Representing Perpetrators of Mass Violence

Conference: Representing Perpetrators of Mass Violence
Utrecht University, 31 August–3 September, 2016

NB: Room change: Drift 21, Room 032 (Sept 1 and 3) and Drift 13, Room 004 (Sept 2)
Organizers: Susanne C. Knittel and Uğur Ümit Üngör

Keynote speakers:

Prof. Scott Straus, University of Wisconsin – Madison (https://faculty.polisci.wisc.edu/sstraus)
Milo Rau, International Institute of Political Murder (http://international-institute.de)

Many recent films, novels, and television series dealing with perpetrators of mass violence and genocide question the simplistic dichotomy of good versus evil. At the same time, in public discourse and the media such binaries often persist, particularly in the context of the “war on terror” and in the popular memory of the Holocaust and other major atrocities of the recent past. In both cases, the question of representation is of central importance.

This conference aims to explore the questions and problems that arise in the context of the representation of perpetrators in the media, public discourse, in cultural representations, as well as in education and academic scholarship. The conference title refers to all forms of representation, including but not limited to self-representation (in social media, auto-documents, interviews, testimonies), representation in the news and the media, fictional representation (in literature, film, and the arts), legal representation (either contemporary or historically), representation in the accounts and testimonies of their victims and survivors, and representation in academic scholarship of various disciplines (including history, sociology, anthropology, political science, literary and cultural studies, media studies, philosophy, law, criminology, religious studies, etc.).

The conference also features the performance of The Woman at His Side, a staged reading that explores the complicity of wives of SS officers in the crimes of their husbands, and a screening of Milo Rau’s film Hate Radio, which investigates the role of “Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines” (RTLM) in the Rwandan genocide.

Both of these events will be held at Filmtheater ’t Hoogt, and are free and open to the public. To reserve a ticket, please click here for The Woman at His Side, and here for Milo Rau’s lecture and film screening.

Click here to download the Conference Program.

Registration:
The conference is free and open to the public. Seats are limited, please register by sending an e-mail to perpetratorstudies@uu.nl.

The organizers:
Susanne C. Knittel is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University.

Uğur Ümit Üngör is Associate Professor of History at Utrecht University and Research Fellow at the Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam.

This conference is the second international conference organized by the Perpetrator Studies Network. For more information please visit us at https://perpetratorstudies.sites.uu.nl

Support for this conference comes from Utrecht University’s Research Focus Area Cultures, Citizenship and Human Rights and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).