1. A Lesson on War-Related Sexual Violence in a History Classroom: Discussion Points for Educators
- Author
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Mocnik, Nena
- Abstract
While sexualized violence is perhaps one of the most common acts of aggression in imperial, colonial, and genocidal histories, it is also one of the most silenced, ignored, and under-addressed topics in the history curricula. Making sexualized violence visible is perhaps the biggest task and favor that history education can do to support efforts to prevent and eliminate violence. By dedicating her studies attempting to understand the legacy of mass sexualized violence during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, Nena Mocnik has always looked at this phenomenon through the lenses of political science, human rights, and/or trauma studies as a matter of historiography or history education. She argues the duty of contemporary history education is therefore to keep these voices loud and heard so following generations can "unlearn" the behaviors and power dynamics that lead to the execution of such crimes. As plentiful evidence is now available, the next logical step is to work further on the methodologies and preparations for teachers to develop the capacities needed to discuss sexualized violence as a part of history education. In the first section of the article, she reflects on the circumstances that allow sexualized violence to remain a silent topic, both in historiography and history education. In the second section, she gives an example of a workshop session she conducted where builds on the case of mass rapes during the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In the last section, she reflects on the pedagogical aspects of this workshop, combining them with guidelines for future applications.
- Published
- 2021
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