Gendered Violence: Learning from the Past to Change the Future

This Lightning Session will examine the history of gendered violence within a variety of contexts: 1. Sexual violence and exploitation of women under the concept of “concubinage” in British Atlantic slavery (the Caribbean and southeastern North America). 2. Women’s perceptions and negotiation of ideas regarding sexual consent versus sexual violence in colonial Mexico. 3. The lynching—and commemoration—of innocent Black men victimized by distorted views of Black and White sexuality in the late nineteenth-century U.S. Midwest. 4. Sexual violence in Progressive-era North Dakota and the scholar’s ethical responsibilities in telling survivor stories. 5. Violence that queer Indigenous and White women encountered at Minnesota’s Shakopee State Reformatory for Women from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Linda Gordon, a prominent historian of domestic violence, will moderate and comment.