American Violence: Histories, Structures, and Legacies

American Violence: Histories, Structures, and Legacies rethinks violence as central rather than exceptional to the history of the United States, from the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the New Industrial Order to the Modern Liberal State.The volume brings together scholars from across history, law, cultural studies, Indigenous studies, Black studies, gender studies, and violence studies. Chapters examine how violence has shaped American state formation, racial hierarchy, legal belonging, public memory, and global power. Subjects range from early American conquest, Indigenous genocide, and Atlantic slavery to lynching, armed citizenship, self-defense, protest policing, border deaths, and wrongful conviction. The volume also includes case studies such as the 1964 "Mississippi Burning" murders and global perspectives on the international consequences of the Second Amendment. Rather than treating different sites and forms of violence as separate histories, the book shows how these harms share institutions, justificatory languages, and enduring afterlives.This important companion will be of interest to students and scholars of History, American Studies, Sociology, Criminology, Gender Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, and Indigenous Studies.

About the Author

Scott Gac is Professor of History and Co-Director of the Primus Project at Trinity College, USA. He is the author of Singing for Freedom (2007) and Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (2024).

Caroline E. Light is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Harvard's Program in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, USA. She is the author of Stand Your Ground: A History of America's Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (2017).