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The Historiography of Genocide
"The Historiography of Genocide" is an indispensable guide to the development of the emerging discipline of genocide studies and the only available assessment of the historical literature pertaining to genocides.
655 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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February 6, 2018
This has been a difficult read for a couple of reasons:
1) Genocide will never (and ought never to be) a subject that is emotionally 'easy' to learn about
2) There are a lot of complex ideas and research squashed into a relatively short survey (given how much historiography the book attempts to cover) making it a dense read
3) The book is not only a survey of genocide historiography but it also covers a crash course chapter on an element of the most historiographically prominent genocides (13 are covered in all)
This book is a comprehensive overview of the whole field of genocide studies and its historiography. It's helpful to learn how genocide research has been conducted in other disciplines (though history-centric, the book does talk about multi-disciplinary approaches, particularly in the 'Concepts' section) and the Case Studies section does well to illustrate a lot of the theory that the book goes over in the opening section. Each essay gives a brief overview of the existing historiography with a focus on post-2000 research and concludes with thought-provoking questions for possible further research.
I'd recommend this book to anyone studying an undergraduate degree or above in humanities/social sciences as, unless you're already familiar with historiography, a lot of the concepts and terminology would be difficult to get your head around and it might be off-putting.
An emotionally and intellectually challenging read, this book is informative and thorough. the sheer amount of scholarship this book covers is both inspiring and humbling - it has raised a wide range of interesting questions for the future of genocide studies and added a great deal more texts to my reading list(!).
1) Genocide will never (and ought never to be) a subject that is emotionally 'easy' to learn about
2) There are a lot of complex ideas and research squashed into a relatively short survey (given how much historiography the book attempts to cover) making it a dense read
3) The book is not only a survey of genocide historiography but it also covers a crash course chapter on an element of the most historiographically prominent genocides (13 are covered in all)
This book is a comprehensive overview of the whole field of genocide studies and its historiography. It's helpful to learn how genocide research has been conducted in other disciplines (though history-centric, the book does talk about multi-disciplinary approaches, particularly in the 'Concepts' section) and the Case Studies section does well to illustrate a lot of the theory that the book goes over in the opening section. Each essay gives a brief overview of the existing historiography with a focus on post-2000 research and concludes with thought-provoking questions for possible further research.
I'd recommend this book to anyone studying an undergraduate degree or above in humanities/social sciences as, unless you're already familiar with historiography, a lot of the concepts and terminology would be difficult to get your head around and it might be off-putting.
An emotionally and intellectually challenging read, this book is informative and thorough. the sheer amount of scholarship this book covers is both inspiring and humbling - it has raised a wide range of interesting questions for the future of genocide studies and added a great deal more texts to my reading list(!).
Displaying 1 of 1 review