ASU Jewish Studies

ASU Jewish Studies is an intellectual resource for all aspects of the Jewish experience. Through courses, conferences, and public events, we foster critical inquiry and scholarly entrepreneurship.

From Kishinev to Sderot: Considering ‘Spectacular Violence’ and Mass Murder against Jewish Communities
April 15, 7-8:30pm
Registration:https://jewishstudies.asu.edu/jswestermann

About the lecture

Professor Edward B. Westermann will examine organized violence against Jewish communities ranging from pogroms in Eastern Europe, to mass murder during the Shoah, and finally to the massacres of October 7 by considering the historical contexts and specific events related to each case. It evaluates the motives and actions of the perpetrators within a framework of religious, racial, and political antisemitism.

About the lecturer

Edward B. Westermann received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a Regents Professor of History and a Piper Professor of 2023 at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. His latest book, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany appeared with Cornell University Press in 2021 and received the 2023 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research. From January 2019 until September 2021, he served as a Commissioner on the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission.

Rosenbluth Family Charitable Foundation Genocide Awareness Week
April 15-19
Registration: https://shprs.asu.edu/gaw2024

Nationalism, State Violence and Genocide

This year’s conference theme of nationalism, state violence and genocide revolves around the role of the state in facilitating and shaping the perpetration of genocidal violence. By focusing on the genocidal state, Genocide Awareness Week 2024 seeks to explore and examine different forms of authoritarian and exclusionary forms of nationalism; how extremist form of national identity are constructed and maintained; race and racial science; cultural erasure; religious nationalism, and how mass violence is engineered and facilitated by genocidal states using technology and propaganda and other related topics.

As in previous years, our approach invites a range of academic experts, activists, survivors and governmental officials to provide presentations and discussions from a variety of perspectives. Our approach is also comparative in orientation with a range of historic and contemporary examples that highlight the underlying patterns, processes and the continuities and discontinuities between different cases of genocide. These include the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, Rwanda and Bosnia among various other well-known and lesser-known case studies. It is also intended that such a wide-ranging and comparative approach will help provide insights relevant to current events and trends at the local, national and international levels.

Contact the Adult department
Chi Isiogu
chii@vosjcc.org