Holocaust and Genocide Studies Concentration

Undergraduate Concentration

The Holocaust and other genocides are studied to enhance our understanding of the society from which we came, the society in which we live, and the society to which we currently are giving shape. By studying the Holocaust and genocide, we learn about collusion and resistance; about the hot violence of mass murder and the cold violence of the modern, bureaucratic machinery of death; and about suffering and adaptation to suffering. We learn how societies disintegrate, step by step, and how ordinary men, women, and children both participate in and are affected by this disintegration. We learn, in short, a tremendous amount about what we need to know now to help us make the world a better place, wherever we might be.

The undergraduate concentration in Holocaust and Genocide Studies provides students with solid grounding in this interdisciplinary field.  Students take a series of courses in a variety of disciplines to ensure a critical and sophisticated understanding of the various facets of these atrocities. The undergraduate program of study encompasses history, sociology, political science, geography, international development, psychology and literature.

For more information, please visit the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Department’s website.

1. Select one of the following two core requirements:

• SOC 130 Genocide  or HIST 130 Introduction to History of Genocide 

2. Select two of the following three clusters:

A) Holocaust, B) Forced Deportation, Mass Murder, and Genocide in the Eastern Mediterranean, and C) Human Rights, Mass Murder and Genocide.

3. Choose one of the following as an additional elective.

• GEOG 090 - Native Americans, Land and Natural Resources  
• HIST 133 - Women during the Holocaust  
• HIST 165 - Nazi Germany and the Holocaust
    
• HIST 175 - Holocaust: Agency and Action
    
• HIST 230 - History of the Armenian Genocide
    
• ID 252 - Conflict in Sudan and the Horn of Africa   
• PSCI 214 - Mass Murder and Genocide Under Communism  
• PSCI 240 - Human Rights and International Politics
    

4. Choose one capstone seminar related to one of your clusters.

• GERM 250 - German Film and the Frankfurt School
    
• GERM 286 - Germans, Jews and Turks  
• HIST 234 - History of Racism in Modern Europe
    
• HIST 236 - Gender, War and Genocide in 20th Century
    
• HIST 237 - The Holocaust Perpetrators
    
• HIST 252 - The Holocaust Through Diaries and Letters  
• HIST 260 - Rescue and Resistance During the Holocaust  
• HIST 261 - Jewish Children in Nazi-Occupied Europe  
• HIST 262 - Genocide, Denial, Facing History and Reconciliation
    
• HIST 265 - Life and Death in the City: Occupied Europe, 1939-1945  
• HIST 268 - Special Topics
    
• HIST 273 - Life Under Occupation  
• HIST 276 - Collective Memory and Mass Violence
    
• HIST 279 - Massacres, Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention: Western Powers in the Balkans and the Middle East   
• HIST 366 - Refugees
    
• ID 210 - Transitional Justice: Theoretical Debates, Institutional Frameworks, and Development Impacts  
• ID 243 - Seeing Like a Humanitarian Agency  
• ID 285 - States of Violence: Culture, Trauma, and Identity in Asia  
• ID 291 - Displacement and Development in the Contemporary World.
    
• PSCI 289 - Advanced Topics in International Relations - Capstone Seminar
    
• PSYC 225 - Research on Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation  
• PSYC 241 - The Psychology of Resistance during Genocide  
• PSYC 264 - Social and Cultural Psychology of Genocides