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Kupferberg Holocaust Center-NEH Book: Approaches to Mass Atrocity Education in Community Colleges: Chapter 6

"Humanistic Pedagogy Across the Disciplines": An edited volume featuring insights from QCC faculty members who incorporated the Kupferberg Holocaust Center's resources into their classrooms

Chapter 6: Students Reflect on the Intersection of Sex, Gender, and Genocide from a Social-Psychological Perspective

About the Chapter:

Insights from social psychology students’ experiences in the 2015-16 KHC-NEH Colloquium, “Gender, Mass Violence, and Genocide,” are shared. In addition to attending at least one event during the fall 2015 semester, students completed a reflection identifying ways gender and violence intersect during genocide and drawing on specific historical examples given during the series. Students focused on how gender was reflected in the language used by genocidal regimes and in the specific forms of violence that were waged against victims. Students integrated theory with details from the series to develop a fresh perspective on genocide analysis. This chapter highlights students’ impressions of their learning, as well as reflections on the ways in which engagement with the series enriched the course experience for the participants and instructor.

About the Author:

Azadeh Aalai, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Queensborough Community College, CUNY. She is a social psychologist specializing in mass media depictions, the psychology of aggression, warfare and genocide, and gender-related studies. She is also an adjunct for the M.A. program in Psychology at New York University. She was the recipient of a KHC-NEH grant naming her the scholar-in-residence at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center for 2017-18. She has also worked with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a recipient of the Silberman faculty seminar exploring the themes of sex and gender during the Holocaust.

Relevant KHC-NEH Event: Gendered Memories of the Holocaust

For more information about “Gendered Experiences in and Memories of the Nazi Holocaust” held on December 2, 2015, click here.