Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory

Interacting with Literary Representations of Sexual Assault

Reading and discussing stories that include representations of sexual assault involves a paradox. There is a need to represent, expose, and challenge the ideologies and systems that enable such assault. At the same time, interacting with such representations can be an imposition on those who experience sexual violence, misogyny, and cisheterosexism. Because sexual assault trauma is often felt in the body in recurring reverberations throughout a person’s life, textual representations of it may trigger a trauma response. Rape culture ensures that sexual assault remains obscured by shame and victim-blaming, making it profoundly difficult to resolve sexual assault trauma. Survivors of sexual violence may thus find themselves relegated to a state of survival, sensing that they do not have control over their own body in a society that enables their violation and shrouds it in silence. When literature exposes sexual assault as common, even customary, it provides a space to consider how and why it is so entrenched in society. However, such literary revelations may be experienced by readers as yet another wave of trauma that rape culture keeps unresolved. As literature acknowledges sexual assault that is elsewhere silenced, readers who are otherwise inundated by rape culture may encounter echoes of their own trauma in ways that paradoxically extend their violation. It is crucial to understand the utility of such literature as well as its potential impacts on readers and evolving social norms.

Contributors are welcome to consider encounters with representations of sexual assault in fiction, including the novel, short story, poetry, and drama, as well as nonfiction such as memoir. Especially relevant subject areas include rape culture, trauma theory, feminism, queer theory, and race studies. Papers are encouraged to pursue the topic through further focus on period, form, reader reception, pedagogy, banned books, political and ideological movements, intersectionality, generational cycles, historicization, or theoretical pairings.

The proposed special issue aims to address the paradox of interacting with literary representations of sexual assault by exploring questions such as:

How do students and professors, raced, gendered, and sexed subjects, or members of different generations engage with literary representations of sexual assault?

How does this literature expose the impact of sexual assault on intimate relationships, parenthood, education, creativity, or professional life?

When sexual violation is intersectional, how is the paradox of literary representation intensified?

How do the identities of those represented factor, including the age, gender, sexuality, race, class, or ability of perpetrators and victims?

How does story setting—time period and location—impact contemporary readers’ experience of the material? Do more contemporary and/or local representations cause more distress?

What complications arise for readers of such literature in university spaces that continue to be a site of sexual assault and a conduit of rape culture? What are practical ways of supporting students interacting with this literature?

The Me Too movement made headway toward normalizing sharing stories of sexual violence. How does the Me Too format manifest in literature between story-as-text and reader? And, for students in a classroom setting?

How does form factor? Are some stories written or presented in ways that exacerbate the paradox of literary representations of sexual assault? Are there narrative strategies, literary devices, or formal qualities that cause harm, scaffold support, address structural causes, and/or offer a way to work through the central paradox of concern in this special issue?

What complexities arise as drama represents sexual assault on the stage for an audience?

How may texts shift responsibility for change from victim-survivors to assailants and reinforcers of rape culture?

What approaches to this literature may illuminate historical, political, social, and/or economic contexts, integrate mental health resources, and/or provide theoretical framing?