Bringing sexualized violence to the stage.
Seeing Rape Performances
Specifically considering rape and sexual violence as it is represented in law, media, film, theater, literature, performance art, and pop music. Students will be challenged to confront, question, critique, and contest how cultures define rape. We will see how rape is interpreted, understood, used and manipulated in the service of those who have power over those who do not. We will consider law in the U.S. and abroad as well as various societal (i.e. non-legal) responses to rape. Ultimately, students will employ their critical and creative skills to write and stage original plays on this theme at the end of the semester.
Shonna Trinch, Professor, is a sociolinguist in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College. Her research has examined social justice issues at the intersection of language law, and gender violence. Her first book, Latinas’ Narratives of Domestic Abuse: Discrepant Versions of Violence, examines how women and sociolegal professionals collaborate and conflict in the construction of legally and linguistically viable narratives in their pursuit of justice. She has published this work in various top-tiered journals.
Recently, Professor Trinch published an award-winning book with Professor Edward Snajdr called, What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification and Place-Making in Brooklyn (Vanderbilt University Press). This book is based on their extensive research on the changes Brooklyn has undergone over the past 17 years, and it was funded by the National Science Foundation. In their book, they examine how race, class, gender, ethnicity, privilege, and justice get deployed in the language and design of Brooklyn’s commercial storefronts, and the larger contexts of gentrification and placemaking in urban space.