“After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda” with Dr. Nicole Fox
On Tuesday, April 2, the Strauss Center for International Security and Law hosted Dr. Nicole Fox, Associate Professor in California State University Sacramento’s Criminal Justice Division, for a discussion of her book, “After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda.” This talk was moderated by Ambassador (Ret.) Larry André, Distinguished Diplomat in Residence at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and Dr. Maro Youssef, State Fragility Program Fellow at the Strauss Center.
In After Genocide, Nicole Fox investigates the ways memorials can shape the experiences of survivors decades after mass violence has ended. She examines how memorializations can both heal and hurt, especially when they fail to represent all genders, ethnicities, and classes of those afflicted. Drawing on extensive interviews with Rwandans, Fox reveals their relationships to these spaces and uncovers those voices silenced by the dominant narrative—arguing that the erasure of such stories is an act of violence itself. The book probes the ongoing question of how to fit survivors in to the dominant narrative of healing and importantly demonstrates how memorials can shape possibilities for growth, national cohesion, reconciliation, and hope for the future.
Thank you to all who joined us at 12:15 pm on Zoom. For questions about this event, please contact Brittany Horton at brittany.horton@austin.utexas.edu.
Biographies
Dr. Nicole Fox is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University Sacramento. Her research centers on how racial and ethnic contention impacts communities, with a focus on how remembrances of adversity shape social change and collective memory. Her most recent project examines individuals who conducted acts of rescue during episodes of mass violence, theorizing the social factors that shape such high-risk actions. Her 2021 book (University of Wisconsin Press) focuses on how memorials to past atrocity impacts community development and reconciliation for survivors of genocide and genocidal rape.
Ambassador (Ret.) Larry E. André, Jr., retired from the State Department’s Senior Foreign Service in May 2023 after a 38-year career with the federal government (3 ½ years with Peace Corps, first as a volunteer for two years then as a staff member, 16 months as a USAID contractor in Chad, then 33 ½ years with the State Department’s Foreign Service). He served in a mix of leadership, policy, and management positions.
Dr. Maro Youssef is a Fellow in the State Fragility Program at the Strauss Center. Her expertise is in gender, intelligence, human rights, qualitative methods, US foreign policy, and the Middle East and North Africa. As an applied sociologist, she has 15+ years of research and policy experience, including at the US Department of State, World Bank, and University of Southern California. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was also a Brumley Graduate Fellow. She speaks Arabic, English, and French.