Intergenerational Survivors of Genocide and Mass Atrocities Lived Experiences of Knowledge Providers

Foreword

·       By Victor Ochen, Director of the African Youth Initiative Network and Global Advisor to UNHCR on Gender, Forced Displacement, and Protection

Chapter 1: Introduction

·       Centering the Positionality of Intergenerational Survivors as Knowledge Producers of Atrocity

Saghar Shahidi-Birjandian and Sarah Seiselmyer-Snyder

Part 1: Personal Identity and Intimate Ways of Knowing Inherited Genocide and Mass Atrocity

In this section, contributors primarily focus on the insights they have gained about themselves through knowledge produced on their respective familial and communal experiences of atrocity violence.

●      Chapter 2: Fathertongue: Toward Embracing a Familial Legacy of Genocide and Survival

Christine Su

●      Chapter 3: The Auschwitz Torah: Writing Histories of Childhood during the Holocaust Jonathan Lanz 

●      Chapter 4: Invoking Place to Confront the Settler-Colonial Self

Kerri Malloy

●      Chapter 5: Dark Days of Tutsis in Rwanda: A Survivor’s Testimony

Ibrahim Ndagijimana

●      Chapter 6: Ilsa’s Rug and My Journey as a Holocaust Scholar

Daniel Neuspiel

Part 2: Seemingly Removed but Deeply Connected

In this section, contributors focus on the nature of their respective positionalities and identity struggles in producing knowledge on mass violence.

●      Chapter 7: Bloodlines of Strife and Sorrow: Armenians a Century after Genocide

Ani Garabed Ohanian

●      Chapter 8: From the Mother’s Milk: Am I an Intergenerational Survivor of Genocide? Sarah Seiselmyer-Snyder and Brenda Wanjiru

●      Chapter 9: In Genocide’s Shadow: The Armenian Genocide and a Diaspora Existential Journey

Alan Whitehorn

Part 3: Uncovering the Balance of Risk and Reward of Industrializing Genocide Studies

In this section, contributors expose the various ways that producing knowledge and/or formally teaching in industries related to genocide and mass atrocities, causes harm to those with lived experiences of the intergenerational impacts of genocide and mass atrocities, whilst also providing opportunities for transformative change in related fields and industries.

●      Chapter 10: From Gaza to Darfur: Preventing Mass Atrocities Should Never be Controversial

Mike Brand

●      Chapter 11: Living with Hypocrisy in Genocide Studies and Atrocity Prevention

Saghar Shahidi-Birjandian and Yatana Yamahata

●      Chapter 12: Early Warning Late Response: State Actors in Plateau State Conflicts Olusola John and Bala Thomas Mabiri

Part 4: Shaping and Shaped by Living Legacies of Genocide through Knowledge Production

In this section, contributors share raw truths about their lived experiences producing knowledge on genocide and mass atrocities as intergenerational survivors.

●      Chapter 13: Healing through Genocide Studies: A Personal Perspective

Sandrine Irankunda

●      Chapter 14: Echoes of Trauma in Knowledge Production: Struggling for Recognition of Bangladesh’s 1971 Genocide

Tawheed Rezza Noor

●      Chapter 15: It is Impossible to Live Now [in 1933]”: Ten-10-Year Camp Imprisonment of My Great-Grandfather During the Holodomor

Tetiana Boriak

Chapter 16: Conclusion

●      Positionality as Power: The Unique Epistemic Contribution of Intergenerational Survivor-Scholars

Saghar Shahidi-Birjandian and Sarah Seiselmyer-Snyder

Biography

 Dr. Saghar Shahidi-Birjandian is the Founder of Collaborative Structural Change, a Founding Partner of Mediated Solutions, and Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. As a scholar-practitioner, Saghar’s work focuses on context-sensitive, survivor-centered problem analysis for strategy development in transitional justice and atrocity prevention, with publications in Genocide Studies and Prevention and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

 Dr. Sarah Snyder is a Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University's Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, a lecturer at Goodwin University, and a founding member of Collaborative Structural Change. She published Trauma Beyond Time: Temporal Constructs in Holocaust Testimonies, examining intergenerational trauma and memory in Holocaust survivors and their descendants.

"The authors-intergenerational survivors in this volume, ask what it means to connect through trauma and call us to action now, without dropping intimate questions of personal and communal wellbeing and healing. This is an essential, unique and addictive read, branching out well beyond the academic niche of genocide and mass atrocity studies. All those interested in questions of justice, real-world grounded practice and scholarship should pick this book up. "

- Luisa Calvete Portela Barbosa, SOAS University of London

"This remarkable and innovative volume examines how genocide and mass violence rebounds across generations and informs not just lived experience but the contours of scholarly knowledge about these phenomena. The chapters are personal, powerful, and leave the reader both with keen insights and in awe of human resilience."

 - Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University, Newark