This course will engage in social, anthropological and historical works to look at ways in which visual and textual medias both produce a culture of war and are produced by war. Starting with the notion of war as a “primitive ritual,” this class will trace the idea of ritual in warfare and in cultures produced by war from “primitive warfare” through the cold war and post-cold wars to look at shifts in notions of ritual and “the primitive” from “dirty” to “clean” wars, while observing shifts in technology that produced a new discourse of war. And of course the aftermath of war in terms of migration and dispacement. This course will look at wars thematically rather than chronologically in order to better understand the ways in which most wars from primitive to post-modern constructed, projected and consumed the image of an enemy; used human sacrifice and martyrdom to protect a bound community; “treated” returning soldiers; mourned and memorialized post-war and, finally, how the remains of war come to produce peace time culture.