The Cultural Meaning of Genocide and the Moral Witness in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Carolyn Dean (Yale University, Charles J. Stille Professor of History and French) presents a public lecture entitled “ The Cultural Meaning of Genocide and the Moral Witness in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries" on Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 7:00 pm.

About the Talk:
The distinction between mass murder and genocide was articulated in legal terms by Raphael Lemkin when he coined the neologism genocide in 1943. By the 1980s, the Jewish Holocaust survivor eventually symbolized the cultural rather than legal meaning and experience of genocide - an otherwise incommunicable experience of loss and grief. But the Holocaust survivor was one of a long line of moral witnesses to mass killing that made it legible in new terms. This talk provides an overview of the history. It focuses on two interwar trials that foreshadowed the contemporary meaning attributed to genocide.

Sponsored by The Program in Judaic Studies and the Arthur B. and David B. Jacobson Fund.

November 10, 2021
Brown University