Course syllabus

SOCIOLOGY 326: SOCIOLOGY OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH

COURSE OUTLINE 2020

This course syllabus has been updated to reflect changes required for online delivery. 

 

Lecturer

Anisha Sankar

Office hours: by appointment, please email me to arrange a time.

Email: asan738@aucklanduni.ac.nz

 

Lectures

Lectures will be uploaded on Monday evenings to Canvas. 

 

Tutors

Janaki Somaiya: jsom467@aucklanduni.ac.nz

Nate Rew: nrew454@aucklanduni.ac.nz

 

Tuākana

Amiria Taumata: atau584@aucklanduni.ac.nz

 

Prerequisites

30 points at Stage II in Sociology, or 15 points at Stage II in Sociology and CRIM 201 or 202

 

Purpose

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a comprehensive overview of traditional and contemporary theoretical perspectives on violence and death. Students will be encouraged to reflect critically on what constitutes violence and death, but also on the factors that mediate our frame of recognition for these concepts. The course will emphasise a structural analysis of violence and death that grounds students’ understanding of the concepts within the historical and material factors that enable them. Particular emphasis will be given to factors of race, class and gender. Part one covers critical theories of violence and death, with a special focus on colonial violence, imperialism, and war. Part two offers contextualisations of violence and death, giving students insight into how different theorists approach particular incidents, events, or moments of violence and death in their area of inquiry, and how they draw meaning from it. Each lecture will use a particular theorist or theorical approach as a point of entry into a wider critical dialogue relevent to the themes of violence and death in society today.

 

Content warning

Given the sensitive nature of this course, each week will cover themes that will potentially be triggering for some students. Broadly speaking, content will cover colonial violence, war, genocide, murder, police brutality, racial violence, and gendered violence. Each lecture and tutorial will start with a content warning, where students will be given an opportunity to leave if they feel like they want to sit that particular lecture out. You are welcome to skip a specific lecture/tutorial if you anticipate this may the case for you. You are also welcome to talk to the lecturer or tutors about any concerns or general inquiries you anticipate about the material, and we will be happy to support you in whatever ways we can. Please be considerate to your classmates, and aware that some people may be more emotionally affected by course material than others.

 

 

Lecture Schedule

Part One: Critical theories of violence and death

Session 1 (2 March)                 Introduction: concerning violence

Session 2 (9 March)                 Concerning violence pt. 2

Session 3 (16 March)               Racialisation and ontological violence

Week 23rd March - teach free week                   

Session 4 (30 March)               Between colonisation and civilisation

Session 5 (6 April)                      Frames of war

Mid-term break (Monday 13 April – Friday 24th April)

Session 6 (27 April)                   Terrorist assemblages: imperialism and homonationalism

Session 7 (4 May)                       The 'right' to maim 

Session 8 (11 May)                     Witches, witch-hunts, and class struggle

Session 9 (18 May)                     Carceral capitalism and police brutality

Session 10 (25 May)                  Guest lectures

Session 11 (1 June)                    After death: critical theories of haunting + review and exam prep

Session 12 (8 June)                    Exam prep 

 

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the couse, you should:

• Be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of various sociological approaches to the themes of violence and death
• Engage in close readings of different texts on the themes of violence and death
• Articulate the relevence of course content to the themes of violence and death today

 

To be able to achieve the learning outcomes, you will need to:

• Read all assigned readings before the week’s lecture
• Attend the weekly lecture and tutorial
• Participate in the discusssions of readings during lectures/tutorials
• Actively seek to understand all of the readings. This involves reading beyond the text and bringing any questions of clarification, points of inquiry, and other ideas, to class
• Plan, prepare and submit your two assessments on time
• Plan and prepare adequately for the exam

 

Commitment

This is a 15 point paper, requiring a commitment of 10 hours a week. This should be made up of lecture attendance (2 hours), tutorial attendance (1 hour), essay preparation (3 hours), and reading (4 hours).

 

Tutorials

Tutorials are important to the course as they will give you space to cement your understanding of course content. The material we will cover will be hard to break down alone, so please make the effort to come to each tutorial and be prepared to engage in class discussions so that everyone can learn collectively. 

 

Readings

The set readings are a crucial component of this course, as both lectures and tutorials will centre the reading material – it will be impossible to pass without familiarising yourself with all of them. Supplementary readings are optional but students are strongly encouraged to read them to gain a better understanding of the literature and topic. Please complete all readings before class, and be aware that the depth of some readings may require them to be read several times. All readings will be accessible via TALIS.

 

Week One: Concerning violence pt. 1

Olsson, Göran Hugo, Lauryn Hill, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Annika Rogell, Tobias Janson, Frantz Fanon, and Kino Lorber, Inc., Production Company. Concerning Violence: Nine Scenes from the Anti-imperialistic Self-defense. New York: Kino Lorber, 2014.

 

There will be a special screening of this documentary in addition to the lecture in week one on Thursday 5th March, 5pm – 7pm, in the lecture theatre 102-G36 in Old Government House – attendance for this screening is optional, and you are welcome to watch it in your own time if you prefer. You can watch it via Kanopy (https://auckland.kanopy.com/video/concerning-violence); log in with your University of Auckland username and password.

 

Supplementary:

Gordon, Lewis. “I Am from Martinique” in What Fanon Said: A philosophical Introduction to his Life and Thought. New York: Fordham Press, 2015, pp. 8-18.

 

Week Two: Concerning violence pt. 2

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Preface to The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. London: Penguin Books, 2001 [1963], pp. 7-26.

 

Frantz Fanon. ‘Concerning Violence’ in The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books 2001 [1963], pp. 27-75.

 

Week Three: Racialisation and ontological violence

Fanon, Frantz. ‘The Fact of Blackness’ in Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press, 2008 [1952], pp. 82-108.

 

Gillespie, John. ‘On the Prospect of Weaponized Death,’ in Propter Nos, no. 2 (2017): 5-11.

 

Supplementary:

Gillespie, John. ‘Die lit, or the art of being ontological terror’ in Mumbletheory (2019): https://mumbletheory.com/2019/07/07/die-lit-or-the-art-of-being-ontological-terror/

 

Week Four: Between colonisation and civilisation

Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000 [1972], pp. 29-78.

 

Supplementary:

Kelley, Robin D. G. ‘Introduction: a Poetics of Anticolonialism’ to Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire, trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000, pp. 7-28.

 

Week Five: Frames of war

Butler, Judith. Introduction to Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso, 2009, pp. 1-31.

 

Week Six: Terrorist assemblages: on imperialism and homonationalism

Puar, Jasbir K. Introduction to Terrorist Assemblages. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 1-36.

 

Mid-term break

 

Week Seven: The ‘right to maim’

Puar, Jasbir K. ‘The ‘Right’ to Maim: Disablement and Inhumanist Biopolitics in Palestine’. In Borderlands, vol. 14, no. 1 (2015): pp. 1-27.

Public holiday

 

Week Eight: Witches, witch-hunts and class struggle

Federici, Silvia. ‘Globalization, Capital Accumulation, and Violence against Women’ in Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2018, pp. 47-59.

 

Federici, Silvia. ‘Witches and Class Struggle’ in Jacobin (2018):

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/witch-hunt-class-struggle-women-autonomy

 

Supplementary:

Federici, Silvia. ‘How the demonization of ‘gossip’ is used to break women’s solidarity’ in In These Times (2019): http://inthesetimes.com/article/21707/the-subversive-feminist-power-of-gossip

 

Week Nine: Carceral capitalism and police brutality

Wang, Jackie. ‘Against Innocence: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Safety’ in Lies: a Journal of Materialist Feminism, vol. 1 (2012): pp. 145-172.

 

Wilderson, Frank III. ‘We’re Trying to Destroy the World: Anti-Blackness and Police Violence After Ferguson’. Interview with Frank B. Wilderson III by Ill Will Editions (2014).

 

Week Ten: Guest lectures

Readings to be confirmed

 

Week Eleven: After death: critical theories of haunting + exam review

Tuck, Eve and C. Ree. ‘A Glossary of Haunting’ in A Handbook of Autoethnography, edited by Stacy Holman Jones and Carolyn Ellis. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2015, pp. 639-658.

 

Supplementary:

Tuck, Eve and Angie Morril. ‘Before Dispossession, or Surviving It’ in Liminalities, vol. 12, no. 1 (2016), pp. 1-20.

 

Ruha, Benjamin. ‘Black Afterlives Matter’, in Boston Review (2018): http://bostonreview.net/race/ruha-benjamin-black-afterlives-matter

 

Week Twelve: Review and exam prep

No set readings for this week, please allocate reading hours to exam preparation.

Public holiday

 

Assessments

The grades for this course will be based on:

1. A 2,000 word essay (20%)
2. A 3,000 word essay (40%)
3. A two-hour 'take home' exam (40%)

 

Assessment one

Students are required to write a 1,700 (min) – 2,000 (max) word essay on any one of the set texts from the first four weeks. The essay should explore the author’s specific approach to the themes of violence and/or death, engaging closely with the chosen text and drawing on specific arguments and examples put forth by the author. Students will not be required to draw on external sources.

 

Essays are due Wednesday 8 April (week 5) by 4.00pm and are worth 20% of your final grade.

 

Assessment two

Students are required to write a 2,000 (min) – 2,500 (max) word essay on any one of the set texts from weeks six to ten. The essay should explore the author’s specific approach to the themes of violence and/or death, engaging closely with the chosen text and drawing on specific arguments and examples put forth by the author. The essay should also utilise five external sources to supplement your engagement with the chosen text. Please reference these sources appropriately.

 

Essays are due Thursday 28th May (week 10) by 4.00pm and are worth 40% of your final grade.

 

Handing in

Essays should be submitted online to Canvas and to turnitin for plagiarism screening. If you do not submit your essay to turnitin, it cannot be marked so will receive a 0% grade. 

 

Late work

Extensions for assessments will be granted if circumstances beyond your control prevents you from completing your work. Supporting information, like a medical certificate, may be requested. You can apply for an extension by contacting me via email. Without an extension, late essays will be penalised by 2% per day. No coursework will be accepted more than one week after the due date without an extension. Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Given the exceptional circumstances of the current covid-19 situation, if you find yourself in a position where you will require an extension, please don't hesitate to get in touch. 

 

Plagiarism

You must reference all source material properly, so that it doesn’t appear that you are trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own. If you have questions about what constitutes plagiarism, please ask! Essays will need to be submitted for screening via Turnitin, which is extremely good at picking up plagiarism. Plagiarism is taken very seriously as a form of cheating and any cases of plagiarism will be treated with the utmost severity.