Genocide studies

Academic field of study that researches genocide

Part of a series on

Genocide

Issues

* List of genocides
* Genocides in history
* Genocides in history (before 1490)
* 1490–WWI
* WWI–WWII
* 1946–1999
* 21st century
* Effects on youth
* Denial
* Massacre
* Rape
* Incitement
* In relation to Colonialism / War
* Perpetrators, victims, and bystanders
* Prevention
* Psychology
* Recognition politics
* Risk factors
* Stages
* Types
* Anti-Indigenous
* Cultural
* Paper
* Utilitarian
* Studies
* Outline
* Bibliography
* Education

Related topics

* Compulsory sterilization
* Democide
* Ethnic cleansing
* Ethnocide
* Forced assimilation

Category

* v
* t
* e

Genocide studies is an academic field of study that researches genocide. Genocide became a field of study in the mid-1940s, with the work of Raphael Lemkin, who coined genocide and started genocide research, and its primary subjects were the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust.[1] The Holocaust was the primary subject matter of genocide studies, starting off as a side field of Holocaust studies, and the field received an extra impetus in the 1990s, when the Bosnian genocide and Rwandan genocide occurred.[2] It received further attraction in the 2010s through the formation of a gender field.[3]

It is a complex field which lacks consensus on definition principles[4] and has had a complex relationship with mainstream political science;[clarification needed] it has enjoyed renewed research and interest in the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. It remains a relevant yet minority school of thought that has not yet achieved mainstream status within political science.[5]

## History

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### Background

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The beginning of genocide research arose around the 1940s when Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, began studying genocide.[1] Known as the 'father of the genocide convention,' Lemkin invented the term genocide and studied it during World War II.[6] In 1944, Lemkin's book Axis Rule introduced his idea of genocide, which he defined as 'the destruction of a nation or ethnic group'; after his book was published, controversy broke out concerning the specific definition. Many scholars believed that genocide is naturally associated with mass murder, the Holocaust being the first case; there were also several other scholars who believed that genocide has a much broader definition and is not strictly tied to the Holocaust.[7] In his book, Lemkin wrote that "physical and biological genocide are always preceded by cultural genocide or by an attack on the symbols of the group or violent interference of cultural activities."[8] For Lemkin, genocide is the annihilation of a group's culture even if the group themselves are not completely destroyed.[9]

After the publication of Lemkin's 1944 book, Israel Charny sees Pieter Drost's 1959 publication of The Crime of State and a 1967 Congress for the Prevention of Genocide held by La Société Internacionale de Prophalylaxie Criminelle in Paris as two of the few notable events in genocide research prior to the 1970s.[10]

### 1970s/1980s

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Charny credits the main launch of genocide studies to four books published in the late 1970s/early 1980s: Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder, by Irving Louis Horowitz in 1976; Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization in the Holocaust, by Helen Fein in 1979; Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, by Leo Kuper in 1981; his own 1982 book, How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide: The Human Cancer; and Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology, by Jack Nusan Porter in 1982. He argues that although Fein's book did not directly refer to genocides other than the Holocaust, its comparison of genocide in different countries occupied by the Nazis "laid groundwork for thinking about comparative studies of genocide in general".[11]

### 1990s

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Starting off as a side field to Holocaust studies, several scholars continued Lemkin's genocide research, and the 1990s saw the creation of an academic journal specific to the field, the Journal of Genocide Research. The major reason for this increase in research, according to Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, can be traced back to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s, which showed Western scholars the prevalence of genocide.[2] Despite growth in the preceding decades, it remained a minority school of thought that developed in parallel to, rather than in conversation with, the work on other areas of political violence, and mainstream political scientists rarely engaged with the most recent work on comparative genocide studies.[5] Such separation is complex but at least in part stems from its humanities roots and reliance on methodological approaches that did not convince mainstream political science;[5] in addition, genocide studies are explicitly committed to humanitarian activism and praxis as a process, whereas the earlier generations of scholars who studied genocide did not find much interest among mainstream political science journals or book publishers, and decided to establish their own journals and organizations.[5]

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) was created in 1994, with Fein as its first president. Charny credits the plan to create the IAGS with Fein, Robert Melson, Roger W. Smith, and himself meeting at a 1988 Holocaust conference in London in which the four participated in a session on genocides other than the Holocaust.[12]

### 2000s

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In the 2000s, the field of comparative genocide studies lacked consensus on the definition of genocide, a typology (classification of genocide types), a comparative method of analysis, and on time frames.[4] Anton Weiss-Wendt describe comparative genocide studies, which include an activist goal of preventing genocide, as having been a failure in genocide prevention.[4]

In 2005, a second international association of genocide scholars, the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS), was created.[13] In 2006, the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention was launched by Charny on behalf of the IAGS.[14]

### 2010s

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In the 2010s, genocide scholarship rarely appeared in mainstream disciplinary journals, despite growth in the amount of research.[5]

### 2020s

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In the 2020s, Holocaust scholars published their analyses of the allegations of genocide in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and on the topic of Gaza genocide. Raz Segal and Luigi Daniele argued that a crisis in the overlapping fields of studies occurred, stating, "We argue that the crisis stems from the significant evidence for genocide in Israel's attack on Gaza, which has exposed the exceptional status accorded to Israel as a foundational element in the field, that is, the idea that Israel, the state of Holocaust survivors, can never perpetrate genocide."[15] Omar McDoom, describing the two fields of study together as HGS (Holocaust and genocide studies), observed a split in the HGS community in which "Israel-uncritical" researchers saw "only Hamas [as having] transgressed", while another part of the community saw "both sides [being] engaged in legally and morally problematic violence". McDoom's analysis found "evidence strongly suggestive of bias in favour of Israel" by a part of the community and made recommendations on "ethical obligations and good practices for scholars engaged in public commentary" in the field.[16]

In March 2025, several genocide and holocaust scholars launched the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, on the basis of an open letter undersigned by 400 scholars.[17]

## Gender field

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See also: Genocidal rape

In 2010, the study of genocide connected to gender was a new field of study and was considered as a specialty topic within the broader field of genocide research. The field attracted research attention after the genocides of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, in which war crimes tribunals acknowledged that several women were raped and men were sexually abused.[3] Feminist scholars study the differences between males and females during genocide by studying the lives of women survivors during the Holocaust.[18] Similar research on the Armenian genocide has explored the representation of Armenian women as victims with specific focus on the film Ravished Armenia. These studies focus on the power of representations to disempower the object of the representation (as "the Armenian women"). Some scholars argue that representations of rape, when they become disempowering, can be viewed as acts of violence themselves.[19][page needed]

## See also

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* Outline of genocide studies
* Genocide education
* Genocide prevention
* International criminal law
* Crimes against humanity
* Genocide Convention
* Rwandan genocide
* Gaza Genocide

## References

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### Footnotes

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1. ^ a b Bloxham & Moses 2010, p. 2; Moses 2010, p. 22.
2. ^ a b Bloxham & Moses 2010, p. 2.
3. ^ a b Von Joeden-Forgey 2010, p. 61.
4. ^ a b c Weiss-Wendt 2008, p. 42.
5. ^ a b c d e Verdeja 2012, p. 307.
6. ^ Bloxham & Moses 2010, p. 2; Moses 2010, pp. 19, 21.
7. ^ Moses 2010, p. 32.
8. ^ Moses 2010, p. 34.
9. ^ Moses 2010, p. 35.
10. ^ Charny 2024, p. 2.
11. ^ Charny 2024, p. 3.
12. ^ Charny 2024, p. 9.
13. ^ USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research Will Host the 2024 International Network of Genocide Scholars Convention, USC Shoah Foundation, 8 August 2022, Wikidata Q127984049, archived from the original on 28 July 2024
14. ^ Charny 2024, pp. 16–17.
15. ^ Segal & Daniele 2024, p. 2.
16. ^ McDoom 2024, p. 3.
17. ^ "As scholars of genocide, we demand an end to Israel's atrocities". The Guardian. 2025-07-29. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-08-02.
18. ^ Von Joeden-Forgey 2010, p. 63.
19. ^ Chabot et al. 2016.

### Bibliography

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Main article: Bibliography of Genocide studies

* Bloxham, Donald; Moses, A. Dirk (2010). "Editors' Introduction: Changing Themes in the Study of Genocide". In Bloxham, Donald; Moses, A. Dirk (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1–15\. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232116.013.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-923211-6.
* Chabot, Joceline; Godin, Richard; Kappler, Stefanie; Kasparian, Sylvia (2016). Mass Media and the Genocide of the Armenians: One Hundred Years of Uncertain Representation. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-34-956606-8.
* Israel Charny (2024). "A Personal Autobiographical Essay on the Origins and Beginning Years of Genocide Studies, and Some Reflections on the Field Today". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 17 (3). ISSN 1911-0359. Wikidata Q127976569. Archived from the original on 8 July 2024.
* Omar Shahabudin McDoom (25 April 2024). "Expert Commentary, the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and the Question of Genocide: Prosemitic Bias within a Scholarly Community?". Journal of Genocide Research. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2346403. ISSN 1462-3528. Wikidata Q127943398. Archived from the original on 27 July 2024.
* Moses, A. Dirk (2010). "Raphael Lemkin, Culture, and the Concept of Genocide". In Bloxham, Donald; Moses, A. Dirk (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 19ff. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232116.013.0002. ISBN 978-0-19-923211-6.
* Raz Segal; Luigi Daniele (5 March 2024). "Gaza as Twilight of Israel Exceptionalism: Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Unprecedented Crisis to Unprecedented Change". Journal of Genocide Research. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2325804. ISSN 1462-3528. Wikidata Q127945239. Archived from the original on 21 June 2024.
* Von Joeden-Forgey, Elisa (2010). "Gender and Genocide". In Bloxham, Donald; Moses, A. Dirk (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 61ff. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232116.013.0004. ISBN 978-0-19-923211-6.
* Verdeja, Ernesto (June 2012). "The Political Science of Genocide: Outlines of an Emerging Research Agenda". Perspectives on Politics. 10 (2). Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association: 307–321\. doi:10.1017/S1537592712000680. JSTOR 41479553. S2CID 145170749.
* Weiss-Wendt, Anton (2008). "Problems in Comparative Genocide Scholarship". In Stone, Dan (ed.). The Historiography of Genocide. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230297784. ISBN 978-0-230-29778-4.

## Further reading

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* Bachman, Jeffrey (2020). "Cases Studied in Genocide Studies and Prevention and Journal of Genocide Research and Implications for the Field of Genocide Studies". Genocide Studies and Prevention. 14 (1). doi:10.5038/1911-9933.14.1.1706 (inactive 1 July 2025). ISSN 1911-0359.`{{cite journal}}`: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
* Straus, Scott (April 2007). "Review: Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide". World Politics. 59 (3). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press: 476–501\. doi:10.1017/S004388710002089X. JSTOR 40060166. S2CID 144879341.
* Weiss-Wendt, Anton (December 2005). "Hostage of Politics: Raphael Lemkin on 'Soviet Genocide'". Journal of Genocide Research. 7 (4): 551–559\. doi:10.1080/14623520500350017. ISSN 1462-3528. S2CID 144612446.

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