Where are the bodies? A transnational examination of state violence and its consequences.

This special issue of The Public Historian will examine what is a pressing, pervasive, traumatic, and very public contemporary issue in which history and historians are heavily involved in many countries around the globe. Authors will investigate a range of issues around the state involvement in death, including the role of the state as perpetrator and its responsibilities to the victims and their families; the process and significance of exhumation, of identification, and of repatriation; the status of refugees and displaced peoples who die when legally stateless and so without state protection; the differing transnational stances in tracing and punishing the perpetrators; the fraught issue of personal and official reparation; and the role and efficacy of international justice.