Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Unit

The Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Unit is committed to diversity and inclusivity. Pre-arranged panels should reflect gender and racial/ethnic diversity as well as diversity of field, method, and scholarly rank as appropriate.

For a co-sponsored with the Religion and Law Unit, we seek papers on issues of statelessness and lack of citizenship documentation, the violence of states (including their legal bureaucracies and processes thereof) as well as the understanding of statehood as a means of survival. The tensions between utopian, or even religious visions of the unstately and practical aspirations (among those most subject to violence) for the protections of the state will hopefully be addressed.

For a co-sponsorship with Co-sponsored with the Religions, Social Conflict, and Peace Unit, we welcome proposals that engage in discussions about genocide in the context of the 30th anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide. Proposals can include one or more of the following:

• Narratives and commemorations of genocides in Rwanda and Africa.
• The role of Western powers in the genocides "in the margins."
• Comparison and relations between genocides at "Centers" and in the "Margins."
• Interrogation peacebuilding and/or reconciliation in the Global South.
• The legacies of western colonialism in the genocides in Africa.
• The opportunity/problems of comparisons between the genocide in Rwanda and other genocides.
• Afro-American thought and genocides in the Caribbean and Africa.

Prompted by Esra Özyürek’s 2023 book Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany, we invite proposals that consider genocide in relation to Muslim communities. With an eye to differing global contexts, proposals might address the situation of Muslim minorities or majorities, and may varyingly consider issues of memory or the ongoing experience and perpetration of mass violence.

We invite proposals that consider the politics of comparison related to genocide. In public discourse, the Holocaust has been many times cited (often controversially) in relation to other historical or contemporary phenomena, but we also encourage reflection on the politics of comparison concerning other genocides. Proposals might address the motivation and reception of comparisons, and questions of how to critically weigh up the (in)appropriateness of such comparison-making. The intersections between debates on comparison, notions of historical uniqueness, and the ‘sacrality’ of remembering in particular ways may be considered in this regard.   

We seek proposals that address religion and indigenous genocide. Prompted by recent revelations concerning the Residential School system in Canada and their connections with church institutions, we invite proposals that consider indigenous genocide in relation to religious factors among both victims and perpetrators.