Profile: Alex Hinton
Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights
Sociocultural and psychological anthropology; genocide and political violence; transitional justice; Southeast Asia (with a focus on Cambodia); culture and mind; globalization and modernity; self and emotion; anthropological and critical theory.
Associated Programs
Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights
Department of Anthropology, Rutgers New Brunswick
Division of Global AffairsCourses Taught
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Genocide
Anthropology of Power
Peoples and Cultures of Southeast Asia
Seminar in Anthropology
Culture, Political Violence, and Genocide
Culture and Globalization
Human Rights in a Global World
Global JusticeEducation
Ph.D. Anthropology, Emory University, 1997.
Publications
Books
2013 Hidden Genocide: Power, Knowledge, Memory. Rutgers University Press. In Press. (Thomas LaPointe and Douglas Irvin, co-editors.)
2010 Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence. Rutgers University Press.
2009 Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation (Kevin O'Neill, co-editor). Duke University Press.
2005 Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide, University of California Press, 2005. [2008 Stirling Award for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology, Society for Psychological Anthropology]
2002 Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, University of California Press.
2002 Genocide: An Anthropological Reader, Blackwell.
1999 Biocultural Approaches to the Emotions, Cambridge University Press.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
2012 Critical Genocide Studies. Genocide Studies and Prevention 7(1): 4-15.
2012 Genocide and Effacement: A Conference on Cambodia, a Painting, and Ways of Knowing. Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture 11(1): Winter.
2008 Songs at the Edge of Democratic Kampuchea. In At the Edge of the Forest: Essays on Cambodia, Narrative and History Honoring David Chandler. Anne Hansen and Judy Ledgerwood, eds. Pp. 71-91. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asian Program Press.
2006 "Khmerness and the Thai Other: Violence, Discourse, and Symbolism in the 2003 Anti-Thai Riot in Cambodia" Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 37 (3): 445-68.
2006 We Can't Let the Khmer Rouge Escape. Washington Post. August 4.
2006 Seeking Justice for the Killing Fields . International Herald Tribune. June 1.
2006 The Stare. Rutgers Magazine Spring.
2005 Genocide and Modernity. In A Companion to Psychological
Anthropology: Modernity and Psychocultural Change. Conerly Casey and Robert B. Edgerton, eds. Pp. 419-435. Malden, MA: Blackwell.2005 Lessons from Killing Fields of Cambodia - 30 Years On. Christian Science Monitor. April 14.
2004 The Perpetrator, the Victim, and the Witness. Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, 16(1):137-153
2004 The Poetics of Genocidal Practice: Life Under the Khmer Rouge. In The Cultural Poetics of Violence Practice. Neil Whitehead, ed. Pp. 157-184. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.
2002 The Dark Side of Modernity: Toward an Anthropology of Genocide. In Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Alex Hinton, editor. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2002 Anthropology and Genocide. In Genocide: An Anthropological Reader. Alex Hinton, editor. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
2001 Purity and Contamination in the Cambodian Genocide. In Cambodia emerges from the past: Eight Essays, Judy Ledgerwood, ed., Pp. 60-90. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
2001 Review of David Chandler's book, Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Poison. Holocaust and Genocide Studies 15 (3): 523-525.
2000 Under the Shade of Pol Pot's Umbrella: Myth and Mandala in the Cambodian Genocide. In the Vision Thing: Myth, Politics, and Psyche in the Modern World. Tom Singer, editor. New York: Routledge.
1998 Genocidal Bricolage: A Reading of Human Liver-eating in Cambodia. Yale University Genocide Studies Program Working Paper (GS 06): 16-38.
1998 A Head for an Eye: Revenge in the Cambodian Genocide. American Ethnologist 25 (3): 353-377.
1998 Why did you Kill? Anthropology, Genocide, and the Goldhagen Controversy. Anthropology Today 14 (3):9-15.
1996 Agents of Death: Explaining the Cambodian Genocide in terms of Psychosocial Dissonance. American Anthropologist 98(4): 818-831.
1993 Prolegomenon to a Processual Approach to the Emotions. Ethos 21 (4): 417-451.
Research Initiatives
Alex Hinton is Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights and Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs and at Rutgers University, Newark. He is also the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (2011-13). He is the author of the award-winning Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (California, 2005) and seven edited or co-edited collections, Hidden Genocide: Power, Knowledge, Memory (Rutgers, forthcoming in 2013), Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence (Rutgers, 2010), Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation (Duke, 2009), Night of the Khmer Rouge: Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia (Paul Robeson Gallery, 2007), Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide (California, 2002), Genocide: An Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, 2002), and Biocultural Approaches to the Emotions (Cambridge, 1999). He is currently working on several other book projects, including a co-edited volume on the legacies of mass violence and a book on the Khmer Rouge tribunal. He serves as an Academic Advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, on the International Advisory Boards of the Journal of Genocide Research and Genocide Studies and Prevention, as co-editor of the CGHR-Rutgers University Press book series, "Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights." In 2009, Alex Hinton received the Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology "for his groundbreaking 2005 ethnography Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide, for path-breaking work in the anthropology of genocide, and for developing a distinctively anthropological approach to genocide." He is currently a Visitor (2012-13) at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
LINKS
General genocide web-sites with key links (both to other general sites and to sites with information about specific genocides; some of these sites also include on-line bibliographies, news reports, data banks, survivor memoirs, documentation, syllabi, warning alerts, and general information about genocide)
The Genocide Research Project, University of Memphis & Penn State University
Institute for the Study of Genocide
Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies
Centre for Comparative Genocide Studies, Macquarie University
Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Shalom College
Danish Center from Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, & Human Rights
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies, University of Nevada, Reno
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
Early Warning, Prevention, and Criminalization
Minorities at Risk Project, University of Maryland
Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court
Documentation Center of Cambodia
Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights
Files
- 973-353-5345
- ahinton@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Hill Hall 627
