Violence and Contagion

The Violence Revolution? Young People, Public Health and Violence Reduction (Professor Alistair Fraser, Criminology, University of Glasgow)

The city of Glasgow, once dubbed the ‘murder capital of Europe’, has more recently become famed for its reductions in violence. Based on a three-year study of violence and violence reduction in the UK, funded by the ESRC, this talk will explore the causes and consequences of Scotland’s journey in violence reduction. Exploring questions of national identity, cultural change, and affective narrative, I explore the conditions under which progressive policies can come to the fore and interrogate the role of storytellers in communicating these stories with persuasion and influence. In conclusion I will reflect on the extent to which such policy narratives can travel to other jurisdictions.

Alistair Fraser is Professor of Criminology at the University of Glasgow, where he teaches and researches issues of youth violence, street culture and urban crime. He is the author of Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City and Gangs and Crime: Critical Alternatives and is a former BBC “New Generation Thinker”.

Violence and Affective Contagion in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Dr Sophie Franklin, English Literature, University College Dublin/ University of Reading)

Throughout the nineteenth century, British writers of fiction and nonfiction frequently foregrounded the ideal of an autonomous (white) wilful individual while also recognising the power of affective influence on the seemingly self-contained subject. Violence (both physical and emotional) emerged as a central point of contention within these debates, particularly through the simultaneously overlapping and competing discourses of heredity and contagion. This talk spotlights the latter through considering several long nineteenth-century literary case studies, particularly Joanna Baillie’s concept of ‘sympathetick curiosity’ in her Plays on the Passions (1798) and Anne Brontë’s formulation of contagious antipathy in Agnes Grey (1847), both of which express the possibilities and implications of affective contagion in the face of violent emotions and behaviours. In the process, this talk reflects on the predominance of the “violence as contagious” narrative throughout the nineteenth century, as a metaphorical and literal framework that captured both fears of permeability and the promise of an apparent solution to violent criminality.

Dr Sophie Franklin is a DOROTHY MSCA COFUND postdoctoral researcher at University College Dublin and the University of Reading. Her current project seeks to historicise the “violence as contagious” narrative from the nineteenth century to the present day. Her work has appeared in Neo-Victorian Studies, Brontё Studies, and the Journal of Victorian Culture, and she is the co-editor of Consent: Legacies, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future (Routledge, 2023).

This event is hosted by Durham University's Institute for Medical Humanities and the Affective Experience Lab of the Discovery Research Platform, led by Corinne Saunders and Fraser Riddell.

This event is free to attend.