In a range of scholarly and popular conversations, violence is figured as a critical problem of the political present. As might be true of so many moments, ours is, indeed, a heyday of violence; however, not all ages produce so much talk about their violence. What about the violence of our moment makes it so conducive to reflection? How have particular forms of violence, practices of theory and perceptions of the present been variously configured in times other than our own? How do violence and its attendant modes of justification and censure change (with) the political times? This series of talks invites scholars from across the humanities and social sciences to consider the political, ethical, historical, legal, religious, aesthetic and ethnographic conditions by which violence can arise and become an object of critique. Possible topics include but are in no way limited to war and terror, occupation and resistance, crime and punishment, slavery, domesticity, sexuality and globalization.

All lectures are held in the Common Room on the second floor of the Heyman Center, which is located in the East Campus Residential Center of Columbia University. Lectures are free and lunch is provided.

February 4		"Listen to the Devil" Scott Atran University of Michigan
February 11		“Forensic Architecture: Only the Criminal Can Solve the Crime” Eyal Weizman Goldsmiths College, University of London
February 18		"The Prison, Welfare, and Labor Market Nexus: A Gendered Analysis of the Violence of Incarceration" Kristin Bumiller Amherst College
March 11		"The Invention of Islamic Fundamentalism" David Harrington Watt Temple University
March 25		"Music, Interpellation, and Violence among Korean Survivors of the Japanese Military 'Comfort Women'" Josh Pilzer University of Toronto
April 1		“Rape: Notes Towards Moral Ontology of the Body” Jay Berstein The New School
April 8		"Global Rebellion: The Rise of Religious Violence" Mark Juergensmeyer University of California, Santa Barbara
April 15		"Quotidian Erasures: Gender and the Records of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade" Jennifer Morgan New York University
April 22		"The Violence of Time: Virginia Woolf and the Aesthetics of the Moment" Martin Hägglund Harvard University
April 29		"Meet the Spartans: Softness, Corpulence, and 'Violence'" Christopher Forth University of Kansas