Editors’ Introduction to Volume 3 # 1.

This issue of IJC&R contains six papers that were originally presented at the following conference: Exploring Women’s Testimony: Genocide, War, Revolution, the Holocaust and Human Rights, in Maine. The conference was sponsored by Colby College, the University of Maine at Augusta, and the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine, and chaired by Audrey Brunetaux and Robert Katz in October 2014.

Dauge-Roth examines the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda by analyzing the testimonials of female survivors for content and impact. Gallimore, too, writes of post-genocide Rwanda as “the killing of maternity” and its impact on current gender relations. Taylor uses narrative theory to study the Holocaust through women’s voices in the film, Were the House Still Standing, addressing community, hearth, and family. Kulasic, who survived the Tmopolje concentration camp as a child, focuses on the war of Bosnia and Herzegovina to present the relationships between personal and public interpretations of women and children battered by war. Wales Freedman explores how people who write trauma narratives, e.g., Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Morrison, might produce understanding in their readers. Lastly, Holden writes of Germaine Tillion, a French WWll resistance fighter and only the second woman (Madame Currie being the first) to be inducted in the French Pantheon on May 27, 2015, describing the structure and purpose of an operetta that Tillion wrote while a prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. This is a fascinating collection of articles that deal with the difficult topic of genocide, war and loss. The authors share their unique perspectives on these challenging issues, and analyze a variety of narratives through the lens of contemporary literature, art, film, and new media, using material from different locations around the globe.

The issue also contains two book reviews by Jesse and Arredondo. Jesse’s extended review deals with Timothy White’s recently published volume on Theories of International Relations and Northern Ireland. Among Jesse’s important insights is the idea that this collection shows that more individuals are usually involved in peace processes than the famous people we hear about, peace is indeed a collective endeavor. In this era of growing forced and voluntary migration, Miraftab’s book on the way immigrants construct their lives in a new environment---Beardstown, Illinois is timely and reviewed in this volume by Arredondo. It is also in a lengthy piece. Arredondo draws attention to the author’s focus on the relational dimension of constructing new lives: the relationships between various groups of immigrants, between each and its former homeland and between the global and local contexts. We are pleased to publish these reviews.