Sexual Violence
Tutor: Dr Anna Hájková
Trigger warning: in this session, we will discuss sexual and sexualized violence
Seminar questions
What are the main functions of sexual violence?
What is the theoretical intervention that Helliwell brings?
Is sexual violence a topic like any other? Why yes, and why not? what are some of the ethical obligations at hand connected to the topic?
Core reading
Cockburn, Cynthia. "‘Why Are You Doing This to Me?’Identity, Power and Sexual Violence in War." Sexuality, Gender and Power. Routledge, 2010. 203-218.
Christine Helliwell, "It's Only a Penis": Rape, Feminism, and Difference, Signs, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Spring, 2000), pp. 789-816.
A conversation between two submarine soldiers, the 23-year-old petty officer Helmut Hartelt and the 21-year-old sailor Horst Minnieur, courtesy of Regina Mühlhäuser (distributed in class; email AH if you want to read ahead of time)
Further reading
Joanna Bourke, Rape: A History from the 1860s to the Present, Virago, 2007
Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape
Lauren Cantillon's talk “Challenging the Shame Paradigm: Jewish Women’s Narratives of Sexual(ized) Violence During the Holocaust” which is recorded on this website, on the bottom.
Gina Herrmann, “They Didn’t Rape Me”: Traces of Gendered Violence and Sexual Injury in the Testimonies of Spanish Republican Women Survivors of the Franco Dictatorship, in Tapestry of memory: Evidence and testimony in life-story narratives, ed Nanci Adler.
Elisa von Joeden‐Forgey, ' Gender and Genocide', in Donald Bloxham, and A. Dirk Moses (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (2010; online edn, Oxford Academic, 18 Sept. 2012).
Regina Mühlhäuser, Sex and the Nazi Soldier (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2021)
Mühlhäuser, Regina. "Understanding sexual violence during the Holocaust: a reconsideration of research and sources." German History 39.1 (2021): 15-36.