Overview

Since the 1990s, sexual violence in conflict zones has received much media attention. In large part as a result of grassroots feminist organizing in the 1970s and 1980s, mass rapes in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and during the Rwandan genocide received widespread coverage, and international organizations-from courts to NGOs to the UN-have engaged in systematic efforts to hold perpetrators accountable and to ameliorate the effects of wartime sexual violence. Yet many millennia of conflict preceded these developments, and we know little about the longer-term history of conflict-based sexual violence. Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones helps to fill in the historical gaps. It provides insight into subjects that are of deep concern to the human rights community, such as the aftermath of conflict-based sexual violence, legal strategies for prosecuting it, the economic functions of sexual violence, and the ways perceived religious or racial difference can create or aggravate settings of sexual danger. Essays in the volume span a broad geographic, chronological, and thematic scope, touching on the ancient world, medieval Europe, the American Revolutionary War, precolonial and colonial Africa, Muslim Central Asia, the two world wars, and the Bangladeshi War of Independence. By considering a wide variety of cases, the contributors analyze the factors making sexual violence in conflict zones more or less likely and the resulting trauma more or less devastating. Topics covered range from the experiences of victims and the motivations of perpetrators, to the relationship between wartime and peacetime sexual violence, to the historical background of the contemporary feminist-inflected human rights moment. In bringing together historical and contemporary perspectives, this wide-ranging collection provides historians and human rights activists with tools for understanding long-term consequences of sexual violence as war-ravaged societies struggle to achieve postconflict stability.

Full Product Details

Author:   Elizabeth D. Heineman
Publisher:   University of Pennsylvania Press
Imprint:   University of Pennsylvania Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.476kg
ISBN:  

9780812222616

ISBN 10:   081222261
Pages:   277
Publication Date:   17 May 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: The History of Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones —Elizabeth D. Heineman I. SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN PEACE AND IN CONFLICT 1. Rape in the American Revolution: Process, Reaction, and Public Re-Creation —Sharon Block 2. Sexual Violence in the Politics and Policies of Conquest: Amerindian Women and the Spanish Conquest of Alta California —Antonia I. Castañeda 3. Femicide as Terrorism: The Case of Uzbekistan's Unveiling Murders —Marianne Kamp II. THE ECONOMY OF CONFLICT-BASED SEXUAL VIOLENCE 4. Girls, Women, and the Significance of Sexual Violence in Ancient Warfare —Kathy L. Gaca 5. The Victimization of Women in Late Precolonial and Early Colonial Warfare in Tanzania —James Giblin III. TELLINGS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE 6. War Crimes or Atrocity Stories? Anglo-American Narratives of Truth and Deception in the Aftermath of World War I —Nicoletta F. Gullace 7. Sexual and Nonsexual Violence Against ""Politicized Women"" in Central Europe After the Great War —Robert Gerwarth 8. The ""Big Rape"": Sex and Sexual Violence, War, and Occupation in Post-World War II Memory and Imagination —Atina Grossmann 9. War as History, Humanity in Violence: Men, Women, and Memories of 1971, East Pakistan/Bangladesh —Yasmin Saikia IV. LAW AND CIVILIZATION 10. The Theory and Practice of Female Immunity in the Medieval West —Anne Curry 11. Law, War, and Women in Seventeenth-Century England —Barbara Donagan 12. ""Unlawfully and Against Her Consent"": Sexual Violence and the Military During the American Civil War —E. Susan Barber and Charles F. Ritter V. TOWARD AN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK 13. Legal Responses to World War II Sexual Violence: The Japanese Experience —Yuma Totani 14. Toward Accountability for Violence Against Women in War: Progress and Challenges —Rhonda Copelon Notes List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments

Reviews

The chapters in Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones provide in-depth analyses of pre-1990s episodes of sexual violence in conflict... The book should be read by all researchers investigating contemporary issues of sexual violence in conflict to gain a deeper understanding of the functions of sexual violence in these conflicts. -Human Rights Quarterly [Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones] makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the relationship between sexual violence and periods of conflict. -Women's Review of Books

Author Information

Elizabeth D. Heineman is Associate Professor of History and of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa.

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