[Discussion] Cultural History Conference

[sule tarakcioglu]

*Fourth York Cultural History Conference. Cultures of Violence:
Interpersonal Violence in Historical Perspective York UK, 21-23 April 2005

*Violence is an inescapable theme in human history. War, violent crime,
personal conflict and aggression appear to be constant features of the
human condition. Has violence been codified, tamed and suppressed by a
'civilizing process', which forged the modern, rational, bourgeois self?
Is civilization opposed to or predicated upon violence? This conference
aims to test these assumptions by examining interpersonal violence below
the level of the state from Classical Antiquity to the 21st Century. A
comparative analysis of various sorts of violence in various different
periods, places and contexts will enable us better to understand how and
why thresholds of acceptable and legitimate violence changed over time.
What may have seemed acceptable behaviour in one time and place may be
unacceptable in another. How did societies discuss and represent
violence in art and literature? How was violence regulated and
controlled? What factors moved people, psychological, material and
ideological to violence? Papers are welcomed on particular cases, on
comparative and interdisciplinary themes, or on theoretical approaches.
Themes might cover such topics as:

spectacles of violence
crime, banditry, riot
intimate, domestic and sexual violence
ethnic, communal and religious violence
combat
honour, feuding and duelling
peace-making and arbitration
repression, civility and state-building


Speakers include:

    * William Miller (Michigan) author of Bloodtaking & Peace-making and
      Humiliation
    * Ed Muir (Northwestern) author of Mad Blood Stirring John Keane
      (Centre for the Study of Democracy) author of Reflections on Violence

*
*Dr Stuart Carroll
Dept History
University of York
YORK
UK
YO10 5DD
Tel:01904-432968
Fax:01904-432986

Email: smc4@york.ac.uk <mailto:smc4@york.ac.uk>
Visit the website at http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~imd104/
<http://www-users.york.ac.uk/%7Eimd104/>