Intersections of Identity and Sexual Violence on Campus: Centering Minoritized Students' Experiences

While sexual violence has been present and prevalent on campus for decades, the work of recent college student activists has made it an issue of major societal and institutional concern. This book makes an important contribution to and provides a foundation for better contextualizing and understanding sexual violence. Each chapter in this edited volume focuses on populations that are not often centered in the discourse of campus sexual violence and accounts for individuals' intersecting identities and how they interlock with larger systems of domination. Challenging dominant ideologies concerning assumptions of white women as the only victims-survivors, the racialization of aggressors, and the deleterious rape myths present in both research and practice, this book draws attention to the complexities of sexual violence on the college campus by highlighting populations that are frequently invisible in research, reporting, and practice. The book places sexual violence on campus in a historical context, centering the experiences of populations relegated to the margins, and highlighting the relationship between racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of domination to sexual violence. The final chapters of the book explore how critical models of intervention and prevention and a critical analysis of existing institutional policies may be implemented across college campuses to better address sexual violence for multiple populations and identities in higher education. This book will expand educators’ understanding of sexual violence to inform more effective policies, procedures, practice, and research that reaches beyond preventing sexual violence and addresses the dominant systems from which sexual violence stems, in an attempt to eradicate, not just prevent, the act and the issue.

Jessica C. Harris is Assistant Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research explores interlocking systems of domination that influence the experiences of people of color in higher education. Jessica’s recent research topics center on multiraciality within higher education, women of color and sexual violence at historically white institutions, and critical race theory in education. Her research endeavors are political choices informed by her personal experiences. Prior to becoming a faculty member, Jessica worked with race-oriented student services and housing and residential education at three different college campuses.

Chris Linder currently holds a faculty position in College Student Affairs Administration and the Institute for Women’s Studies at the University of Georgia. She believes in centering the voices of historically minoritized people in higher education. One way in which she puts this value into practice is through research that fosters equitable campus environments, with an explicit focus on race and gender. Her research is informed by her work in a campus-based women’s center, where she supported survivors of sexual violence. Most recently, her research has focused on ways campus activists use their voices to elevate sexual violence as an important national issue. As a power-conscious educator, Chris also works to expose power in dominant narratives. Specifically, she examines the intersection of racism and sexual violence in historical and contemporary contexts.