An interdisciplinary collection of critical, feminist reflections on interpersonal gender violence Despite the growing interest in the subject of gender violence, surprisingly little has been written in recent years about the methodology behind this emerging field of research. This interdisciplinary collection seeks to fill this gap by empowering scholars to conduct gender violence research in ways that deconstruct rather than reinforce existing power structures and hierarchies. The book argues for new approaches to research and activism on gender-based violence grounded in the intersectional realities of individuals and communities. Each chapter discusses the role of reflective methodologies to recognize institutional and intersectional inequalities, challenging the reader to contemplate ethical considerations of an embodied feminist methodology when researching gender-based violence. By centering these issues for applied scholars, practitioners, and academic activists, the book offers insights about where sociocultural notions of criminality and innocence might align across geographies of gender-based violence. The volume encourages further thinking about embodied methodological creativity in and for the future of interpersonal gender-based violence research. A powerful tool for conducting productive scholarship, Researching Gender-Based Violence provides recommendations for interrogating, practicing, and collaborating across fields, disciplines, and lived realities.

Winner, 2021-2022 AES Senior Book Prize, awarded by the American Ethnological Society Honorable Mention, Senior Book Prize of the Association for Feminist Anthropology Uncovers how the process of sexual assault adjudication reinforces inequality and becomes a public spectacle of violence For victims in sexual assault cases, trials rarely result in justice. Instead, the courts drag defendants, victims, and their friends and family through a confusing and protracted public spectacle. Along the way, forensic scientists, sexual assault nurse examiners, and police officers provide their insight and expertise, shaping the story that emerges for the judge and jury. These expert narratives intersect with the stories of victims, witnesses, and their communities to reproduce our cultural understandings of sexual violence, but too often this process results in reinscribing racial, gendered, and class inequalities. Bodies in Evidence draws on observations of over 680 court appearances in Milwaukee County’s felony sexual assault courts, as well as interviews with judges, attorneys, forensic scientists, jurors, sexual assault nurse examiners, and victim advocates. It shows how forensic science helps to propagate public misunderstandings of sexual violence by bestowing an aura of authority to race and gender stereotypes and inequalities. Expert testimony reinforces the idea that sexual assault is physically and emotionally recognizable and always leaves material evidence. The court’s reliance on the presence of forensic evidence infuses these very familiar stereotypes and myths about sexual assault with new scientific authority. Powerful, unflinching, and at times heartbreaking, Bodies in Evidence reveals the human cost of sexual assault adjudication, and the social cost we all bear when investing in forms of justice that reproduce inequality and racial injustice.

An interdisciplinary collection of critical, feminist reflections on interpersonal gender violence Despite the growing interest in the subject of gender violence, surprisingly little has been written in recent years about the methodology behind this emerging field of research. This interdisciplinary collection seeks to fill this gap by empowering scholars to conduct gender violence research in ways that deconstruct rather than reinforce existing power structures and hierarchies. The book argues for new approaches to research and activism on gender-based violence grounded in the intersectional realities of individuals and communities. Each chapter discusses the role of reflective methodologies to recognize institutional and intersectional inequalities, challenging the reader to contemplate ethical considerations of an embodied feminist methodology when researching gender-based violence. By centering these issues for applied scholars, practitioners, and academic activists, the book offers insights about where sociocultural notions of criminality and innocence might align across geographies of gender-based violence. The volume encourages further thinking about embodied methodological creativity in and for the future of interpersonal gender-based violence research. A powerful tool for conducting productive scholarship, Researching Gender-Based Violence provides recommendations for interrogating, practicing, and collaborating across fields, disciplines, and lived realities.

Winner, 2021-2022 AES Senior Book Prize, awarded by the American Ethnological Society Honorable Mention, Senior Book Prize of the Association for Feminist Anthropology Uncovers how the process of sexual assault adjudication reinforces inequality and becomes a public spectacle of violence For victims in sexual assault cases, trials rarely result in justice. Instead, the courts drag defendants, victims, and their friends and family through a confusing and protracted public spectacle. Along the way, forensic scientists, sexual assault nurse examiners, and police officers provide their insight and expertise, shaping the story that emerges for the judge and jury. These expert narratives intersect with the stories of victims, witnesses, and their communities to reproduce our cultural understandings of sexual violence, but too often this process results in reinscribing racial, gendered, and class inequalities. Bodies in Evidence draws on observations of over 680 court appearances in Milwaukee County’s felony sexual assault courts, as well as interviews with judges, attorneys, forensic scientists, jurors, sexual assault nurse examiners, and victim advocates. It shows how forensic science helps to propagate public misunderstandings of sexual violence by bestowing an aura of authority to race and gender stereotypes and inequalities. Expert testimony reinforces the idea that sexual assault is physically and emotionally recognizable and always leaves material evidence. The court’s reliance on the presence of forensic evidence infuses these very familiar stereotypes and myths about sexual assault with new scientific authority. Powerful, unflinching, and at times heartbreaking, Bodies in Evidence reveals the human cost of sexual assault adjudication, and the social cost we all bear when investing in forms of justice that reproduce inequality and racial injustice.