Nonviolence and Transdisciplinarity: The risks and rewards of unthinking mastery

First seminar in the Peace and Planet's methodology seminar series. 

Are there particular disciplinary limits to the study of pacifism and nonviolence? Must academic disciplines and fields necessarily establish themselves by means of epistemic violence (e.g. policing boundaries, excluding categories of knowledge or ‘knowers’)?

Whilst each seminar is discrete, as a suite of three they share a thematic focus on the methodological impact of nonviolence, decolonial/transcultural feminisms and ecological/planetary thinking on scholarly and creative praxis in the humanities.

Suggested preparatory reading

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, ‘Pacifism and Nonviolence: Discerning the Contours of an Emerging Multidisciplinary Research Agenda’, Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, 2023, pp.1-27 [or just pp.1-14].

Carol Cohn, ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, Signs 12:4, Summer, 1987, pp. 687-718. [or just pp.687-702]. (and online via JStor)

Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2015 [ch.1, pp.1-41, or just 1-21]. (chapters of whole book available online via DeGruyter-Brill)

Marsha Meskimmon, ‘Sexual violence, structural silence and transversal solidarity’ in Transnational Feminisms, Transversal Politics and Art: Entanglements and Intersections, New York and London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 100-122 [or just pp.100-06, 111-17] chapters of whole book available online via Taylor and Francis)

Cheyney Ryan, ‘Why Pacifism Now?’, Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, 2023, pp. 65–75.

Julietta Singh, Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2018 [Introduction, pp. 1-28, or just pp.1-10]. (whole book available online via Open Access/Project Muse)

Suggested further reading

Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind, London and NY: Verso, 2020 [Postscript, pp.185-204]. (chapters of whole book available online via ProQuest Ebook Central)

Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks, ‘Revenge of the Patriarchs: Why Autocrats Fear Women’, Foreign Affairs 101.2, March/April 2022, pp.103-116. (and online via ProQuest)

Donna J. Haraway, ‘A Game of Cat's Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies’, Configurations 2.1, 1994, pp. 59-71. (and online via DeGruyter-Brill)

Richard Jackson, ‘A defence of revolutionary nonviolence’, in Revolutionary Nonviolence: Concepts, Cases and Controversies, edited by Richard Jackson, Joseph Llewellyn, Griffin Manawaroa Leonard, Aidan Gnoth, Tonga Karena, London, NY, Dublin: Zed Books, 2020, pp.18-41. (chapters of whole book available online via Bloomsbury Collections) Waging Nonviolence. 

Sign up

Attendance limited. To sign up, email: peaceandplanet@hum.ku.dk.

Sign up deadline 5 September.