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Unit of Study LAW72011 - Why the State Needs to Kill: law, violence and the production of political authority (2018)

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Unit Snapshot

  • Pre-requisites

    72 credit points in any university course

  • Co-requisites

    N/A

  • Anti-requisites

    N/A

  • Enrolment information

    Students must attend 4 days of intensive teaching. This unit may be offered in a Session (13 weeks) or Study Period (7 weeks), please note if offered in a Study Period it will have a heavier estimated student workload per week. Please refer to the SCU Unit webpages for further information prior to enrolling.

Unit description

Introduces students to the origins and pathways of state violence and the response to that violence. Provides students with an opportunity to analyse and critique the way that the state’s reliance on its subjects recognising and responding to its violence renders the state vulnerable to other readings and other responses. Encourages students to think critically about how the question of race is frequently bound up with state violence.

Unit content

1. Course introduction

2. Political Theories of State Violence

3. Race and State Violence

4. Literary and theoretical engagements with State Violence

  1. Ancient Greek renditions

  2. Early modern renditions

  3. Contemporary stories of state violence

5. Resisting State Violence

Availabilities

Location Domestic International
Lismore - BB Study Period 1 N/A

Learning outcomes and graduate attributes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

GA1: Intellectual rigour, GA2: Creativity, GA3: Ethical practice, GA4: Knowledge of a discipline, GA5: Lifelong learning, GA6: Communication and social skills, GA7: Cultural competence
Learning outcome count Learning outcome description GA1 GA2 GA3 GA4 GA5 GA6 GA7
1 Analyse the explanatory models for state violence, its origins and its modes of expression
2 Analyse and engage with literary and theoretical accounts of state violence in different contexts.
3 Apply theories of race and the way it intersects with questions of state violence and authority
4 Critically analyse and distinguish between various modes of resistance to state violence

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

  1. Analyse the explanatory models for state violence, its origins and its modes of expression
    • GA1:
    • GA2:
  2. Analyse and engage with literary and theoretical accounts of state violence in different contexts.
    • GA1:
  3. Apply theories of race and the way it intersects with questions of state violence and authority
    • GA1:
    • GA2:
  4. Critically analyse and distinguish between various modes of resistance to state violence
    • GA1:
    • GA4:

Prescribed learning resources

Prescribed Texts
  • No prescribed texts.

Prescribed Learning Resources may change in future Teaching Periods.