have all attempted to remedy the differences between Lemkin’s broad definition of genocide against the narrower legal one.

The aim of this paper is to answer the question: how has our concept of genocide evolved since Lemkin? First, the author analyzes different approaches to defining genocide, starting with Lemkin’s original theory, moving to international law and ending on contemporary scholarly definition. Next he compares the legal definition against Lemkin’s by analyzing the United States policy of forced assimilation of its own indigenous population beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Specifically, he will examine the Native American boarding school system that existed well into the second half of the twentieth century. This research raises yet another important question: how do our perceptions of these crimes change when viewed through different ways of defining genocide? Finally, the author examines the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission which defined Canada’s boarding schools as genocide in a June 2015 statement and attempt to find approaches for the United States to begin understanding its own troubling relationship with Native American communities.

Joe Eggers is an interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Studies student study human rights and sociology. His research examines how we define genocide by looking at the forced assimilation of Native Americans beginning in the late 19th century. 

Tuesday, September 29: *PUBLIC EVENT* Peace Talk with Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor MICHIKO HARADA

Hibakusha Peace Talk by Ms. Michiko Harada

September 29, 2015

4:00 PM

120 Andersen Library
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, West Bank

In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of WWII, and the 60th anniversary of close local ties to Nagasaki, the University of Minnesota was pleased to welcome Ms. Michiko Harada, a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) kataribe (storyteller), who traveled from Nagasaki, Japan and talked about her experience with the atomic bomb and why she speaks for peace. 

Her story was compelling.  Michiko Harada was a six year old girl playing outdoors about 2 ½ miles from the epicenter of the bombing and was injured by flying glass. In the years that followed, she lost many family members to radiation illness and cancer.

We filmed the talk, which is available on our YouTube channel.

Turn out was great, with over 75 students and participants from the university and community in attendance.  The event was covered by the StarTribune.

Next HGMV on Wed, Oct 28: “Memory, Affect, and Retributivism after Genocide” by Sam Grey (Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar in Sociology)

Wednesday, October 28
4:00 PM
710 Social Sciences Building, West Bank
Sam Grey:
“Memory, Affect, and Retributivism after Genocide: Resistance to Forgiveness-Reconciliation in Dakota Homeland”

According to legal philosopher Robert Solomon, “[n]o one, not even a saint, can have a sense of justice without the capacity for anger and outrage” – yet there has been little work on these retributive passions in the transitional justice canon generally, and virtually none in the work on Settler-colonial states in particular. While absent from the academic literature, those who express anger, resentment, and indignation in the context of Indigenous-Settler reconciliation projects are often portrayed in popular media as politically opportunistic, merely intransigent, or actually emotionally unwell. That problematic absence and these troubling portrayals are probed by examining resistance to reconciliation in Minnesota, where both Settler and Indigenous communities still struggle over the actual facts, correct interpretation, and proper response to the 1862 war with, and attempted genocide of, the Dakota Oyate (Dakota Nation) – a struggle that persists despite an unprecedented two formal reconciliation projects (a ‘year of reconciliation’ in 1987, one of the earliest examples of such work globally; and another state-wide undertaking in 2012). This exploration looks at persistent resistance to Indigenous-Settler reconciliation in Minnesota/Mini Sota Macoce from multiple political, moral, affective, and historical perspectives. It finds that expressions of retributivism in the context of an active, recurrent reparations politics are not adequately described by existing theoretical frameworks, nor can they be reduced to individual episodes of withholding, non-overcoming, or lack. They are, instead, assertions of alternative political virtues; and further, emblematic of a new, powerful, emotional, and strategic politics of ‘irreconciliation’ and ‘unforgiveness’ in Settler-colonial states.

Sam Grey is a Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Victoria (BC, Canada). Working within the fields of political theory and comparative politics, she has focused her reading on non-Western political thought; Indigenous comparative politics; feminist and gender analyses; and methodological issues. Sam’s primary research interests are political virtue, the politics of emotion, Settler colonialism, and reparations politics; more specifically, her dissertation looks at anger as a political virtue, unforgiveness as a decololonization praxis, and Indigenous-Settler ‘irreconciliation’ in the contemporary Anglosphere. As an author Sam has published on human rights, gender justice, food politics, peacemaking, contractualism/contractarianism, the ontology of health, intellectual property, solidarity politics, polygyny, and applied ethics; and is the co-editor of three books on Indigenous knowledge and rights-based advocacy. As a student and researcher she has lived and worked in Southeast Asia (Northern Thailand), South America (Andean Peru), and North America (the Canadian Great Lakes and West Coast regions, as well as the American Upper Midwest).

THURSDAY, October 21: Author LOU URENECK, Archival Research at the University's Libraries, and "The Great Fire" at Smyrna

Wednesday, October 21
Author LOU URENECK, Boston University
The Great Fire at Smyrna and the genocide of the Ottoman Greek and Armenian population
120 Andersen Library

3:30 PM - Light reception and exhibition of YMCA Archives
4:00 PM - Talk and Q&A with the author
5:00 PM - Book signing

CHGS, with the University of Minnesota Libraries, was pleased to present a talk by Boston University professor and journalist Lou Ureneck on his recently published book, The Great Fire: One American's Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide, the harrowing story of a Methodist Minister and a principled American naval officer who helped rescue more than 250,000 refugees during the persecution of Armenian and Greek Christians, published to coincide with the Armenian genocide’s centennial in 2015.

HGMV Meeting | Wednesday, November 4 | Wahutu Siguru: "What African Media? Rethinking Research on Representations of Africa in Africa's Press"

Wednesday, November 4, 2015
4:00PM
710 Social Sciences
Wahutu Siguru: "What African Media? Rethinking Research on Representations of Africa in Africa's Press"

Wahutu Siguru is a PhD candidate in sociology.  In his dissertation Siguru looks at the creation of knowledge about genocide and mass atrocities in African by the media. His research leverages multiple research methodologies and theories to tease out how the press creates our knowledge of genocide and mass atrocities. He specifically looks at how Darfur has been reported on in print media from Africa and the global north. He is currently conducting a content analysis of newspapers from Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Egypt and just came back from a 6-month long fieldtrip where he interviewed journalists from Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and South Sudan that had reported on Darfur and other atrocities around the continent; these interviews were in addition to previous interviews conducted in Kenya and South Africa in the summer of 2012. During the fieldtrip Siguru also conducted an ethnography of a journalism school in Nairobi in an attempt to understand how a highly ranked international journalism school in Nairobi taught students how to ‘become’ journalists. This specific paper uses a subsection of his content analysis and interview data. It was made possible by funding received through the Bernard and Fern Badzin and the Anna Welsch research fellowships in the Spring and summer of 2015 respectively.

November 7 Educator Workshop: Lessons, Resources, Experiences

Saturday, November 7

9:00 AM - 3:00 PM

1210 Heller Hall

West Bank, University of Minnesota

Six licensed educators attended the Institute for Global Studies summer institute, Holocaust Education in a Global Context on June 15-18, 2015. The following two weeks, these six educators worked to accumulate and create lesson plans, resources, and information which will aid in teaching about the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, the Dakota War, and the Holocaust. These teachers will be talking about their experience and presenting their materials in the daylong workshop.

Free workshop, open to educators, worth 6 CEUs. The session is full and registration is closed.

Canadian scholar, Adam Muller, will speak about the creation of an immersive virtual education tool representing an Indian Residential School in an attempt to bring survivors of genocide closer to secondary witnesses

Embodying Empathy: Canadian Settler-Colonial Genocide and the Making of a Virtual Indian Residential School

Adam Muller, University of Manitoba  

Wednesday, November 18

4:00 PM

710 Social Sciences

West Bank, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

This presentation introduces and reflects on some of the key challenges facing researchers involved with the multidisciplinary critical and creative Embodying Empathy project now underway at the University of Manitoba. Embodying Empathy seeks to construct a digital representation of a Canadian Indian Residential School (IRS) using virtual and augmented reality technologies. The project’s digital “storyworld” is being designed as a museum-quality educational tool that will instruct those immersed in it about Canadian settler-colonial genocide. It also seeks to ascertain whether immersive representations can bridge the empathetic distance separating victims from secondary witnesses to atrocity.

Adam Muller is Associate Professor of English at the University of Manitoba (Canada). He specializes in the representations of war, genocide and mass violence, human rights, memory studies, critical theory, cultural studies, and analytic philosophy.

Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, cosponsored by the Human Rights Program, the Institute for Advanced Study collaborative "Reframing Mass Violence," and the Minnesota Humanities Center.

December 1: Discussion on the implications of comparing the experiences of Jews and Native Americans

Reflections on the Comparison of

Jews and Native Americans as Victims
by LEO REIGERT, Kenyon College

Tuesday, December 1

1:00-2:30 PM

Folwell 113

Jews and Native Americans are often rhetorically connected as victims of genocide by members of both groups. In this talk, Associate Professor of German at Kenyan College, Leo Reigert, will reflect from both a personal and scholarly perspective on what is gained and lost in such representations. Compared to the Holocaust, public acknowledgement of the genocide committed against the Native Americans remains limited, not to speak of restitution or the payment of reparations. This, it will be argued, has important ramifications for writing and thinking about the two groups.

Leo Reigert is Associate Professor of German, Kenyan Collge. This talk is part of his new project investigating the encounter with Native Americans in the lives and works of German Jewish authors from the nineteenth century to the present day.
 
Organized by The Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, and the Department of American Indian Studies.

November 30 APPLICATION DEADLINE: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellowship for 2016-2017

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies awards fellowships on a competitive basis to support significant research and writing about the Holocaust. We welcome proposals from scholars in all academic disciplines, including but not limited to history, political science, literature, Jewish studies, philosophy, religion, sociology, anthropology, comparative genocide studies, and law.

Stipends range up to $3,500 per month for the purpose of defraying local housing and other miscellaneous living expenses and are subject to US tax law. Residents of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area receive a reduced stipend of $1,750 per month. Awards include a stipend to offset the cost of direct travel to and from Washington, DC. Residents of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area do not receive a travel stipend. The funds provided through this award may be subject to US federal and/or state tax. Please be advised the Mandel Center cannot provide individual tax advice.

Accepting applications for the 2016–2017 fellowship competition: September 1, 2015–November 30, 2015.

For more information: http://www.ushmm.org/research/competitive-academic-programs/fellowship-competition  

Film screening and Q&A with producer Kemal Pervanic: 'Pretty Villiage' (Sat, Oct 17, 4:30pm, St. Anthony Main #3)

Saturday, October 17
4:30 PM
St. Anthony Main Theatre #3

'Pretty Village' is an acclaimed documentary about Bosnia about what happens to ordinary people when their lives are torn apart by war.  The film was produced by UK-based Bosnian arts activist, Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska Death camp. It documents his return to his former village to collect survivor stories and bear witness the atrocities that occurred there during the Bosnian war. Kemal will be passing through Minnesota (he now resides in the UK) and the MN Film society will present this screening with him in attendance, available for audience Q&A.

TUESDAY and THURSDAY, October 13 and 15: International artist DANIEL BLAUFUKS events to include Artist Talk and Film Screening

The Twin Cities, the University of Minnesota, and CHGS and its many co-sponsors welcome a visit by Lisbon-based German-Jewish media artist DANIEL BLAUFUKS

Film clips, artist talk and scholarly roundtable discussion
Tuesday, October 13
5:30 - 6:00 PM -- Film clips from Als Ob / As If
6:15 - 7:30 PM -- Roundtable discussion with panel of scholars and artists
Panel to include University of Minnesota faculty Gary Cohen (History), Paula Rabinowitz (English), Alice Lovejoy (Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature), and Leslie Morris (German, Scandinavian and Dutch); and David Harris (RIMON: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation)
Weisman Art Museum

Meet the artist and film screening
Thursday, October 15
10:00 - 11:30 AM Coffee with the artist
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM Als Ob / As If Film installation on the Czech city of Terezín / WWII Jewish camp-ghetto of Theresienstadt
Weisman Art Museum

Daniel Blaufuks is an acclaimed artist working in Lisbon and exhibiting internationally. His exhibition, "All the Memory of the World, Part One," has as its theme the creation of memory through media. In other words: the use of film and photography to create memories, even memories that are actually fictional. Please read more about this exhibition here.

At the center of the exhibition is "Als Ob / As If," a monumental 4-hour film installation. In Als Ob, Blaufuks combines footage he shot in 2014 in the Czech city of Terezín, which was formerly the Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt, with footage from Nazi propaganda films.

The contemporary clips are of everything that makes up the life of a normal city. They are reflected in clips from the fake documentary "Theresienstadt" made by the Germans in 1944, which pretended to show how normal the city/ghetto/concentration camp was. In the propaganda film, we see the elderly passing by, children playing, and chess-playing men. Combining clips from these two films is powerful, especially as Blaufuks purposely filmed some scenes in the same locations that the Nazi video depicts.

Blaufuks was born in Lisbon in 1963 to a family of Jewish German refugees. He studied at Ar.Co (Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual), Lisbon, at the Royal College of Art, London and at the Watermill Foundation, New York. He exhibits widely and works mainly in photography and video, presenting his work through books, installations and films.

The documentary "Under Strange Skies" was shown at the Lincoln Center in New York. His exhibitions include: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, LisboaPhoto, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York, Photoespaña, Madrid, where his book Under Strange Skies received the award for Best Photography Book of the Year in the International Category in 2007, the year he received the BES Photo Award as well. He published Terezín with Steidl, Götingen. In 2011 he had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and in 2014 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon. For more information see http://www.danielblaufuks.com

Event organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, co-sponsored by the Center for Austrian Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, Center for German and European Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Department of Art, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Department of English, Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, Department of History, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Institute for Advanced Study, Weisman Art Museum, and Macalester College. Additional support from RIMON: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.