Newswise — A genocide scholar from the University of Arkansas has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Rwanda while developing a genocide studies program at that country's national university.
At the National University of Rwanda, Samuel Totten will work with faculty and graduate students from the Centre for Conflict Management, as well as faculty in history, political science and law, to develop a master's degree program in genocide studies. In addition, he will conduct three research projects that build on his previous research in Rwanda.
"Dr. Totten is respected internationally for his scholarly contributions to the study of genocide and to the exposure and prevention of genocide in the world today," said Collis R. Geren, the University of Arkansas vice provost for research. "The Fulbright Fellowship is a recognition of the tremendous benefits his experience in curriculum development and in research will bring to Rwanda."
"Rwanda and its people are still in the process of working to recover from the devastation of the 1994 genocide," Totten said. "Each of the planned research projects contributes to deepening the knowledge base and analysis of key aspects of the genocide itself as well as the rebuilding and reconciliation process."
The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by then-Sen. J. William Fulbright, who is also a former president of the University of Arkansas. Fulbright initiated the program "to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship." Each year, the Fulbright Scholar Program selects approximately 1,100 scholars and professionals from the United States to teach and conduct research abroad.
As part of his Fulbright Fellowship, from January through July 2008, Totten will conduct extensive interviews and oral histories with Rwandans. He will complete a current study of Rwandan gacacas " local courts that aim to uncover the truth of who killed whom during the Rwanda genocide and to sentence the convicted to prison. During a visit to Rwanda in 2006, Totten conducted a series of in-depth, randomized interviews with 25 village residents about the genocide and the gacacas. The Fulbright Fellowship will allow him to conduct more interviews and analyze the data.
Totten also will undertake a study of the status and actions of Hutus and Tutsis incarcerated in Rwanda prisons just prior to and during the 1994 genocide. He plans to spend a month conducting interviews with prisoners in four or five prisons in various parts of Rwanda.
The third area of research is an oral history project, a two-year endeavor that will involve collecting oral histories about a wide range of events from 1959 through 2007 in Rwanda. Totten will develop questions related to ethnic tension, various massacres, the 1994 genocide, the immediate aftermath of the genocide and the current period of rebuilding and reconciliation in Rwanda. The head of the Rwandan Commission on the Reconciliation Process has voiced strong support for this project in particular.
In addition to his previous field work in Rwanda, Totten has collected oral histories at Darfur refugee camps in Chad, both independently and as a member of the U.S. State Department's Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project in 2004.
He has published extensively over the past 20 years with an emphasis on prevention and intervention of genocides. His most recent books are Genocide at the Millennium, Century of Genocide and Genocide in Darfur: Investigating Atrocities in the Sudan.
Totten has worked on numerous curriculum projects over the years, including co-authoring Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Over 500,000 copies of the guidelines have been distributed around the world.
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