GS40050 Gender War and Violence Mid-term Assignment | UCD

GS40050 Assignment Brief

Instructions

Mid-term assignment/ critical review brief

In 800 words (+/- 10%),

Critical Reading assignment

For your critical reading assignment, you can choose 1 or 2 readings (s) (either from required readings or further readings) from the module (weeks 1 through 7) and write a critically engaged report.

This assignment is a short, 800-word (+/- 10%) contribution, which details observations you have made about your chosen reading.  You should try to ‘think critically’ in setting out your observations and analysis. See the notes on critical thinking at the end of this section.

Any further questions, just email or ask in class

Critical Thinking and Writing

In this assignment, in the end-of-term paper, and in other module activities, you should demonstrate an ability to critically engage with readings and sources and apply theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches to the major ideas under discussion.

To critically read a document or article, you need to analyse and evaluate the information that you encounter in the course of your reading and then make inferences or draw conclusions based upon your analysis and evaluation. These three key skills are core to critical thinking. Ultimately, the aim is to create original academic work of your own (while acknowledging the ideas and work of others, of course).

Analysis

involves close reading or scrutiny of a piece of work to detect and identify its main points, arguments, and conclusions, and the evidence offered in support of them. Analysis involves identifying key themes or areas of contention, and/or making connections between different ideas or approaches towards the topic under consideration.

Evaluation

 involves assessing and probing the various points, arguments and evidence that you have found, to make a judgement about their credibility, relevance, and strength. It may involve considering what an author or authors have omitted, as well as what they have included, and questioning the conclusions that they have reached.

Inference

involves building on your analysis and evaluation of the available information by using it to reach a conclusion of your own. This may involve agreeing or disagreeing with the theories, arguments and conclusions of others, discussing the implications of the information that you have considered, and possibly making suggestions or recommendations for the future.

Developing these skills will make it possible for you to master the key academic skill of reflective judgement or the ability to make a reasoned judgement, based on the available information, while also being cognisant of the nature and limits of knowledge and knowing. As your critical thinking skills develop, you should feel more confident about creating original work of your own, knowing that your ideas rest on solid critical foundations.

📘 1. Gaby Zipfel (2013)

“‘Let Us Have a Little Fun’: The Relationship between Gender, Violence and Sexuality in Armed Conflict Situations.”

🧩 Main focus:

• Explores how gender and sexuality operate within war and violence.
• Argues that sexual violence is not random, but part of a system of power, domination, and social control in armed conflict.
• Looks at how violence, masculinity, and sexuality are intertwined — how war both produces and legitimizesgendered violence.

💡 Core ideas:

• Sexual violence is not only about sex, but about power and identity.
• The military context creates conditions that normalize or even encourage sexual aggression.
• Challenges the idea that wartime sexual violence is just a by-product of chaos — instead, it’s structured and gendered.

🧠 Useful for critical analysis:

You can evaluate:

• How convincingly Zipfel connects gender theory and violence.
• Whether she offers evidence or stays theoretical.
• If she considers women’s agency or focuses only on victimhood.

📙 2. Valerie Wieskamp (2013)

“Sexual Assault and the My Lai Massacre: The Erasure of Sexual Violence from Public Memory of the Vietnam War.”

🧩 Main focus:

• Examines how sexual violence during the Vietnam War (especially at My Lai) has been erased from public memory and media representations.
• Focuses on memory, visual culture, and propaganda — not the acts themselves, but how society chooses to remember or forget them.

💡 Core ideas:

• Sexual assault was a real and significant part of the My Lai Massacre, but public narratives focus on mass killingand heroic or tragic male soldiers, ignoring women’s suffering.
• This erasure of sexual violence reflects gendered silencing and cultural discomfort with acknowledging such crimes.
• Connects media, gender, and war memory.

🧠 Useful for critical analysis:

You can critique:

• How Wieskamp uses sources (photographs, media, archives) to build her argument.
• Whether she sufficiently explains why this erasure happens.
• How gender politics shape public memory.

⚖️ 3. Are they similar?

Yes and no — they connect thematically, but differ in focus:

💬 4. In short:

The two readings are related but not repetitive.
Zipfel = “gender and sexual violence during war.”
Wieskamp = “gender and sexual violence after war — in memory and media.”

They actually complement each other perfectly:
You could write a very strong 800-word critical review that connects them — showing how sexual violence is both enacted (Zipfel) and erased (Wieskamp) as part of gendered systems of war.

✅ Recommendation:
If you want an easy yet insightful critical reading:

• Use both together. They share a theme (gendered violence) but give you two angles — theory and representation.
• ]In your essay, structure it like this:
  a) Introduce both authors and their main arguments.
  b) Analyse Zipfel (violence as gendered system).
  c) Analyse Wieskamp (erasure in memory/media).
  d) Critically compare — do they connect? Do they show different stages of the same problem?
  e) Conclude with your own inference: what does this say about how gender and war interact?

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