For my research paper, I'm thinking of researching rape culture on college campuses; how well schools help and advocate for victims, how students contribute to the overall rape culture, the victim blaming that occurs, and more topics that come up during my research.
This is a good topic, and approaching it as "rape culture" is useful. Lately, especially under Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss, we are experiencing a growing backlash against "rape culture" and the way that Title IX has been enforced on campus, so one timely approach would be to examine the backlash moment we are in -- perhaps comparing it to the "date rape" backlash of the 90s, which was captured in an interesting documentary film:
ReplyDeletehttps://rutgers.kanopystreaming.com/video/date-rape-backlash-media-denial-rape
Among the books putting "rape culture" and the Obama approach to Title IX enforcement into question are:
Campus Rape Frenzy
Twisting Title IX
Unwanted Advances
There are also a number of documentary films and books that talk about campus rape and the larger forces that encourage rape culture, especially The Hunting Ground, which is available in both book and video form (both worth looking at):
https://www.amazon.com/Hunting-Ground-Assault-American-Campuses/dp/1510705740/
https://www.amazon.com/Hunting-Ground-Kirby-Dick/dp/B014TVGEIW/
The film "It happened here" is also worth watching:
https://www.amazon.com/Happened-Here-Angie-Epifano/dp/B00XJDE3I0/
And the Bro-Code:
https://rutgers.kanopystreaming.com/video/bro-code
Messages that men receive are also discussed in Michael Kimmel's book Guyland.
Some blogs of previous students who have taken on the topic of campus rape might point you to interesting sources:
ReplyDeletehttp://carlybargmannblog.blogspot.com/ -- which had some good sources.
http://savannahdavis201blog.blogspot.com/ -- not the most complete blog, but she developed an interesting topic related to the taboo against speaking in hookup culture, as discussed in the work of Lisa Wade, whose American Hookup would be a must-read.
http://collegestacy.blogspot.com/ -- which focused on the fascinating and well documented case of the "mattress girl."
http://meravkleinmann.blogspot.com/ -- which focused on male victims of sexual assault, which are more common than you might think and, because victims are much less likely to report, much more likely to be the result of serial rapists.
http://entitlementadeadlysinforathletes.blogspot.com/ -- which focused on "athletic entitlement" as a cause of rape on college campuses with a strong sports focus.
A book that has helped my thinking on this topic and which contains at least two very well documented cases is Jon Krakauer's Missoula, in which he looked at all rape cases on a college campus during a two-year period:
https://www.amazon.com/Missoula-Rape-Justice-System-College/dp/0385538731
Finally, I think a very promising approach to this issue would be to look at how "hookup culture" may feed "rape culture," and here the work of Lisa Wade, especially American Hookup, is very useful.