Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Portland State University/The Anthropology of Violence (Winter 2024)

About the course: This course presents an upper division introduction to the anthropology of violence. We discuss three different forms of violence: structural violence (violence imposed by large-scale social structures), symbolic violence (violence inherent in identity politics such as sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, and jingoistic nationalism), and state violence (violence imposed by states on their citizens through a variety of tactics). We end with a discussion of human rights and resistance to violence. Throughout the course, positive alternatives for peace and conflict resolution are presented.

About the Wikipedia assignment: Each student will interact with a Wikipedia article to create a new entry or improve an existing 'stub' entry. Each student will read approximately 15 external sources and spend about as much time revising their chosen article as they would spend writing a term paper for the course. Students may choose one of the articles that the instructor has suggested (see 'articles' in the menu at the top of the page and click on the 'available articles' tab) or find and choose another article to work on. (If you find your own article, please run it by the instructor to make sure that it fits the parameters of the assignment before sinking a lot of work into it.)