Surviving Forced Disappearance: Identity and Meaning

A Conversation with Gabriel Gatti (Prof. of Sociology, University of the Basque Country)
Thursday, November 20
3:00p.m.
Room 710 Social Sciences
(Spanish with translation)




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, 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 Meaning was 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 Studies, The Human Rights Program, the Department of Sociology and CHGS.

Barbara Frey, will present on Human Rights Advocacy in Mexico at the first HGMV workshop

"Uneven Ground: Asymmetries of Power in Human Rights Advocacy in Mexico"
Presented by Barbara Frey, Director, Human Rights Program
Thursday, October 2
3:00p.m.
Room 710 Social Sciences


The presentation is the first of the 2014-2015 workshops for the Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence Studies (HGMV) Interdisciplinary Graduate Group.



Professor Frey will explore the social and political context or "terrain" in which human
rights actors work in Mexico and the barriers to their success in protecting human rights on the ground. She will show how this terrain affects advocacy by describing one particular case, the campaign for due process reforms in the criminal justice system. Frey's central finding is that the terrain of human rights advocacy in Mexico is profoundly "uneven" - characterized by asymmetries of power that limit the effectiveness of the human rights movement to bring about sustainable human rights protections.
Barbara Frey is Director of the Human Rights Program in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. Frey has headed the Program since it was established in 2001, for the purpose of providing academic, research and outreach opportunities for students in the field of international human rights.
The HGMV workshop was founded to foster interdisciplinary conversations on the subject areas of Holocaust studies, genocide and memory, peace and conflict studies, human rights, nationalism and ethnic violence, representations of violence and trauma, conflict resolution, transitional justice, historical consciousness and collective memory.
For more information about HGMV please email Erma Nezirevic at nezir001@umn.edu.

First Meeting of the HGMV 2014-2015 Workshop Announced

Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence
Studies (HGMV) Interdisciplinary Graduate Group
2014-2015 workshops

First Meeting
Thursday, September 18
12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Room 710 Social Sciences Building
Lunch will be provided

The group was founded to foster interdisciplinary conversations on the subject areas of Holocaust studies, genocide and memory, peace and conflict studies, human rights, nationalism and ethnic violence, representations of violence and trauma, conflict resolution, transitional justice, historical consciousness and collective memory.

The HGMV Graduate Group also provides funds for graduate students whose work has been accepted for conference presentations.

To RSVP to the September 18 meeting or for more information on how to become involved please contact Erma Nezirevic at nezir001@umn.edu.

Reframing Mass Violence: Transitional Justice and Human Rights

Barbara Frey, Director, Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota
Thursday, January 23
3:00 p.m.
235 Nolte

Countries emerging from repression, armed conflict, or mass atrocities have sought ways to address the past as a part of their transition into new forms of governance and citizenship. In this introduction to the topic, Barbara Frey will review some of the methods and mechanisms that have been developed by national and international actors, including public memorials, truth commissions, and national or international criminal prosecutions to assist societies to transition away from their repressive pasts.

Organized by the IAS Reframing Mass Violence: Human Rights and Social Memory in Latin America and Southern Europe Collaborative. Cosponsored by the Human Rights Program, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Lecture Flier: 20140114170524742.pdf

Reframing Mass Violence: Human Rights and Social Memory in Latin America and Southern Europe

1 Credit Topics Course Spring 2014
ALL sessions and guest-speaker presentations are public
Nolte 235
Thursdays 3:00p.m. to 4:30p.m.

This course will explore the particular developments and transnational entanglements of social memories in societies revisiting their legacies of dictatorship, state terror, and grave human rights violations in Latin America and Southern Europe.

It will be organized in a series of lectures in which distinguished experts from the countries of study will discuss their work and engage in dialogue with local scholars and students on the contemporary processes of re-interpretation and re-framing of the atrocities as well as the transitional justice models adopted in their aftermaths.

Coordinators:
• Barbara Frey (Human Rights Program)
• Alejandro Baer (Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Dept. of Sociology)
• Ana Forcinito (Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese)


January 23
Barbara Frey (U of M)
Transitional Justice and Human Rights
February 6
Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís (filmmakers)
Screening and discussion of their film "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator" (Guatemala)
February 20
Alejandro Baer (U of M)
The Collective Memory of Mass Atrocities
March 6
Mariana Achugar (Carnegie Mellon University)
Uruguayan Memories of Dictatorship
March 27
Glenda Mazzarobba (UNDP rep. for the Brazilian Truth Commission)
Reparations, Half Truths and Impunity
April 10
Emilio Crenzel (University of Buenos Aires) (tbc), Ana Forcinito, Leigh Payne (Oxford/U of M) Panel Discusion: The Evolving Memory of Argentina's "Disappeared"
April 24
Anna Forcinito (U of M)
Art, Memory and HHRR
May 8
Francisco Ferrándiz (CSIC, Madrid)
Unearthing Civil War Victims in Spain
Institute for Advanced Studies Research Collaborative Reframing Mass Violence 2013/2014.

Graduate Course: Topics in Law, Crime, and Deviance: Gender, Mass Violence & Crime in International Law

Sociology 8190: Topics in Law, Crime, and Deviance: Gender, Mass Violence &
Crime in International Law

Spring 2014

This course examines crime and criminal justice as gendered phenomena with a
specific emphasis on gender-based violence during conflict. It explores how notions of different types of masculinity and femininity are embedded in and influence criminal behaviors, the operation of the criminal justice system, and the evolution of international criminal law. Course readings draw on historical and contemporary research and various theoretical perspectives, some of which present very different ways to think about how crime and criminal justice are shaped by gender and sex.

Law's Labor's Lost: Constitutional Revolution and the Problem of Radical Social Change

Professor Mark Goodale, Anthropology and Conflict Studies, George Mason University
Thursday, October 17
3:30 p.m.
Room 710 Social Sciences

How do the regulating logics of law constrain forms of violence that often accompany revolutionary movements, and how do these logics at the same time constrain the kind of creative social and political practices that are necessary for real transformation? Scholars have shown how human rights can be used to bring authoritarian leaders to justice and shape progressive forms of governance. But when international norms are domesticated through national legal processes, their role in facilitating deep and structural transformation is more fraught with ambiguity and contradiction.

Mark Goodale is an anthropologist, socio-legal scholar, and social theorist. He is Associate Professor of Conflict Analysis and Anthropology at George Mason University and Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. Goodale is author and editor of numerous books and field projects and has an upcoming critical introduction to anthropology and law and an ethnography of revolution, folk cosmopolitanism, and neo-Burkeanism, in Bolivia.

Organized by the IAS Reframing Mass Violence: Human Rights and Social Memory in Latin America and Southern Europe Collaborative. Cosponsored by the Human Rights Program, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Professor from University of Antioquia (Medellín-Colombia) to present at CHGS Workshop

Sandra Gómez Santamaría will present at the first meeting of the 2013 Holocaust Genocide & Mass Violence Studies Workshop, taking place on Thursday, September 19, in Room 710 Social Sciences.

Sandra Gómez Santamaría is a Human Rights professor involved in the University of Minnesota-Antioquia Human Rights partnership. She has a Master of Arts degree in Sociology of Law from the Oñati International Institute from the Sociology of Law (IISL, Basque Country-Spain) and she received a Law degree from University of Antioquia (Medellín-Colombia). She also has experience working as researcher on human rights in the Colombian Commission of Jurist, a human rights NGO in Colombia. Her áreas of interest includes Human Rights, Sociolegal studies, critical legal theories, Anthropology of the State and Cultural Studies.

The workshop was founded in 2012 by CHGS, the Human Rights Program and the Department of Sociology to foster interdisciplinary conversations on the subject areas of Holocaust studies, genocide and memory, peace and conflict studies, human rights, nationalism and ethnic violence, representations of violence and trauma, conflict resolution, transitional justice, historical consciousness and collective memory.

For more information about particpation in the workshop please email Wahutau Siguru at siguru@umn.edu.

Eric Harkleroad PhD Candidate in Anthropology to Present at CHGS Workshop

Workshop for Graduate Students and Faculty Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence Studies
Thursday, May 9
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
710 Social Sciences

Eric Harkleroad will present "Warfare and Society: Archaeology's Contribution to the Discussion."

Eric's research focuses on situating warfare within the social sphere to examine its changing place in the daily life of Iron Age people in Southern Britain. His dissertation takes a regional look at how warfare, or the symbolic representations of warfare, is distributed across the landscape at different sites and how this changes through time. The work he is presenting uses a different scale focusing on one site and trying to understand how warfare fits into society at one specific site. Additionally he will address the relevance of Anthropology and Archaeology to the interests of the HGMV workshop.

This the last workshop of the 2012-2013 school year. The workshop will resume in September of 2013. For more information on how you can participate next year please email Alejandro Baer at abaer@umn.edu.

Special thanks to Shannon Golden for facilitating and organizing the workshops this year.

P.h.D. Candidate in Spanish and Portuguese Erma Nezirevic to Present at CHGS Workshop

"Mobile Memories: Collective Memory of Mass Violence in Spain and the (ex) Yugoslavia"
Interdisciplinary Workshop for Graduate Students and Faculty Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence Studies
Friday, March 29, 12:00-1:30 p.m. Room 710 Social Sciences

Spain and (ex)Yugoslavia have followed a seemingly parallel historical path in the twentieth century, including similar experiences of rising nationalisms, civil wars, dictatorships, transitions to democracy, and subsequent struggles over collective memory. Erma examines the interrelations between the collective memories of civil war and mass violence in both places (including new ex-Yugoslav states). Her goal is to explore how collective memory works between them and show how cultural production in one influences the other and vice versa. This exchange, along with their global and multigenerational influences, represents "mobile memories," for which a study of interdisciplinary sources is crucial.

If you are interested in participating in the workshop please contact Shannon Golden at golde118@umn.edu.

Remaining Workshop Schedule:

April 11: Thursday, 3:30-5:00 p.m. (609 Social Sciences)
Matthias Falter, " 'Antifascist Consensus' & the 'Club of Political Correctness': Addressing National Socialism in Austrian Parliamentary Debates on Right-wing Extremism"

April 25: Thursday, 3:30-5:00 p.m. (710 Social Sciences)
Hiromi Mizuno, "When Crimes Cannot Be Punished: the Comfort Women Issue and International Human Rights Law"

May 3: Friday, 12:00-1:30 p.m. (710 Social Sciences)
Courtney Gildersleeve

May 9: Thursday, 3:30-5:00 p.m. (710 Social Sciences)
Eric Harkleroad

Preventing Mass Violence: The Expansion of R2P and the Challenge of Statebuilding

Jon Western, Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College

Thursday, March 29
3:30 p.m.
1314 Social Sciences


This talk will feature results from a research project that is situated in the literature on emerging norms and examines how and why the United States and the international community moved from failures to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities in Rwanda and Bosnia (prior to Srebrenica) to embark on ambitious liberal statebuilding efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere. More broadly, the project examines how the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) emerged in concept and expanded in scope to include a focus on capacity building and governance.
Theoretically, it presents an analysis of the various pathways in which new norms emerge and are applied to policy decisions. It also explores how those norms are contested and can regress amid policy setbacks, domestic politics, and changing claims of legitimacy.
Jon Western is Associate Professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College. His teaching and research focuses on U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, human rights and humanitarian affairs. His book, Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public, was published in 2005 by the Johns Hopkins University Press and his articles, book reviews, and essays have been published by journals including International Security, Harvard International Review, Global Dialogue, International Affairs, and Political Science Quarterly.
Western has served as a peace scholar-in-residence and the coordinator of the Dayton Upgrade Project at the United States Institute of Peace. He has also taught at Columbia University and George Washington University and served as a Balkans and East European specialist at the U.S. Department of State.
Presented by: The Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.