'Assaulting the Past':
Placing Violence in Historical Context

An International Conference hosted by the History Department, Oxford Brookes University

St Anne's College, Oxford, 7 - 9 July 2005

Recent scholarship has expanded our knowledge and understanding of the rate at which interpersonal violence (particularly homicide) occurred in early modern Western Europe, showing that its incidence and classification are inextricably linked to the wider social forces operating in any given period or region. This conference seeks to build on such work by approaching the theme from a variety of historical perspectives centred on the notion of 'place'. It will consider the factors evident at other times and in other geographical areas, examine the spaces in which quotidian acts of violence (as opposed to political or military violence) might flourish, and show how these change with time, location, education, modernization, etc., to create an international, comparative and qualitative assessment of violent behaviour and the experience of violence in the post medieval period.

By drawing together the various strands of thought explored by historians (of crime and gender, law and society, science and medicine) and social scientists (criminologists, geographers, psychologists and sociologists), and expanding upon them, it is hoped that a body of findings relevant to the study of violence and its place in modern society will emerge. Papers of an interdisciplinary nature are particularly encouraged.

Proposals for 30-minute papers are invited on themes including:

The history of violence in non-Western European nations 
Historical trends in regional patterns of violence
Contrasts between violence in urban-rural, public-private, centre-periphery settings
Local contexts for violence
Relationships between period- and location-specific forms of violence 
Gender and violence
Non-homicidal violence
Violence against the self, including suicide
Legal, medical and social responses to violence
Changing attitudes to the punishment of violence
Theoretical assumptions about violence

Please send an abstract of 300 words, together with a brief CV, to the conference organiser: Dr Katherine Watson, School of Arts and Humanities, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Oxford, England, OX3 0BP (kwatson@brookes.ac.uk).

The closing date for proposals is 1 June 2004.