Museums and Mass Violence examines the varied ways in which museums around the world address - or fail to address - the problem of mass violence and severe human rights abuses.
Bringing together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners and a transnational set of case studies, this volume explores the potential of museums to contribute to social justice in the contemporary era. At the same time, it directs attention to the perils these institutions face when they curate and exhibit -difficult- knowledge concerning genocide, mass killing, and other kinds of atrocity crimes. The question of how museums shape historical understanding of political oppression, particularly within the political, social and economic contexts in which they operate, is another major issue addressed by this volume. Asking for whom, exactly, -difficult histories- are difficult, contributors to this volume also ask the hard question of what museum professionals should do when the -terrible gift
