For this year’s show honoring genocide commemoration month, Radio Intifada hosts Dr. Elyse Semerdjian to discuss her latest article, “A World Without Civilians,” published in the Journal of Genocide Research. We discuss Dr. Semerdjian’s insights about how modern warfare both foreshadows “a posthuman future in which entire populations are no longer categorized civilian” and “essentially nukes populations without conventional nuclear warheads.” Years after the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was ratified, it is clear that laws and definitions have not helped prevent genocide. We discuss this contradiction, ask what must be done instead, and reflect on where we can locate hope. 

Elyse Semerdjian is the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She is the author of “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppoand Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide. She has also authored articles on gender, Ottoman Armenians, urban history, and law in the Ottoman Empire.  

This show is co-hosted and co-produced by SWANA collective members Ankine Antaram and Soraya Zarook. You can listen to this and our previous shows on Spotify, Anchor, Google Podcasts, Breaker, and Radio Public. You can also follow our updates on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. SWANA Region Radio is run entirely by the volunteer efforts of our collective: Ankine Antaram, Nyma Ardalan, David Lloyd, Hamoud Salhi, Rana Sharif, and Soraya Zarook. We appreciate any amplification of our work. Thanks for listening and for sharing!