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Full-Text Articles in Social Justice

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim Jun 2023

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …


Deterring Torture: The Preventive Power Of Criminal Law And Its Promise For Inhibiting State Abuses, Francesca Laguardia Jan 2017

Deterring Torture: The Preventive Power Of Criminal Law And Its Promise For Inhibiting State Abuses, Francesca Laguardia

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The use of torture in the War on Terror reinvigorated a longstanding debate about how to prevent such human rights violations, and whether they should be criminalized. Using US history as a case study, this article argues that the criminal sanction is likely to be more successful in preventing such abuses than many other often suggested methods. Analyzing thousands of pages of released government documents as an archive leads to the counterintuitive finding that torturers were often deterred, at least momentarily, by fear of criminal liability, and would have been successfully deterred if not for the lack of prior prosecutions.