The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies subjects both genocide and the discipline it has spawned to systematic, in-depth investigation. Genocide has scarred human societies since Antiquity. In the modern era, genocide has been a global phenomenon: from massacres in colonial America, Africa, and Australia to the Holocaust of European Jewry and mass death in Maoist China. In recent years, the discipline of genocide studies has developed to offer analysis and comprehension. Thirty-four articles chart genocide through the ages by taking regional, thematic, and disciplinary-specific approaches. Articles examine secessionist and political genocides in modern Asia. Others treat the violent dynamics of European colonialism in Africa, the complex ethnic geography of the Great Lakes region, and the structural instability of the continent's northern horn. South and North America receive detailed coverage, as do the Ottoman Empire, Nazi-occupied Europe, and post-communist Eastern Europe. Sustained attention is paid to themes like gender, memory, the state, culture, ethnic cleansing, military intervention, the United Nations, and prosecutions.