Oddities of Violence Workshop

Where are the limits to our existing accounts of political violence?

Bringing together a local and international, transdisciplinary group of experts studying terrorism, genocide, and philosophies of violence, our Oddities of Violence workshop hopes to answer this question through what we are calling “oddities of violence”—overlooked or under-appreciated examples of terrorism, genocide, and the philosophy of violence.

Working at the limits of our understanding of political violence, this workshop opens up new and fruitful research agendas for the study of terrorism, genocide, and the philosophy of violence by putting into dialogue literatures and knowledge that too often exist in parallel.

The Oddities of Violence workshop takes place over a day-and-a-half (June 8–9, 2023) and is organized into three broad conversations that we call “Genesis”, “Archetype”, and “Novelty”.

Our workshop contributors examine cases of terrorism and genocide as well as philosophies of violence ranging from (Genesis) the Peloponnesian War, the anxieties of the Roman Empire, and panic over organized arson in early-modern European, to (Archetype) Jewish anti-Fascist violence, starvation and revolution in Khmer Rouge Cambodia, and the role of “magical thinking” in modern violence, ending with (Novelty) new legal interpretations of Indigenous genocide in North America, on-line violent extremism, and the meaning and uses of the idea of the New to make sense of contemporary protest and violence.

Joining our contributors will be commentators from the Departments of Classics and Religion, Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology from the University of Calgary.

The event is organized and convened by Gavin Cameron, Joshua Goldstein, and Maureen Hiebert of the Department of Political Science.

The Oddities of Violence workshop is generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connect Grant program, as well as by the University of Calgary’s Vice-President Research, Faculty of Arts, and Centre for Military, Security, and Strategic Studies.

For more information about the event and contributors, please see: https://odditiesofviolence.wixsite.com/oddities-of-violence.

Th event is free, and is held both in-person as well as live-streamed. To receive the Zoom link, please register on the website above.