German Historical Institute (GHI) in Rome; Raphael Rössel (GHI Washington); Daniel Gerster (Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg); Claudia Kemper (LWL-Institut für westfälische Regionalgeschichte, Münster); and Petra Terhoeven, GHI Rome (Web)
Time: 21.-22.05.2026
Venue: Rome
Proposals by: 30.09.2025
This conference brings together scholars who study the history of the relationship between gender and violence. We invite researchers from different methodological and disciplinary backgrounds to convene and develop a common research agenda focusing on the social and political impact of gendered representations of violence.
We encounter violence not just in ongoing international conflicts. Violence – which we define as targeted, external influence that causes an individual bodily harm – remains a crucial everyday reality that structures the social fabric on the global, national, and local levels. Gender hierarchies, in particular, continue to be shaped not just by concrete attacks but also by the ways in which these attacks are represented and debated. Discourses about violence remain saturated with gendered images of aggression, strength, weakness, and victimhood. But (how) have representations of violence as a gendered phenomenon themselves had social or political impacts on gender hierarchies? In what way have debates on violence and gender interacted with other categories, above all, race, religion, and class? The proposed conference addresses the longue durée of public negotiations of gender and violence and their attendant power dynamics, raising not least the question of what role those affected by violence themselves have played in these negotiation processes.
The conference seeks a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which gender hierarchies are intertwined with the often ambivalent public perception of certain behavior as violent or non-violent. We invite contributions that trace the interrelation between gender and violence in relation to the (re)production of or challenges to power structures within European and North American history as well as in global perspectives. Since the nineteenth century, at least in Europe and North America, popular media, the social sciences, and parliamentary politics have become central sites for seemingly endless public debates about the gendered aspects of violence. War-time propaganda – for instance Continue reading
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