[Commlist] CFP Edited Collection on Sexual Violence in Popular Culture

Call for papers!

Working Title: /Sexual Violence at the Margins: An Intersectional 
Analysis of Rape Narratives/

Edited Collection by Stephanie Patrick and Mythili Rajiva

Publisher: TBD

Since the explosion of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in late 2017, 
gendered and sexual violence have never been more visible, discussed, 
and debated in Western culture. While a survey of recent television and 
film texts might demonstrate a related shift in how some stories of 
sexual violence are told, these texts do not necessarily represent a 
shift in the power structures of media production, the demographics of 
those telling such stories, or even a more nuanced understanding of rape 
and rape culture (Byrne & Toddeo, 2019; Jermyn, 2017; Pinedo, 2019).

As Sarah Projansky so powerfully argued in her classic text /Watching 
Rape /(2001), the media is a site in which ideas about sexual violence 
are not only reflected but, also, socially and culturally constructed. 
The recent growth in feminist scholarship on sexual and gendered 
violence in the media (Boyle, 2019; Clarke, 2014; Horeck, 2018; Joy, 
2019; Magestro, 2015; Oliver, 2016; Phillips, 2016) points to a growing 
understanding of the relationship between rape culture and culture more 
broadly. However, such an understanding seems to have little effect on 
the amount of dead or raped girls showing up on our screens. In fact, 
the trope of the victimized young woman is more popular than ever, 
mobilized in a range of contemporary, “post-television” texts spanning a 
variety of genres, including shows such as /Game of 
Thrones/,/Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt/, /You/, /The Fall/, /Thirteen 
Reasons Why/, /Unbelievable/,/Outlander/, and /The Handmaid’s Tale/. 
Furthermore, while these shows may represent a more diverse view of 
gendered violence in Western popular culture, they are still centered on 
the victimization of white, middle class, able-bodied, heteronormative 
women. Feminist media scholarship has, thus far, reflected this 
preoccupation, demonstrating few extended engagements with 
representations of gendered and sexual violence against women who are at 
the margins of Western society (notable exceptions include Moorti, 2001, 
Abdurraqib, 2017, Millward, Dodd, and Fubara-Manuel, 2017).

The following edited collection seeks to fill this gap by examining 
representations of violence against girls or women that are currently 
missing from the conversation. This collection will work the margins for 
those subjects whose victimization is forgotten or erased in mainstream 
representations of and/or scholarship about sexual and gendered violence.

Topics for chapters can include (but are not limited to):

- Representations of sexual and gendered violence against girls or women 
who are not white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, or heteronormative; for 
example, LGBTQ+ people, racialized women, disabled women, poor or 
working class women, immigrant women, Indigenous women

- Analysis of the ways that white femininity operates in texts to 
sideline racialized women’s experiences. How are such representations 
mobilized post-#MeToo – a phrase that often invokes the victimization of 
white (and famous) women, while erasing the victimization of women of 
colour (and the work of activist Tarana Burke, who coined the phrase in 
2006 ) (Garcia, 2017)?

- Depictions of violence against women outside the traditional noir and 
crime genres (in sketch/comedy, sitcoms, fantasy, historical, reality 
television, teen drama, etc.)

- The politics of sexual violence on Reality TV shows

- Depictions of violence against sex workers

- Production/economic analyses of representations of violence against women

- Representations of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements (particularly in 
fictionalized formats)

- Sexual violence against celebrities that are not white, 
heteronormative, able-bodied women.

- “Post-truth” or “threshold” texts that “radically destabilize 
incommensurable political stances such as feminism/misogyny” (Rajiva and 
Patrick, 2019)

- Audience reactions to consuming such imagery (particularly audiences 
and fandoms beyond white, cis/straight girls and women)

_Instructions for Submission:_

Please submit an abstract (maximum 300 words) along with a title, author 
bio(s), and keywords (up to five) via email to Stephanie Patrick at 
(spatr045 /at/ uottawa.ca) <mailto:(spatr045 /at/ uottawa.ca)>by April 1^st , 2020. 
Authors will be notified of their selection by May 1^st , 2020 and, once 
chapters have been selected, a press will be solicited.

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