This course examines anthropological approaches to the study of violence. Violence has long been a central focus for anthropological research. One of the overarching ambitions in much of this research has been to make violence meaningful in some respect. Violence can be given meaning in any number of ways. For example, it can be analyzed as being part of a system of exchange, a system of sacrifice, a system of debt, a system of law-making, or a system of signs. More recently, however, studies of violence have started to emphasize the importance of failures in meaning. In this regard, it could be argued that violence describes the limits of the human capacity to give meaning to events. This course provides an overview of anthropological and related theories of violence. Some of the central theorists considered in the course are Benjamin, Arendt, Derrida, Foucault, and Agamben. The course then situates these theories within the context of ethnographic cases. The varieties of violence considered in these ethnographies range from forms of violence normally associated with small-scale societies (circumcision, tribal warfare, headhunting, witchcraft killings, etc.) to the forms of violence perpetrated by modern states and their citizens (modern warfare, torture, incarceration, rape, police violence, vigilantism, etc.)