The Blog
These are posts by students on the trip, part of their final class requirements.
Please note: Violence and sexual violence present in most posts

Lessons that Will Stay with Me
Professor Nancy D. Wadsworth
I hope to continue refining the class in coming years, but I know that the profundity and sense of emotional community that marked the first time with this remarkable group of students will be forever impressed on my memory.

Honoring the Dead? Struggling to Understand the Presence of Human Remains at Rwandan Genocide Memorials
Ontario Duley
The Rwandan government argues that the display of human remains is one necessary effort to counter denialism about the Genocide Against the Tutsi. Thus, it is not without careful consideration that bodies are placed on display.

Challenges of the Victim-Perpetrator Binary
Britta Petersen
Defining roles in the civil wars and genocides is much fuzzier than the official government narratives would lead us to believe.

Tuyisenge Narcisse
Austin Clapp
In Narcisse’s story, this truly seems to be what has caused him the most suffering: the feeling of having everything that was once his being ripped away with no ability to control the outcome.

The Catholic Problem in the Rwandan Genocide
Tom Oexeman
As we learned, some of the deadliest massacre sites were Catholic Churches, most notably Ntarama and Nyamata, and partly because their priests abandoned their own parishioners or actively enabled genocidaires.

When People Resist Genocide
Lauren Yehle
With so much emphasis on survivors, it’s difficult to understand what inspired some Hutus to murder and others to resist.

From the Fields of Genocide: How Individuals Accepted Genocidal Ideation in the Genocide Against the Tutsi
Blake Schapiro
Examining the role that propaganda played in the genocide and focusing on the internal psychological processes that translated genocidal ideation into active participation in ethnic cleansing.

Yahrzeit*
Anne Pogoriler
There were many echoes of the Holocaust in our tour of Rwanda’s more recent trauma.