Understanding Atrocities is a wide-ranging collection of essays bridging scholarly and community-based efforts to understand and respond to the global, transhistorical problem of genocide. The essays in this volume investigate how evolving, contemporary views on mass atrocity frame and complicate the possibilities for the understanding and prevention of genocide. The contributors ask, among other things, what are the limits of the law, of history, of literature, and of education in understanding and representing genocidal violence? What are the challenges we face in teaching and learning about extreme events such as these, and how does the language we use contribute to or impair what can be taught and learned about genocide? Who gets to decide if it's genocide and who its victims are? And how does the demonization of perpetrators of atrocity prevent us from confronting the complicity of others, or of ourselves? Through a multi-focused and multidisciplinary investigation of these questions, Understanding Atrocities demonstrates the vibrancy and breadth of the contemporary state of genocide studies. With contributions by: Amarnath Amarasingam, Andrew R. Basso, Kristin Burnett, Lori Chambers, Laura Beth Cohen, Travis Hay, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Lorraine Markotic, Sarah Minslow, Donia Mounsef, Adam Muller, Scott W. Murray, Christopher Powell, and Raffi Sarkissian

Across our country educational policies and practices are killing our students' desire to learn and teachers' passion to teach. The central theme of this book is that high-stakes testing is having a critically deleterious effect on our students. The fallout impacts parents, teachers, schools, districts and states. Horace 'Rog' Lucido uses language and supporting evidence that is clear and relatable to the reader. Rarely is the topic of teacher care and concern for students ever embedded in works on educational theory and practice, but here it is championed as the driving force for change, exposing the causes and chronicling the effects of educational malfeasance.

This guidebook is an outgrowth of a 1991 conference on "Teaching about Genocide on the College Level." The book is designed as an introduction to the subject of genocide to encourage more teachers to develop new courses and/or integrate aspects of the history of genocide into the curriculum. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1, "Assumptions and Issues," contains the essays: (1) "The Uniqueness and Universality of the Holocaust" (Michael Berenbaum); (2) "Teaching about Genocide in an Age of Genocide" (Helen Fein); (3) "Presuppositions and Issues about Genocide" (Frank Chalk); and (4) "Moral Education and Teaching" (Mary Johnson). Part 2, "Course Syllabi and Assignments," contains materials on selected subject areas, such as anthropology, history, history/sociology, literature, political science, psychology, and sociology. Materials include: "Teaching about Genocide" (Joyce Freedman-Apsel); (2) "Destruction and Survival of Indigenous Societies" (Hilda Kuper); (3) "Genocide in History" (Clive Foss); (4) "History of Twentieth Century Genocide" (Joyce Freedman-Apsel); (5) "Comparative Study of Genocide" (Richard Hovannisian); (6) "The History and Sociology of Genocide" (Frank Chalk; Kurt Jonassohn); (7) "Literature of the Holocaust and Genocide" (Thomas Klein); (8) "Government Repression and Democide" (R. J. Rummel); (9) "Human Destructiveness and Politics" (Roger Smith); (10) "The Politics of Genocide" (Colin Tatz); (11) "Genocide and 'Constructive' Survival" (Ron Baker); (12) "Kindness and Cruelty: The Psychology of Good and Evil" (Ervin Staub); (13)"Genocide and Ethnocide" (Rhoda Howard); (14) "The Comparative Study of Genocide" (Leo Kuper); (15) "Moral Consciousness and Social Action" (Margi Nowak); and (16) "Selected List of Comparative Studies on Genocide" (Helen Fein). (EH)

This book asks how the moral messages of the Holocaust can best be transmitted. It deals not with historical events, but with possible ways of learning about these events and their significance. The underlying purpose is to expose the reader to sometimes antithetical, and at other times complementary, views concerning the teaching of the subject.

Between 1846 and 1873, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide. Madley describes pre-contact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the Gold Rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and the broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. congressmen, California governors, and others. The state and federal governments spent at least $1,700,000 on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials’ culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book.

Few topics in modern history draw the attention that the Holocaust does. The Shoah has become synonymous with unspeakable atrocity and unbearable suffering. Yet it has also been used to teach tolerance, empathy, resistance, and hope. Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust provides a starting point for teachers in many disciplines to illuminate this crucial event in world history for students. Using a vast array of source materials—from literature and film to survivor testimonies and interviews—the contributors demonstrate how to guide students through these sensitive and painful subjects within their specific historical and social contexts. Each chapter provides pedagogical case studies for teaching content such as antisemitism, resistance and rescue, and the postwar lives of displaced persons. It will transform how students learn about the Holocaust and the circumstances surrounding it.