Concerning Mass Atrocity: A Personal Reflection on Studying and Teaching about Violence

How to study mass violence, genocide and crimes against humanity? And how to teach about these delicate, sensitive and unsettling topics? There is no crystal-clear answer. And there is no one-size-fits-all recipe that guarantees a healthy balance between detached and dispassionate (empirical) scholarship, and how such scholarship percolates into the personal (emotional) circumstances of the scholar or the student. Both scholars and students of mass atrocities – whether they be historical, recent or contemporary – have their own ways of navigating and balancing the personal pitfalls of studying phenomena that may trigger psychological, emotional, moral, legal and political reactions. By drawing from 25 years of experience in investigating and researching atrocity, and 10 years of teaching about mass violence, this chapter discusses the problems, pitfalls and promises of such scholarly coping strategies – both in the field and in the classroom.