a crime not of lust, but of violence and power

October 19, 2016 8:51 AM

Scholars and activists, poets and playwrights have been writing about rape for centuries. What would the conversation around sexual assault, police bias, and the legal system look like if investigators, police officers, and judges read deeply into the literature on sexuality, racial justice, violence, and power? It is in view of this question that the following syllabus is offered as a scholarly resource—and object of critical discussion and debate—on "rape culture" in the 21st century. Public Books presents a 13-week Rape Culture Syllabus.

Title is an excerpt of a quote from Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will.

[Since many of the syllabus selections are entire books rather than individual articles, linked below is one reading from each week that is freely available online.]

WEEK 1: Histories of Gender-Based Violence in the US
→ Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Farah Tanis, Better off Dead: Black Women Speak to the United Nations CERD Committee (2014)

WEEK 2: Second-Wave Feminism and Sexual Violence
→ Susan Griffin, Rape: The All-American Crime (1971)

WEEK 3: The Politics of Rape and Resistance
→ Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color [PDF] (1991)

WEEK 4: Intimate Partner Violence
→ Janet Halley, The Move to Affirmative Consent (2015)

WEEK 5: Queering Violence
→ Christine Peek, Breaking out of the Prison Hierarchy: Transgender Prisoners, Rape, and the Eighth Amendment (2004)

WEEK 6: Privilege and Power
→ Roxane Gay, Peculiar Benefits (2012)

WEEK 7: Rape as Sport
→ DeAndry Levy, Man Up [previously] (2016)

WEEK 8: Toxic Masculinity: Gender and Violence in the US
→ Michael Kimmel, America's angriest white men: Up close with racism, rage and Southern supremacy [previously] (2013)

WEEK 9: Gender, War, and Violence
→ Jasbir Puar, Abu Ghraib and U.S. Sexual Exceptionalism [PDF] (2011)

WEEK 10: Unequal Justice: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Violence in the Prison Nation
→ Andrea J. Ritchie, Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color [PDF] (2006)

WEEK 11: Rape Culture on Campus
→ Caitlin Flanagan, The Dark Power of Fraternities (2014)

WEEK 12: Representing Violence, part I: Narratives of Rape
→ Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye [PDF] (1970)

WEEK 13: Representing Violence, part II: Visualizing Violence
→ Emma Sulkowicz, Self-Portrait [previously] (performance, 2016)

posted by amnesia and magnets (2 comments total)

<3<3<3
posted by Dressed to Kill at 9:14 AM on October 19, 2016

What would the conversation around sexual assault, police bias, and the legal system look like if investigators, police officers, and judges read deeply into the literature on sexuality, racial justice, violence, and power?

I don't know but I'd love to find out.

Thanks for these links amnesia and magnets!
posted by emjaybee at 11:43 AM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]