SO309      Half Unit
Atrocity and Justice

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with IR312 at any time on the same degree programme.

This course introduces undergraduate students to a range of issues relevant to the study of mass atrocity and justice for atrocity. It introduces students to a range of perspectives, from sociological to historical, to social psychological and philosophical.

More concretely, it investigates topics covering definitions of state crime and atrocity, the social construction of atrocities, genocide and the Genocide Convention, structural approaches to understanding genocide (modernity, democracy, and colonial rule), the perpetrators, victims and witnesses of atrocity, denial of state crimes, reporting and documenting atrocity, forensic investigations of mass graves, retributive and restorative approaches to justice (including truth commissions and war crimes tribunals), historic atrocities in settler states (Australia, Canada and the US), and the use of political apologies for atrocity.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT. There will also be a revision session in early ST.

Essay (1000 words)

• Arendt, Hannah (1994) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Books)
• Bauman, Zygmunt (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity)
• Browning, Christopher (1992) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 (New York: HarperCollins):
• Cohen, Stan (2001) States of Denial (Cambridge: Polity Press)
• Coulthard, Glen Sean (2014) Red Skin White Masks (University of Minnesota Press).
• Hacking, Ian (1999) The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press)
• Jones, Adam (2011) Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd edition (London: Routledge)
• Keenan, Thomas and Eyal Weizman (2012) Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of Forensic Aesthetics (Frankfurt: Sternberg Press).
• Wilson, Richard (2001) The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Exam (85%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Course participation (15%)

Assessment is by two components:

1. Class participation (15%) in the WT. Course participation is assessed on the basis of contributions to class discussions that evidence reading and understanding, ability to present arguments derived from the readings and lecture material, and a demonstration of the ability to develop a position in relation to issues presented in the lecture and readings.

2. Exam (85%) in the spring exam period.

Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.