Feminist scholarship has been foundational to studies of sexual violence and sexual crime. In particular, it has suggested that violence is enacted on sexed bodies through multiple forms: some private, hidden and undisclosed, others occurring in public or sanctioned by the state.

Recent work on sex and sexuality has much to offer the study of violence. Yet all too often, broad violence studies have not engaged with the latest scholarship on sexuality. This collection aims to refocus attention on the formative relationship between sex and violence. We ask contributors to consider how examining sexuality, in historical or contemporary perspective, changes and challenges current theories of violence. To what extent, for instance, do they take into account the many forms of gendered, sexual, and homophobic violence? Or the ways these have changed over time?

We call for papers which examine the complex and multifaceted relationship between sex and violence, one that often crosses the borders drawn by race, class, gender and sexuality. Contributors could examine the ways legal and scientific ideas about normality and perversity affirmed or renounced violent acts. Other submissions might consider the ways violence is enmeshed within, or challenged by, the social order and how violent acts changed variously across time, space and place.

Suggested topics: * feminist theories of violence * sexual violence * violence against women * child sexual assault * sexualisation of violence * queer perspectives on sex and violence * homophobia and/or transphobia * Indigenous perspectives on sex and violence * race and/or colonialism * sex and war * gender and the military * medicine and the body * law and sexuality * science and sexuality

Please send a 250 word abstract and short biographical note to Lisa Featherstone and Amanda Kaladelfos by 17th November 2012. Expected publication date is mid-2014.

Lisa Featherstone is a Lecturer in Australian History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has published widely on the history of sexuality, medical history and Australian gender history, and is the author of Let’s Talk About Sex: Histories of Sexuality in Australia from Federation to the Pill (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011). Amanda Kaladelfos is a historian and Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security (CEPS) at Griffith University. Amanda has published on the history of violence, sexuality, and criminal justice in Australia. Amanda’s latest articles appear in Women’s History Review and History Australia.