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Violence

Module description

This module explores the social and cultural histories of collective violence, focusing on the act of violence itself. Engaging with the extensive theorisation of violence offered by different social sciences, the module will examine why violence has taken particular forms and rituals, what it has meant to perpetrators and victims, and the limits placed on violence by formal and informal rules and practices. The module will explore the roles of religion, ethnicity, group dynamics, and gender, phenomena ranging from riots and massacres to the duel, as well as the halting of violence through surrender or negotiation.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This ‘Concepts’ module requires you to engage with historical ideas and theories relating to violence that are applicable across time and space. You will be encouraged to think beyond the detail of your Special Subjects and Dissertations, using a range of illustrative case studies to examine broader ideas. You will have to consider how ideas and concepts about violence vary, develop, or manifest consistently in different time periods and places, and why they are constructed as they are. What can this tell us about past peoples and societies, and what are the implications for the world in which we now live? 

All History ‘Concepts’ modules are partly project-based, requiring you to take the initiative. In the first half of term, a team of tutors will introduce themes, concepts, and ideas, setting you up for the rest of the module.  The second half of term is student-led: you will work in groups to develop your understanding of violence and lead a seminar to teach fellow students more about violence through a series of case-studies. 

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Analyse and explain key developments in the histories of violence across different historical time-periods and geographical regions
• 2. Evaluate carefully and critically the approaches that historians and scholars working in other disciplines have taken to the concept of violence
• 3. Define suitable research topics for independent study/student-led seminars on the history of violence

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Analyse the key developments in complex and unfamiliar political, social, cultural or intellectual environments
• 5. Evaluate different and complex types of historical source and historiography.
• 6. Present work in the format expected of historians, including footnoting and bibliographical references.
• 7. Identify and deploy correct terminology in a comprehensible and sophisticated manner
• 8. Evaluate critically different approaches to history in a contested area

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 9. Work both in a team and independently in order to prepare and lead a seminar
• 10. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment.

Syllabus plan

While content may vary from year to year, it is anticipated that the module may cover some of the following:

• terrorism and political violence
• gender-based violence
• ethnic cleansing and genocide/colonial violence
• intellectualising violence (e.g., cultural relativism and legitimations of violence)
• cultural meanings and symbolism of violence
• violence from above and below
• state violence
• memory and/of violence
• violence and the body
• how to define violence; its limits (moral, legal, etc.)

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

The re-assessment consists of a 3000-word Written Assignment, as in the original assessment, but replaces leading a student-led seminar and participating in seminars with recordings and supporting materials that correspond to one student’s contribution to such a seminar. The introduction should outline the student’s understanding of the topic; the longer recording should explain how the seminar would be structured and organised, as well as detailing the material to be used. This will enable the marker to gain a sense of what the student’s understanding of their concept and its specific application in the seminar, what the student intended to do in the seminar, and the rationale for this activity, as well as enabling them to assess the student’s oral seminar-leading skills.

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Arendt, Hannah. On Violence (1970).
• Bourke, Joanna. Rape: A history from 1860 to the present (Virago, 2008)
• Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution (New York, 1992).
• Buc, Philippe, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror: Christianity, Violence, and the West, ca. 70 C.E. to the Iraq War (Philadelphia, 2015).
• Davis, Natalie Zemon, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past & Present, No. 59 (May, 1973), pp. 51-91
• Morrissey, Susan K. “The ‘Apparel of Innocence’: Toward a Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia.” The Journal of Modern History 84, no. 3 (2012): 607–42. https://doi.org/10.1086/666051.
• Nirenburg, David, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996).
• Pandey, Gyanendra, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories (Stanford, CA., 2006).
• Pinker, Stephen. “The surprising decline in violence”, TED2007, https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_the_surprising_decline_in_violence
• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Philippe Bourgois (eds.), Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology (Oxford, 2004).
  • Tilly, Charles. The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Key words search

Violence; gender-based violence; state violence; terrorism; colonialism; genocide; ethnic cleansing; cultural history; social history; riot; massacre; arson; fire; intimidation.