When Violence Targets the Body: Reproductive Violence in Genocide and War

A public lecture by Bhaswati Bhattacharjee (PhD candidate in English Literature, Dr. Harisingh Gour Central University, India)

2026-2027 Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow

Organized by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research

What can survivors’ testimonies reveal about the ways violence is used to target women’s bodies during genocide and war?

In this talk, Bhaswati Bhattacharjee examines reproductive violence as a deliberate form of violence against individuals, families, and communities. Drawing on survivor testimonies in the Visual History Archive and memoirs by women survivors of war crimes, she explores how practices such as sexual violence, forced pregnancy, and other forms of reproductive harm function as part of broader strategies of persecution and destruction. She considers how women’s accounts document these experiences while also challenging the silences and gaps that often surround them.

Bhattacharjee will examine reproductive violence across past cases of genocide and war, including the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, while also reflecting on contemporary parallels in Ukraine and Sudan. Reflecting on the relationships among violence, power, memory, and testimony, she considers what survivors’ accounts can help us understand about the continuing use of reproductive violence in genocide and war and highlights the importance of listening to survivors as producers of knowledge about these forms of violence.

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Lunch will be served.

Bhaswati Bhattacharjee is a Senior Research Fellow and PhD scholar in English Literature at Dr. Harisingh Gour Central University, India. Her research focuses on war memoirs, survivor testimony, memory, gender, and representations of violence and genocide. Her doctoral research examines memoirs by women survivors of war crimes from Sudan, Rwanda, and Iraq, exploring how their narratives challenge silence and dominant accounts of conflict. Her current research at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research examines reproductive violence and biopolitical warfare through genocide survivor testimonies, with contemporary parallels in Ukraine and Sudan. She has published in national and international journals and presented her research at academic conferences in India and abroad. She has also worked with Genocide Watch as a Research Intern and as a member of its Sudan and Myanmar Task Forces.