Dr Claire Moon

This course is available on the MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Political Sociology and MSc in Sociology. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access). Places are allocated based on a written statement, with priority given to students on the MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics, MSc in Political Sociology and MSc in Sociology. As demand is typically high, this may mean that not all students who apply will be able to get a place on this course.

The course introduces students to current issues in the field of transitional justice and historical injustice, and draws upon a range of examples from Africa, Latin America, post-communist Europe, Australia and the US. Topics include transitional justice as a field of practice and a field of knowledge; the perpetrators of atrocity; denial; retributive and restorative justice; forensic engagements with mass graves and the dead body; theology and therapy in reconciliation; historic injustices in settler states (Australia, Canada and the US) and the politics of apology and reparation; memory and atrocity. The course explores the politics of reconciliation by identifying and examining its key themes, the practices and institutions in which it is embedded and its key political subjects. SO457 is an interdisciplinary course that draws upon literature from sociology, law, political theory, anthropology and philosophy amongst others, in order to understand and interpret the wide social and political reach of reconciliation, as well as its limitations.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures, online materials and seminars totalling a minimum of 20 hours in the WT.

Reading Weeks: Students on this course will have a reading week in WT Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

1 x formative essay of 1500 words.

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Books, 1977); Glen Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (Routledge, 2001); Michael Humphrey, The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: From Terror to Trauma (Routledge, 2002); Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (Capricorn Books, 1961); Keenan, Thomas and Eyal Weizman (2012) Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of Forensic Aesthetics (Frankfurt: Sternberg Press); Neil Kritz, Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes (US Institute of Peace, 1995); Claire Moon, Narrating Political Reconciliation: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Lexington, 2009); Nicholas Tavuchis & Mea Culpa, A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford University Press, 1991); Richard Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Essay (100%, 4000 words) in the ST.

Attendance at all seminars, completion of set readings and submission of set coursework is required.