"Good Amidst Evil: Rescue in the Holocaust & the Rwandan Genocide."
Professional Background
Dr. Jennie Burnet is currently Associate Professor of Global Studies and Anthropology, as well as Associate Director of the Global Studies Institute, at Georgia State University (USA). She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA). As the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Fellow at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Dr. Burnet will be conducting research for her project entitled, “Good Amidst Evil: Rescue in the Holocaust & the Rwandan Genocide.”
Dr. Burnet is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Elliot P. Skinner Book Award for Genocide Lives in Us. In 2006, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame awarded her with the Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship.
Dr. Burnet is the author of the award-winning book, Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda (2012). She has also written numerous book chapters, including “Accountability for Mass Death, Acts of Rescue and Silence in Rwanda” in A Companion to the Anthropology of Death (2018), and “Rape as a Weapon of Genocide: Gender, Patriarchy, and Sexual Violence in Rwanda” in Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey (2015). Her research has appeared in Politics & Gender, African Affairs, African Studies Review, and the Women’s Studies International Forum.
Dr. Burnet is fluent in English and French, and proficient in Kinyarwanda.
Fellowship Research
While in residence at the Mandel Center, Dr. Burnet will develop research that makes systematic comparisons between rescuers from the Rwandan genocide and from the Holocaust. Drawing on the Museum’s resources, especially oral histories, she will explore the moral challenges faced by rescuers and how they conducted their actions. Her work will also explore the motivations of rescuers and recognize their importance in the histories of the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust. This fellowship will also help complete the manuscript for her forthcoming book, To Save Heaven & Earth: Rescue During the Rwandan Genocide.
Dr. Burnet will be in residence through July 31, 2019, and can be contacted at her museum e-mail jburnet@ushmm.org.