I tend to write here a lot, don’t I? Anyway I’m going to try to not post as frequently so I don’t clog up the timeline.

So a bit of context: I am taking a genocide history course and I will have to write a research paper for it. The paper is the biggest part of the grade and we can choose any topic as long as the professor approves of it. We have to book a “consultation” with him where we present our research topic and question, if he thinks it’s good enough we can go ahead and begin research and writing. The topic I want to write about is what was/is happening in the Donbas. I know many of us have referred to it as a genocide and I figured it’d be a good topic to write about since no one really talks about it. I could choose other issues but I’m almost certain other students will write about them, the Donbas situation is just never brought up enough for my liking.

My real question is: how do I present this to my professor?

I know I want to look into the how and why it happened, and how it’s being talked about now. If that’s makes sense. Yes it’s messy and not elegant enough, I’ll work on it, but I feel very passionate about this, especially with an event that is being hosted at my school today, it’s lit a fire in me. One that’s been there for a while but it’s just gotten hotter, it that makes sense.

I don’t want my professor to think my paper is going to be a weird defence of Putin or whatever, he seems quite set in stone on his position of the war so I’m trying to tread lightly without sacrificing my principles. All I’m asking is help in my wording as I don’t know how to say this without potentially screwing myself over. I think I low-key have to convince him that it was/is a genocide.

  • JohnBrownsBussy2 [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Saw this post in my federate feed, so not a lemmygrad native but thought it was interesting. Depending on how confrontational you want to be:

    • You could have the paper premise be on "both sides" of the conflict making claims. I.e., "both Ukrainian-aligned and Russian-aligned accuse each other of genocide during the 2014-present day conflict in Ukraine/Donbas. How do they justify those claims and how do those claims hold up against international law concerning genocide?"
    • You could just make it more focused on the 2014-2022 period. "Did the violence in the Donbas in the post-Maidan, pre-invasion period rise to the level of genocide?"

    IDK about your professor, but most professors should be accepting of such a research paper as long as you present a "neutral" outlook as opposed to a polemical one.

    • SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      10 months ago

      You don’t have to be from lemmygrad, everyone is welcome to give me insight and I really appreciate it! This helps a lot in me approaching my professor about the issue, I hesitate to talk about this stuff with them due to my school being a Canadian institution and the fact that I can’t really gauge whether he’ll be chill or not. Plus recent events at my school make me nervous about broaching the subject. Anyway, thank you so much for this!