Prevention of Mass Violence and Promotion of Tolerance: Lessons from History

International Multidisciplinary Conference
Department of History, Presidency University, Kolkata, India
27-28 February 2017

It is a call for papers and posters from different academic disciplines to help us draw lessons from history as to how mass violence can be prevented and tolerance can be promoted. History testifies to the fact that mass violence is as old as human existence. Almost every episode of mass violence has been followed by efforts aimed at preventing its reoccurrence, yet we have miserably failed in achieving that. It is an invitation to explore why we failed and how lessons from history could help us succeed in this endeavour of ours. We are particularly interested in the subthemes mentioned below but open to anything whatsoever relevant to the broad theme of the conference.

Subthemes

1. Absence of Genocide/Holocaust Studies in countries worst affected by mass violence

2. Role of Genocide/Holocaust Studies in the Prevention of Mass Violence

3. The Contested Field of the History of Genocide

4. The Demand for Apology and its Refusal

5. Resistance to Holocaust Studies

6. Hurdles and Obstacles in raising Holocaust Awareness in Asia, North Africa and Eastern Europe

7. Genocide/Mass Violence as depicted in Cinema and Literature and its reception

8. Debate on the Prohibition of Hate Speech v/s Freedom of Speech

9. Comparison between societies with Holocaust education and those without it

10. Political Response to Genocide/Holocaust Studies

11. Failure to recognize the warning signs

12. Judicial Response to Mass Violence: Failure and Success

13. State’s Response to Mass Violence: Failure and Success

14. The Clash between Academia and State on the issue of Mass Violence

15. The Distortion of History for instigating Mass Violence

16. Selective Amnesia in Historical Studies of Genocide/Mass Violence

17. Sanitization of History

18. Coming to terms with the History of Genocide/Mass Violence

19. History of Interfaith and Cross-cultural understanding as deterrents for Mass Violence

20. Non-State Actors as Perpetrators and Preventers of Mass Violence

21. The Scholarly Debate on Nomenclature

22. The Centrality of the Holocaust

23. The Uniqueness and/or the Universality of the Holocaust

24. Holocaust as a point of reference

25. Absence of Holocaust Studies in South Asia

26. Conflicting Historical Narratives

27. History of Denial

28. Gender in Mass Violence/Genocide

Registration Fee:

• Foreign Participants: US $100/-
• Indian Participants: Rs. 2000/-

In lieu of the registration fee the participants will get lunch during the two days of the conference and a conference kit. Participants are expected to make their own arrangements for accommodation.

Some of the confirmed participants of the conference are the following: Mehnaz M Afridi, Michael Barenbaum, Vian Dakhil, Charles Ehrlich, Reuven Firestone, Edward Mortimer, Dina Porat, David Rosen, Suzanne Rutland, Robert Satloff, and Sarva Daman Singh.

Key Dates:

· Deadline for the Submission of Abstract as a Word file (300 words)/Poster (PDF) with a biographical profile (100 words): 15 December, 2016

· Date of the Notification of Acceptance: 22 December, 2016

· Deadline for the submission of complete paper (10,000 - 12,000 words): 15 February, 2017

It is planned to publish a collection of selected papers presented at the conference.

Email for Paper/Poster Submission: Navras.His@PresiUniv.ac.in

Contact:

Dr Navras Jaat Aafreedi

Assistant Professor

Department of History

Presidency University

Kolkata, India