The Stories We Tell: Narratives of Sexual Violence and Concepts of Gender in Post-Genocide Societies

Public lecture by Virginia Bullington (USC undergraduate, Narrative Studies)

In this lecture, 2018 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow Virginia Bullington will reflect on research she conducted last summer at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. During her residency, Bullington analyzed how testimonies from the Armenian, Guatemalan and Rwandan genocides regarding sexual violence are constructed by interviewees, and how these narratives influence and are influenced by contemporary concepts of gender in those societies post-conflict. She also examined the emotional responses of witnesses, the language they used, and the interview environment among other factors to engage in a comparative study of interviews from the three conflicts. This talk will also draw from more recent research Bullington has conducted using the same methodology with testimonies from survivors of the Nanjing massacre. 

Virginia Bullington is an undergraduate in her third year studying Narrative Studies at the University of Southern California. She spent four weeks this summer as the Shoah Foundation's Beth and Arthur Lev Fellow and is currently working with the USC-UNESCO Journal for Global Humanities, Science & Ethical Inquiry to publish a paper based on the research she conducted using the Visual History Archive. Her research attempts to marry her two interests in literature and narrative with history and politics to approach survivor testimony from a historiographical perspective.