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Jessica Auchter’s talk will focus on intersections between masculinity and violence and on the strategic use of sexual violence as a tool during civil war. While women are often victims of such violence, this talk focuses on those instances when men are targeted as a mechanism of emasculation that serves particular political and strategic aims. Specifically, the talk will draw out the strategic logic of sexual violence against men in cases of civil war, such as Syria, where we see its widespread occurrence in the context of government detention centers, and in cases of ethnic violence, such as Myanmar, where the military has adopted its use as a tactic of ethnic cleansing. Though sexual violence often manifests differently for men and women in these cases, both are premised on norms of masculinity and vulnerability that structure social, political, and ethnic identities.

Bio:

Jessica Auchter is Research Chair in Visual Culture in International Studies and Full Professor at Université Laval in Québec. She is the author of Global Corpse Politics: The Obscenity Taboo (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and The Politics of Haunting and Memory in International Relations (Routledge, 2014). Her work appears in Critical Studies on Security, Journal of Global Security Studies, International Affairs, Human Remains and Violence, Review of International Studies, and International Feminist Journal of Politics, among others, and in several edited volumes. She is currently working on a book project on the visual representation of human rights violations, including sexual violence.