Much attention has been devoted in recent years
to understanding violence. As creative
works have sought to document violence
and understand its causes, accurate description
and representation have often been deemed
necessary to the process of healing and the
prevention of future violence. This emphasis
on describing and representing violence
can, however, end up recreating in text or
image another form of violence. Analyzing and
critiquing hate speech or violent pornography,
for example, may also mean repeating it.
Making someone understand the experiences
of war and other atrocities requires a
certain art in representing the violence; the
more explicit the image or text, the more one
is made to feel the impact of the violence. At
what point do such representations end up
perpetrating violence as they aestheticize it? And
more importantly perhaps, can these
works also suggest solutions to violence? This
course will explore answers to these
questions through theoretical works, as well as
through textual and visual representations
of violence. This is a research seminar and requires
the active participation of students in
presentations and class discussions. Graduate students
are also expected to carry out original
research towards the final paper. For the possibility
of taking this course at the graduate
level see CULT 535.
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