SoSe 2025

In many, if not all, armed conflicts and wars, sexual violence is present. Rape is sometimes called the cheapest weapon of the war, but we do also observe other forms as sexual slavery, forced marriage or forced pregnancies. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we study the phenomena of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in a historical perspective, drawing on literature from historiography, political sciences and ethnology. We focus mainly on case studies from South and Central Eastern Europe since the beginning of World War II until the most recent war in Ukraine, but opening up comparative perspectives to East Asia or Central Africa. A second focus lies on the Children born out of the sexual encounters in wartimes.