How can one group within a community suddenly decide to exterminate its neighbors, as happened in Rwanda in 1994? And in the aftermath of genocide, how do the two groups then resume life together?

These are two of the questions that Alexandre Dauge-Roth, assistant professor of French, is exploring in the personal, literary and film narratives created about Rwanda in the years since Hutu extremists massacred as many as a million Tutsis.

"I'm examining how these authors use an aesthetic of haunting," says Dauge-Roth, a Swiss native who started at Bates in 2005. "These testimonies and documentaries find ways to haunt the reader and the viewer, so that we cannot go back to our usual business and forget about it."

Dauge-Roth has researched these questions for three years. During a 2006 trip to Rwanda, he established a network of genocide survivors who will correspond with Bates students taking "Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda," a 300-level French seminar during winter 2007. (French is an official language of Rwanda.)

In the spring a related conference is planned that will involve guest speakers from the United States and Rwanda, as well as faculty from Colby, Bowdoin and Bates. Dauge-Roth hopes also to bring a Short Term program to Rwanda.

"I hope that students will reflect on what it means to listen to a survivor," says Dauge-Roth. "There's a lot to learn from them about the ability to struggle and to live on despite horrific loss."