WGSS Director Dr. Jennie Burnet’s new book, To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide, is to be published in January 2023 by Cornell University Press. The book considers people who risked their lives in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsi to try and save those targeted for killing. Many genocide perpetrators were not motivated by political ideology, ethnic hatred, or prejudice. By shifting away from these classic typologies of genocide studies and focusing instead on hundreds of thousands of discrete acts that unfold over time, Burnet highlights the ways that complex decisions and behaviors emerge in the social, political, and economic processes that constitute a genocide.
To Save Heaven and Earth explores external factors, such as geography, local power dynamics, and genocide timelines, as well as the internal states of mind and motivations of those who effected rescues. Framed within the interdisciplinary scholarship of genocide studies and rooted in cultural anthropology methodologies, this book presents stories of heroism and of the good done amid the evil of a genocide that nearly annihilated Rwandan Tutsi and decimated the Hutu and Twa who were opposed to the slaughter.
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Dr. Daniel McCarthy (Visiting Lecturer, Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) is the author of the forthcoming essay “Queering Abuelita: Reconciling Loss through Speculative,” published in the journal Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (volume 11, no. 4). This essay uses queer futurity and speculative memory work to offer an example of how queer individuals negotiate and address the contradictions of reconciliation and queerness on their own terms. Additionally, they will present an invited talk on topics of gender, sexuality, and music at the University of South Carolina School of Music in Spring 2023.
Dr. Stephanie Evans was invited to give the Dr. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey Distinguished Lecture for the UNC-Charlotte Africana Studies Department. She also offered a syllabus construction workshop: "Teaching from the Source: Syllabus Construction," in partnership with the GSU Center for Excellence in Learning and Online Education.