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

Scott W. Murray is Associate Professor of History at Mount Royal University. He was a Hess Faculty Fellow in the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2015, and a Holocaust Education Foundation Fellow at Northwestern University in 2013. He was also the recipient of the Calgary Jewish Community Award for Holocaust and Human Rights in 2011 and 2013.

Scott W. Murray's profile page

Amarnath Amarasingam is an Assistant Professor in the School of Religion, and is cross-appointed to the Department of Political Studies, at Queen’s University

Amarnath Amarasingam's profile page

Andrew R. Basso's profile page

Dr. Kristin Burnett is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University. A settler scholar, Burnett has published broadly on topics related to Indigenous health and well-being, and much of her current research and policy work engages with systemic barriers to health care, social services and supports, and food.

Kristin Burnett's profile page

Lori Chambers teaches at McMaster University. She is the author of Married Women and Property Law in Western Ontario.

Lori Chambers' profile page

Laura Beth Cohen's profile page

Travis Hay is a historian of Canadian settler colonialism who was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He is currently an assistant professor at Mount Royal University, the author of Inventing the Thrifty Gene, and the English Language Book Review Editor of Canadian Journal of Health History.

Travis Hay's profile page

Stephen Leonard Jacobs' profile page

Lorraine Markotic's profile page

Sarah Minslow's profile page

Donia Mounsef's profile page

Adam Muller is an associate professor of English at the University of Manitoba. His specializations include literary theory, analytic aesthetics, film theory and criticism, and cultural studies.

Adam Muller's profile page

Christopher Powell is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba.

Christopher Powell's profile page

Raffi Sarkissian's profile page

[This book] provides a window into the urgent, complex, and interdisciplinary dialogues underway in Genocide Studies. - Jobb Arnold, Peace Research

Understanding Atrocities helps us to think “about how we think about the past,” and doesn’t offer easy passe-partouts for unlocking or framing humanity’s monstrous history and its representation. Instead, this book provides insightful and necessary roadmaps for our encounters with the demonic events themselves, as well as the vectors and exchanges that process our memory. -Piet Defraeye, University of Alberta, Universiteit Antwerpen

Understanding Atrocities is a welcome addition to genocide and atrocities scholarship that introduces new voices, approaches, and topics to a growing global field of research. The well-chosen chapters are perfect illustrations of the breadth and dynamism of contemporary genocide studies. -Andrew Woolford, University of Manitoba, author of “This Benevolent Experiment”: Indigenous Boarding Schools, Genocide and Redress in North America