Ruth Lewis (University of Northumbria, UK) et Susan Marine (Merrimack College, MA) coordonnent un numéro spécial de la revue Violence against women sur le thème “Transforming campus cultures: Activism to end gender based violence”.
Les propositions d’article (250 mots) doivent parvenir aux éditrices pour le 7 août 2017.
Argument
With scholarship and activism about gender-based violence (GBV) in universities well-established in the US and Canada over the last few decades, and addressed more recently in Europe and Australia as part of the wider resurgence in feminist activism, it is timely to redirect attention to the attempts to transform, rather than simply adapt, university environments. It is timely, after decades of laudable effort to address GBV in universities, and the significant challenges they represent to gender equality, that we ask the question: do we know enough about how to transform university environments and to liberate them from GBV? How can new ways of thinking and acting on these problems re-center and address the ultimate goal – the elimination of GBV? Despite resistance amongst scholars, activists and practitioners, in the US and Canada efforts to address GBV in universities have fallen victim to bureaucratic and market forces neoliberal commodification, which has prioritised systems of auditing, monitoring and data-collecting. Arguably, these developments restrict the scope for radical transformational change to gender relations and lead to the normalisation of GBV. Noting that there is a proliferation of scholarship in relation to institutional policy, legalistic responses, and bystander frameworks (for example, Fenton et al, 2016; Fisher, Daigle, & Cullen, 2009; Freeman & Klein, 2012; Karjane et al, 2006), we invite papers for this special issue, to be published in 2018, to fill the gap in scholarship about the enduring need for, and attempts to achieve, cultural transformation in universities.
Papers in the special issue will examine activist and other transformational responses to GBV by students, faculty and staff, and the ways they are enacting change locally to challenge the scaffolding of GBV, often described as rape culture (Buchwald, Fletcher & Roth, 2005; Henry & Powell, 2014), lad culture (Phipps and Young, 2015), and laddism (Lewis, Marine, & Kenney, 2016). The prioritising of programmatic, solution-based interventions to tackle GBV in the university context poses unique challenges to meaningful cultural transformation, which this volume will productively explore. The special issue provides an opportunity for critical engagement with institutional policies and practices in terms of how they contribute to or inhibit cultural transformation.
To maintain a focus on the cultural context of GBV in its various forms (rather than just sexual violence, for example), papers could focus on GBV committed and experienced by faculty, staff and/or students as well as addressing domestic violence, stalking, and other gender-based forms of harassment. Scholarship examining GBV reflects consciousness of the saliency of interlocking systems of oppression, thus we invite papers to this special issue which engage productively with reflexivity along these vectors of difference, including race/ethnicity, (dis)ability, socioeconomic class, nationality, and other identity dimensions. Recognizing the significant uptick in awareness and activism regarding gender-based violence against trans*, gender non-conforming, and gender non-binary individuals and communities, a gender-expansive framework will characterize this issue’s papers.
We invite contributions from scholars working across transnational contexts, professional contexts, and across disciplines. In order to enable dialogue between the key players in this topic – scholars, practitioners and activists – we encourage papers addressing any of the following: i) empirical research – contributions from the cross section of disciplines studying GBV in universities, using both qualitative and quantitative methodology; ii) conceptual pieces exploring different philosophical and theoretical perspectives on GBV activism in university contexts; ii) activist/advocate commentaries – contributions from practitioners, community and student activists about the rewards and tensions inherent in collaborations with universities to address GBV.
We invite abstracts of 250 words excluding references for articles to be submitted by 7 August 2017. Authors of selected abstracts will be informed by mid September, with final drafts of each article to be submitted to the editors by mid May 2018. Send your abstract by 7 August 2017 to ruth.lewis@northumbria.ac.uk and marines@merrimack.edu. Please clearly mark that it is for submission to the VAW Special Issue.
References
Buchwald, E., Fletcher, P. R., & Roth, M. (Eds.). (2005). Transforming a rape culture. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions
Fenton, R. A., Mott, H. L., McCartan, K. and Rumney, P. (2016) A review of evidence for bystander intervention to prevent sexual and domestic violence in universities. Technical Report. Public Health England. Retrieved from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/28656
Fisher, B. S., Daigle, L. E., & Cullen, F. T. (2009). Unsafe in the ivory tower: The sexual victimization of college women. Sage Publications.
Freeman, M., and Klein, R.C.A. (2012) University responses to forced marriage and violence against women in the UK: Report on a pilot study. International Family Law. pp 285-299.
Henry & Powell, (2014). Preventing sexual violence: Interdisciplinary approaches to overcoming a rape culture. London, UK: Palgrave MacMillan.
Karjane, H.M., Fisher, B.S., and Cullen, F.T. (2006) Sexual assault on campus: What colleges and universities are doing about it. Office of Justice Programs. US Department of Justice.
Phipps, A., & Young, I. (2015). Neoliberalisation and ‘lad cultures’ in higher education. Sociology, 49, 305–322
Lewis, R., Marine, S., & Kenney K, (2016) “I get together with my friends and I change it”: Young feminist students resist ‘laddism’, ‘rape culture’ and ‘everyday sexism’ Special issue of Journal of Gender Studies ‘Laddism, rape culture and everyday sexism: researching new mediations and contexts of gender and sexual violence’ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1175925
Télécharger l’appel à articles (2 p.): VAWSpecialIssueCfP FINAL30May17
