Visualizing Sexual Assault

barclay_barrios
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‎09-28-2016 07:02 AM

Yana Mazurkevich, a student from Ithaca College in New York, has created a powerful photo series about sexual assault in the wake of Brock Turner’s release.  It’s Mazurkevich’s second project in relation to Turner; her first was called Dear Brock Turner.  Both are visually powerful, if not in fact disturbing.

 

I’ve been thinking about how to bring these images into the classroom, and I think the first place that I would start is Torie Rose DeGhett’s “The War Photo No One Would Publish,” which is centered on a similarly powerful and disturbing image and its censored circulation.  I want students to be acutely aware of the power of images, their circulation, and the ways in which they are carefully controlled.  I would pair DeGhett with one of the essays that touch on feminism and sexual assault, probably Julia Serano’s “Why Nice Guys Finish Last,” which most directly addresses rape culture.

 

I think this would be a productive and potent pairing.  You might want to consider exploring it for your class.

About the Author
Barclay Barrios is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at Florida Atlantic University, where he teaches freshman composition and graduate courses in composition methodology and theory, rhetorics of the world wide web, and composing digital identities. He was Director of Instructional Technology at Rutgers University and currently serves on the board of Pedagogy. Barrios is a frequent presenter at professional conferences, and the author of Emerging.