Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of

72 Book Review >>> Carrie Coisman Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights

Heineman, Elizabeth D., Ed. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2011. 352 pp.

Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights is a group of academically produced and historically minded and crafted essays edited by historian Elizabeth D. Heineman. The collection focuses largely on conflicts before 1990 and across a variety of geographies in an attempt to demonstrate the lack of theorizing and historiography of sexual violence in conflict zones before the Yugoslavian Civil War and the Rwandan Genocide. These essays work to push back on dominating generalizations of sexual violence. Common generalizations include a neo-colonial working definition of primordial sexual violence and an epidemic lack of post-colonial responsibility in the case of the Rwandan genocide, and a neoliberal constructed fear of communism and islamophobia in the case of Yugoslavian Civil War. Further, the collection is concerned with theorizing about the role of sexual violence during periods of acute and extended conflict, extending the definition of sexual violence to include public and state sanctioned sexual violence, and understanding the relationship between peace, conflict, state sanctioned violence, and sexual violence. Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones provides a new and concise historical basis for current research to understand itself in light of this fresh evidence.

The essays aim to expand and diversify the pre-existing literature on which scholars base theoretical and historical work regarding themes surrounding state and sexual violence and conflict zone cultures and cultural shifts between peace and conflict. The authors, most notably E. Susan Barber and Charles R. Ritter, explore how sexual violence can be understood through paradigms of human rights universalism and historical particularism, but they also push back on those paradigms. The collection at large attempts to understand how technological and surveillance information, media, and transnational humanitarian law have changed the way the core of the Global North digest violence in conflict zones when the violence is othered, when the violence is historically relevant to dominant culture, and when and how violence is portrayed in the modern media. “Unlawfully and Against Her Consent: Sexual Violence and the Military During the American Civil War” is an essay by E. Susan Barber and Charles F. Ritter, two esteemed American Civil War historians. Their essay begins to postulate why the American Civil War has been “considered an anomaly to [the] pattern of sexual violence in conflict zones” (202). Barber and Ritter examine a group of court martial records that demonstrate that nearly four-hundred soldiers were prosecuted and convicted through an U.S. army court martial that was designed to address crimes of all varieties by both Confederate and Union soldiers. The records give adequate evidence to make a strong historical claim that sexual violence was prevalent and systematic throughout the American Civil War. This case is particularly

interesting, because, as Ritter and Barber note, these “court-martial trials during the American Civil War represent a time in which, however, brief, a military court system attempted to provide female victims with sexual justice” (214). This particular essay provides many opportunities for further academic inquiry, such as the application of a feminist intersectional framework. Theorizing about the demographics of the survivors of the assault through the lens of intersectionality can give scholars a greater understanding of how sexual assault incidents impacted the outcome of trials and the severity of punishment for the accused party. Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones provides a new framework for understanding systematic and state sanctioned sexual violence by examining the histories of conflict in new geographical and theoretical ways. This collection is useful for feminist scholarship in a variety of disciplines--particularly history--because it aims to discuss sexual violence in conflicts that have been relatively unexamined and that are often used as a means of historical othering and for the purpose nationalistic forgiveness.