Amanda Grzyb

Amanda Grzyb is Associate Professor and Faculty Scholar of Information and Media Studies at Western University. Her research focuses on comparative genocide, state violence, memorialization, social movements, and media and the public interest. She has published widely on the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and state violence in El Salvador and Sudan. Dr. Grzyb's most recent scholarship focuses on collaborative projects, participatory methodologies, and community partnerships that combine scholarly research with public and accessible dissemination outcomes (exhibitions, committee reports, popular books, workshops, public lectures).

She holds an MA and PhD in English from Duke University, an MA in Theory and Criticism from Western University, and a BA in English and Philosophy from Western University.

Dr. Grzyb is an affiliate faculty member in Western's Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Western's Department of Women's Studies and Feminist Research, and Western's Africa Institute. She served on the advisory board of Canada's National Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research from 2009-2012. She served as an international federal election observer in El Salvador in 2014 and as an international observer at two municipal popular consultations on metallic mining in El Salvador in 2015 and 2017. In 2015, she was a Erasmus Mundus visiting scholar at in the European Studies Program at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

Dr. Grzyb is currently the principal investigator for a collaborative, interdisciplinary, SSHRC-funded research initiative called "Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador." Working in collaboration with several Salvadoran municipalities, the Association of Survivors of the Sumpul Massacre and Other Massacres of Chalatenango, and colleagues and PhD students from across disciplines (Architecture, Music, Medicine, Anthropology, Hispanic Studies, Comparative Literature, Visual Arts, and Media Studies), the team is working on the community design of the Sumpul Massacre memorial, an interactive online map of 60 community-identified civil war massacres, and the production of exhibitions, community photobooks, teaching materials, and documentary films.

From From 2012 to 2015, she worked closely with Holocaust survivor, Max Eisen, on the completion of his Holocaust memoir, By Chance Alone (HarperCollins 2016). The memoir won the 2019 CBC Canada Reads competition and it was one of five finalists for the Taylor Award for non-fiction. In addition to editing and fact-checking draft chapters, she also wrote the historical Afterword. You can read a Western News story about the writing process here: http://news.westernu.ca/2016/04/an-important-story-to-tell/

Dr. Grzyb teaches instructor-led study abroad courses in Rwanda, Poland, and El Salvador. She has received multiple teaching awards throughout her career, including Western's Marilyn Robinson Award for Excellence in Teaching (2012), the FIMS Award for Teaching Excellence (2012 and 2006), Duke University Stephen Horne Graduate Instructor Teaching Award (1999); and Western University's Teaching Assistant Excellence Award (2005-2006).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Grzyb, Amanda. “The Changing Landscape of Holocaust Memorials in Poland.” Simone Gigliotti and Hillary Earl, eds. Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Holocaust. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming 2019.

Grzyb, Amanda. "Unsettled Memory: Genocide Memorial Sites in Rwanda," Brown Journal of World Affairs, forthcoming Spring 2019.

Grzyb, Amanda and Beatriz Juarez. Plan Estratégico 2018-2021: Asociación de Sobrevivientes de las Masacre del Sumpul y Otras Masacres de Chalatenango / Strategic Plan, 2018-2021: Association of Survivors of the Sumpul Massacre and Other Chalatenango Massacres: www.asociacionsumpul.org. October 2018.

Grzyb, Amanda and Amy Freier. “Hate Propaganda and International Intervention: the US Refusal to Disrupt RTLM Broadcasts During the 1994 Genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda.” Henry Theriault and Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, eds. Controversies in the Field of Genocide Studies, Transaction Publishers, 2017.

Grzyb, Amanda. “Afterword,” By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz by Max Eisen. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2016.

Grzyb, Amanda. "Curating Action: Comparative Genocide Exhibits and the 'Call to Action' at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, the United States Holocaust Museum, and the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia." Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, eds. The Idea of a Human Rights Museum. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015.

Totten, Samuel and Amanda Grzyb, eds. Conflict in the Nuba Mountains: From Genocide by Attrition to the Contemporary Crisis in Sudan. Routledge, 2015.

Grzyb, Amanda. “The Plight and Fate of Children During and Following the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,” Samuel Totten, ed. The Fate of Children: Genocide. Transaction Publishers, 2014.

Grzyb, Amanda and Didier Odie Muvunyi. “Twenty Years Later: Official Memory and Local Grief at Genocide Memorial Sites in Rwanda. The Forum: Quarterly Publication for the Association of Death Education and Counseling. April, 2014.

Grzyb, Amanda. “Information Mobility, Human Rights Activism, and International Intervention in Darfur.” Suzan Ilcan, Ed. Mobilities, Knowledge, and Social Justice. S. Ilcan, ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

Grzyb, Amanda: “From Kristallnacht to the S.S. St. Louis Tragedy: Canadian Press Coverage of Nazi Persecution of the Jews and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, September 1938 to August 1939,” Ruth Klein, ed. Nazi Germany, Canadian Responses, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012.

Grzyb, Amanda. “Homeless Impersonations: the Urban Plunge and North-American Poverty Tourism,” Expositions, April 2011.

Grzyb, Amanda. “Genocide and Motherhood.” Encyclopedia of Motherhood. A. O’Reilly, ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2010.

Grzyb, Amanda, ed. The World and Darfur: International Response to Crimes Against Humanity in Western Sudan. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, April 2009.

Grzyb, Amanda. “Media Coverage, Activism, and Creating Public Will for Intervention in Rwanda and Darfur.” The World and Darfur: International Response to Crimes Against Humanity in Western Sudan. A. Grzyb, ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009.