Don’t Say "It’s Just Cultural Genocide;” It’s Genocide: Colonial Exceptionalism and Contemporary Opportunities for Intersectional Solidarity in the Study of Indigenous Genocide

Please join the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Social Science, Arts, and Humanities (CAMPSSAH) for a Research Colloquium featuring Professor and Director of Human Rights Studies, Keith David Watenpaugh.

Wednesday, May 10
3:10-4:30pm
Zoom only
Presentation followed by an informal discussion and Q&A

Download a calendar invite and Zoom link

Abstract

This paper draws from a recent article, "Kill the Armenian/Indian; Save the Turk/Man: Carceral Humanitarianism, the Transfer of Children and a Comparative History of Indigenous Genocide" (Journal for the Society for Armenian Studies 29 (1), 1-33) and is part of K. Watenpaugh's book-in-progress The White Savior, the Waif and the Ends of Humanitarianism — a Human Rights Critique, to unpack the colonial origins of the exclusion of the destruction of culture from the final version of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and advocates for a revision of the way the concept of “cultural genocide” is employed in current discussions of settler-colonialism and the genocide of indigenous peoples.

Suggest reading:

Lemkin Genocide Convention Proposal (1947)

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

"Kill the Armenian/Indian; Save the Turk/Man: Carceral Humanitarianism, the Transfer of Children and a Comparative History of Indigenous Genocide," Journal for the Society for Armenian Studies 29 (1), 1-33)

Keith David Watenpaugh is Professor and Founding Director of Human Rights Studies and a CAMPSSAH faculty affiliate. Author most recently of the multi-award winning Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism(California, 2015,) he leads the global refugee academic mobility project the Article 26 Backpack and has received multiple awards for his public scholarship, including the 2021 O'Brien Prize in Human Rights Education from Human Rights Educators — USA and the 2019 Centennial Medal from the Institute of International Education.