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We are planning our seminars for Fall 2008. Please come back in September to find out who will be speaking.

This seminar will explore the causes, forms, purposes and effects of violence in history. It will ask how violence has shaped human environments (ecological, ideological, institutional, cultural, social and psychological) and how incidences of violence have varied across time and societies. It will probe the relationship of violence in its myriad forms to cultural, religious, racial, and gendered beliefs; to systems of labor, commerce and technology; to politics, ideology, and the presence or absence of states with the ability to monopolize the means of violence; to the rule of law and the punishment of lawbreakers; to rebellion, war, and torture. It will investigate how societies and individuals both involved in and divorced from the immediate experience of violence responded to it and coped with its effects. It will examine representations and memories of violence in literature, film, and popular culture. It will look into political and social movements that protested against violence. It will seek to advance our understanding of the history of violence in ways that are empirical, interpretive, comparative, and theoretical.

 

Pre-circulated Papers:
Discussion at each event will be based on a pre-circulated paper available in the Department of History, Benson 227, with the exception of the Marcus Rediker Byrn Lecture on March 10th.   For questions, or to be placed on our email distribution list, please contact Heidi Welch at 322-2575 or heidi.welch@vanderbilt.edu .

We look forward to seeing you at these seminars.
Gary Gerstle
Director
Vanderbilt History Seminar &
James Stahlman Professor of History

 

colin dayan

Colin Dayan
 *  Professor of English and Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities
Vanderbilt University
“Due Process and Lethal Confinement

Jan. 28, 2008, 4:10 p.m.
Buttrick 302

dennis

Dennis C. Dickerson
James M. Lawson Jr. Professor of History
Vanderbilt University
“Religion and the Civil Rights Movement  in Transnational Perspective: The Nelsons in India, 1946-1947”

Feb. 28, 2008, 4:10 p.m.
Benson 200

marcus

Marcus Rediker
Professor of History  * University of Pittsburgh The John William Byrn Lecture
Sponsored by the Department of History
"The Floating Dungeon: A History of the Slave Ship"

Photo by Bill Bollendorf

March 10, 2008, 4:10 p.m.
Renaissance Room, VU Law School

howard

Howard Brown
Professor and Chair Department of History  
SUNY-Binghamton
"Mediatizing Massacres: ‘Collective Trauma’ from the Wars of Religion to the French Revolution”

March 17, 2008, 4:10 p.m.
Buttrick 302

lange

Christian Lange
Lecturer in Islamic Studies
University of Edinburgh 
"Public and Private Punishment in Medieval Islam: the Case of Pillorying (tashhir)"

April 7, 2008, 4:10 p.m
Benson 200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Department of History
VU Station B #351802
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Nashville, TN 37235-1802

Department Location:
227 Benson Hall
Phone: (615) 322-2575
Fax: (615) 343-6002

E-mail: History@vanderbilt.edu

Office Hours:
Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. CST

Summer Office Hours:
Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-4 p.m.