Fratricide and Fraternité
John E. Sawyer Seminar Series 2009-2010
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
And they will each fight against his brother and each against his neighbour.
– Isaiah 19:2
We can live together, we just can’t sleep.
– Bosnian Muslim (Stover & Weinstein 2004)
In June 2008, the School was awarded a grant of $144,000 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a Sawyer Seminar on “Fratricide and Fraternité: Understanding and Repairing Neighbourly Violence.”
The series sought to answer two overarching and inter-related questions:
(1) what turns neighbour against neighbour? and
(2) how do neighbours live together again after atrocity? The series was organized into two parts. The first half examined the causes and manifestations of neighbourly violence, while the second half explored the profound political, social, moral, and cultural consequences of mass violence for individuals and communities.
The Sawyer Seminar Series involved the participation of seven (out of ten) of SAS’s Institutes: Classical Studies (IClS), Commonwealth Studies (ICwS), Germanic & Romance Studies (IGRS), Historical Research (IHR), Musical Research (IMR), the Study of the Americas (ISA), and The Warburg Institute.
