Changing Spaces for Womens Voice in Oral Testimonial Collections of the Rwandan Genocide Against the Tutsi

该项目将利用卢旺达针对图蒂斯人的种族灭绝及其后果，探索两个口头证词集背后的历史学和驱动因素，其中包含妇女性暴力经历的证人证词。尽管我们在理解大屠杀期间以及更广泛的种族灭绝中对妇女的暴力模式方面取得了进展，但将性别和种族灭绝联系起来的研究很少。此外，国家档案馆和非政府组织(NGO)的项目包含大量主要证词，但关于这些证词是如何在历史背景下收集的系统研究几乎没有。我的论文选择了一个跨学科的视角，将历史研究、种族灭绝研究、性别和记忆结合在一起：不同的方法论方法如何有效地帮助女性通过证人证词表达她们广泛的经历，特别是在性暴力在周围社会经常被污名化的情况下？因此，这篇论文的目的是：首先用一个历史框架来评估妇女的经历是如何通过非政府组织在卢旺达针对图西族人的种族灭绝事件中的做法表达出来的。其次，它将审查非政府组织使用的当代方法如何限制或提供与幸存者对话的机会。最后，它将使用收集的证词样本，分析妇女如何用她们自己的话描述她们在针对图西族的种族灭绝期间的性暴力经历。通过将这项工作与女权主义方法进行对话，我将确定以实践为基础的方法的历史背景化如何使妇女能够表达她们在种族灭绝中的性暴力经历，以及这种对话可以为当代关于冲突和非冲突相关性暴力类型的思考增加什么。

This project will explore the historiography and drivers behind two oral testimonial collections containing witness testimony of women's experience of sexual violence, by drawing on the Rwandan genocide against the Tutis and its aftermath. Despite advances to how we understand patterns of violence against women during the Holocaust, and in genocide more broadly, studies linking gender and genocide are rare. Furthermore, National Archive and Non-Government Organisation (NGO) projects contain large quantities of primary testimony, but systematic research on how this testimony has been gathered in an historical context hardly exist. My thesis chooses an interdisciplinary perspective at the intersection of historical studies, genocide studies, gender and memory by asking: How effectively can different methodological approaches help women to express the breadth of their experiences through witness testimony, especially when sexual violence is so often stigmatised in surrounding societies? The aim of this thesis is thus: it will first use an historical framework to assess how women's experience has been articulated through NGO practices in relation to the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi . Secondly, it will examine how contemporary methodologies used by NGOs, can either constrain or provide opportunities in the dialogue with survivors. Finally, using a sample of testimonies from the collections, it will analyse how women describe their experience of sexual violence during the genocide against the Tutsi, in their own words. By bringing this work into dialogue with feminist approaches, I will identify how the historical contextualisation of practice-based methodologies enable women to express their experience of sexual violence in genocide, and what such dialogues can add to contemporary thinking on typologies of conflict and non conflict related sexual violence.