Encountering Perpetrators of Mass Killings, Political Violence, and Genocide

University of Winchester
1-3 September 2015

Programme

Tuesday 1 September 2015

12:30-13:30
Registration and Welcome

13:30-14:30

Typologies: ‘Common’ And ‘Uncommon’ Perpetrators (Chair: Emiliano Perra)
Alette Smeulers (University of Tilburg/University of Groningen), A typology of perpetrators of international crimes and terrorism
Caroline Sharples (University of Central Lancashire), ‘Extremely uncommon murderers’? Remembering and Representing Executed Nazi War Criminals since 1945

Parallel Session:
Perpetrators And the Law (Chair: Shaun Best)
Carola Lingaas (University of Oslo), Perpetrator-based approach in defining victim groups: practice of the international criminal tribunals
Damien Scalia (Université catholique de Louvain), Self-perception as genocidaires: the weight of symbolism and the judicial process

14:30-15:00
Coffee Break

15:00-16:30

Perpetrator Motivations I (Chair: Uğur Ümit Üngör)
Sarah Jewett (West Chester University of Pennsylvania), Génocidaires and Defense Mechanisms: Cognitive Dissonance and Frameworks of Analyzing Perpetrators
Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic (University of Copenhagen), Perpetrator abhorrence: Exploring the moral significance of disgust
Linda Shields (James Cook University), Susan Benedict (University of Texas) & Kirril Shields (University of Queensland), Nurses and Midwives in Nazi Europe: The Forgotten Perpetrators

Parallel Session:
Perpetrators As Heroes (Chair: Paul Bartrop)
S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli (University of South Florida), Perpetrator or Hero? The Legacy of Murtala Muhamed in Nigeria
Victoria Witkowski (European University Institute), Impunity and Amnesia: Rodolfo Graziani and Italian Colonial Crimes
Izabella Sulyok (University of Szeged), From a respectable Mayor to a Perpetrator: How a community in Hungary evaluates a perpetrator?

16:30-17:00
Coffee Break

17:00-18:30

Keynote (Chair: Emiliano Perra)
Prof. Donald Bloxham (University of Edinburgh)
Working on Perpetration: Do We Need to Justify It?

18:30-19:00
Wine Reception

19:00-21:00
Conference Dinner

Wednesday 2 September

9:00-10:30

‘Democratic’ Perpetrators (Chair: Tom Lawson)
John McCallum (University of Chicago), “I had no idea why the Americans had hanged him”: Carlos Romulo and Encounters with Violent Democracy in the Twentieth Century
Chris Mato Nunpa (Southwest Minnesota State University, Emeritus), Genocide of Native Americans

Parallel Session:
Selective Memory (Chair: James Snow)
Niké Wentholt (University of Groningen), The Past as Perpetrator: The impact of European Union accession policy on dealing with the communist past in Southeast Europe
Mark James Hobbs (University of East Anglia), Defending the Indefensible: Far-Right Politics and the Holocaust Perpetrator
Phillip A. Cantrell II (Longwood University), “We are Rwandans Now”: Blissful Ignorance and the Manipulation of the American “Aid Industry”

Parallel Session:
Moral Ambiguities (Chair: Caroline Sharples)
Paul R. Bartrop (Florida Gulf Coast University), Conflicted Nazis during the Holocaust: Perpetrators as Resisters and Rescuers
Joanne Pettitt (University of Kent), Jewish “Culpability”: Redefining Heroism during and after the Holocaust
Laura E.R. Blackie (University of Nottingham), Post-Traumatic Growth in Perpetrators of the Genocide in Rwanda: A Theory of Adjustment and Reconciliation

10:30-11:00
Coffee Break

11:00-12:30

Perpetrators: Post-War Representations and Justifications (Chair: Susanne Knittel)
Stephanie Bird (UCL), Calling the mass murderer to account: Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones and the fantasy of justice
Bill Niven (Nottingham Trent), Perpetrators, Victims or Resisters? Changing Notions of Perpetration in West Germany
Maayan Armelin (Clark University), “Follow me into genocide”: Leadership Styles among “face-to-face” Perpetrators

Parallel Session:
Perpetrator Motivations II (Chair: James Jordan)
Efrat Even-tzur (Tel-Aviv University), The “Good Soldier” and the perpetrator’s violent thrill: A crisis of a cultural image
Ambroise Katambu Bulambo (University of Applied sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland and University of Fribourg), Sexual violence against women in RDC: Understanding the motivations of a crime against humanity
JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz (Texas A&M University at Galveston), The Cambodian Genocide: Foreign Policy Determinants and the Perpetrator Role

Parallel Session:
Dehumanisation & Homogenization of Perpetrators (Chair: Alette Smeulers)
Amy Frake (Houston), The Nature of the Beast: The Dehumanization of the Perpetrator
Jonathan Leader Maynard (University of Oxford), Theorising Perpetrator Diversity in Mass Violence
Erika Zerwes (University of São Paulo), The portraits of Bergen Belsen’s guards by George Rodger

12:30-14:00
Lunch Break

14:00-15:30

Agency (Chair: Tom Lawson)
Shaun Best (University of Winchester), Zygmunt Bauman and Perpetrators’ Agency
Christopher P. Davey (University of Bradford), Formation of Genocide Identities: Perpetrators as Social Agents in the Congolese ‘War of Liberation’ (1996-1997)
Franziska Anna Karpinski (Loughborough University), Masculinity, Honor and Shame in the SS – Leadership Views and Mechanisms of Punishment

Parallel Session:
Female Perpetrators (Chair: Damien Scalia)
James Snow (Loyola University in Maryland), The Construction of Feminine Identities in Genocide Narratives
Cindi Cassady (Centre Christus, Kigali), Beyond Gender: Female Perpetrators in the Rwandan Genocide
Shelly M. Cline (Midwest Center for Holocaust Education), Gendered Justice: The SS Aufseherinnen and the Belsen Trial

Perpetrators Between Self-Reflection and Reintegration (Chair: Uğur Ümit Üngör)
Maja Ćorić (University of Amsterdam), Perpetrators’ narratives in the context of the Bosnian war, 1992-1995
Dumitru Lăcătuşu (University of Bucharest), The Self-Portrait of the Romanian Communist Perpetrators in Autobiographical Texts
Lesley Carroll (Equality Commission for Northern Ireland), Alienation and Reconciliation: An examination of measures taken in Northern Ireland to integrate persons with conflict-related convictions and the impact on victims and survivors

15:30-16:00
Coffee Break

16:00-17:30

Representational Challenges in Popular Memory (Chair: Kara Critchell)
Hans Lind (University of Constance/Yale University), The exclusion of the “daimon” – against a dramatics of evil in Holocaust perpetrator representations
James Jordan (University of Southampton), That’s Not My Name: The Nazi Perpetrator in 1960s British Television

Parallel Session:
Perpetrators In Testimony (Chair: Susanne Knittel)
Sibylle Schmidt (Free University Berlin), Perpetrator’s knowledge: How and what can we learn from perpetrator testimonies?
Andreas Strasser (Free University Berlin), “My first dead” – the autobiographical notes of Rudolf Höß and the problems in dealing with perpetrator testimonies
Boaz Cohen (Western Galilee College), ‘He took my hand’: Perpetrators in Early Child-survivor Testimonies, 1944-1950

Parallel Session:
Remembering And Forgetting In National Memory (Chair: Emily Stiles)
Cinta Ramblado-Minero (University of Limerick), Y bailaré sobre tu tumba: Dancing on Queipo de Llano’s Grave or How to Deal with Unfinished Pasts
Daria Mattingly (University of Cambridge), Remembering the Aberrant, Forgetting the Common: Representation of Local Perpetrators of the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukrainian Cultural Memory
Daria Tomiltseva & Irina Simonova (Ural Federal University), The attitude to Stalin’s crimes in contemporary Russian Public Sphere through the prism of philosophical approaches

Thursday 3 September

9:00-10:30

The Victim/Perpetrator Dichotomy (Chair: Diana Popescu)
Margarida Albuquerque Gomes Antolin Hourmat (Coimbra University), Deconstructing the victim-perpetrator dichotomy: the case-study of Rwanda
Beja Protner (Sabanci University), Victims, Perpetrators, and Implicated Subjects of the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict
Kar Yen Leong (Tamkang University), All in the Family: the Private Sphere, Memory and Encountering Mass Violence

Parallel Session:
Representation In Film (Chair: Paul Bartrop)
Axel Bangert (New York University in Berlin), One of Us: Explorations of Nazi Perpetration in German-language Cinema
Antonella Regueiro (Nova Southeastern University), Challenging the Portrayal of Female Perpetrators of Genocide in Film

10:30-11:00
Coffee Break

11:00-12:30

Paramilitary & Counterinsurgency (Chair: Mark James Hobbs)
Marcia Esparza (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY), Internal Colonialism in Guatemala: the Case of the Civil Self-Defence Patrol system
Fausto Scarinzi (University of Reading), Political Science and the Image of Perpetrators of Mass Killing in Counterinsurgency: Avoiding the Cult of Inevitability
Uğur Ümit Üngör (Utrecht University/Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam), Understanding Paramilitaries: A Comparative Examination of their Rationale and Logic

Parallel Session:
Provocative Representation (Chair: Emiliano Perra)
Samantha Mitschke (University of Birmingham), The Perceived Perversity of Perpetrators: Nazism and Sexuality Onstage
Diana I. Popescu (Birkbeck, University of London), Nazi Imagery in Contemporary Art: Aesthetics Practices of Holocaust Defamiliarization
Susanne C. Knittel (Utrecht University), Re: Perpetrators: Repetition, Reenactment, Representation

12:30-14:00
Lunch Break

14:00-15:30

Acts of Perpetration in the Age of Extremes (Chair: JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz)
Michelle Bentley (Royal Holloway), Weapons of Mass Destruction and Genocide
Gilbert Ramsay (University of St Andrews), Self-Representations of Atrocity in Islamic State Propaganda Videos
Tom Lawson (Northumbria University), Killing Children and the Perpetrators of Genocide

Parallel Session:
Selective Memories (Chair: Caroline Sharples)
Kirril Shields (The University of Queensland), The Naivety of a Nation: Nazi Perpetrators from a Cultural and Geographic Distance
Valeria Galimi (University of Tuscia/University of Siena), Reception of the Eichmann trial in Italy: Representation of the Perpetrator and the Role of Italian Society in the Holocaust
Lars Breuer (Free University Berlin), Perpetrators in Vernacular Memory in Germany and Poland

15:30-16:00
Coffee Break

16:00-17:30
Workshop
Alasdair Richardson (University of Winchester) & Victoria Grace Walden (Queen Mary, University of London), Playing with Perpetrators: An Academic Workshop