In the United States, the early years of the war on terror were marked by the primacy of affects like fear and insecurity. These aligned neatly with the state’s drive toward intensive securitization and an aggressive foreign policy. But for the broader citizenry, such affects were tolerable at best and unbearable at worst; they were not sustainable. Figuring Violence catalogs the affects that define the latter stages of this war and the imaginative work that underpins them. These affects—apprehension, affection, admiration, gratitude, pity, and righteous anger—are far more subtle and durable than their predecessors, rendering them deeply compatible with the ambitions of a state embroiling itself in a perpetual and unwinnable war. Surveying the cultural landscape of this sprawling conflict, Figuring Violence reveals the varied mechanisms by which these affects have been militarized. Rebecca Adelman tracks their convergences around six types of beings: civilian children, military children, military spouses, veterans with PTSD and TBI, Guantánamo detainees, and military dogs. All of these groups have become preferred objects of sentiment in wartime public culture, but they also have in common their status as political subjects who are partially or fully unknowable. They become visible to outsiders through a range of mediated and imaginative practices that are ostensibly motivated by concern or compassion. However, these practices actually function to reduce these beings to abstracted figures, silencing their political subjectivities and obscuring their suffering. As a result, they are erased and rendered hypervisible at once. Figuring Violence demonstrates that this dynamic ultimately propagates the very militarism that begets their victimization.

"Tanner deals with the central question of all narrative texts: how the reader is manipulated into empathy or distance by the text.... This study... is the sort that needs to be redone in every classroom and by every mature reader.... Tanner offers provocative and useful discussions of rape and torture... " -- Choice "This thoughtful and disturbing book raises serious questions about 'the consequences... of reading representations of rape and torture.' " -- American Literature "In this incisive exploration of twentieth-century novels, art, and ads, Laura Tanner explains the mechanisms by which reader and viewer are implicated in violence. Equally effective as a challenge to textual assault is the grace and gentleness of Tanner's own prose. Intimate Violence signals the emergence of an astute and humane critical voice." -- Wendy Steiner Through an examination of such notorious works as The White Hotel and American Psycho, Laura Tanner leads us in a disturbing exploration of the reader's complicity with fictional depictions of intimate violence.

An 8-point statement of objectives & strategies designed to strengthen State & local initiatives to reduce juvenile violence & to increase the capacity of the juvenile justice system to respond to, & prevent, delinquency. Presents innovative & effective strategies designed to reduce violence & victimization, describes how communities can generate solutions & how individuals & groups can prevent or reduce violence in their neighborhoods. Provides important information about Federal training, technical assistance, grants, research, evaluation, & other resources that support these efforts. Extensive bibliography.

This comprehensive, evidence-based examination looks at violence and security across the entire spectrum of education, from preschool through college. In Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool through College two expert authors take an evidence-based look at this important issue, dispelling myths and misconceptions about the problem and offering appropriate responses to it. Their book examines patterns, trends, correlations, and causes of violence, crime, and disorder in diverse educational settings, from elementary schools through colleges and universities. It reviews data and research evidence related to forms of violence, from bullying to murder, and it explores the varied security concerns that confront schools of different levels. In addition to describing the nature and extent of the school violence problem, which is often divergent from media reports, the authors point to other security issues that need to be considered and addressed by administrators and security personnel. Finally, they assess a variety of policy responses and security solutions—some popular yet ineffective, some challenging yet promising—offering advice that will enhance the security of any institution of learning.

By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.