Rupal Oza follows the social life of rape in rural northwest India to reveal how rape is a language through which issues ranging from caste to justice to land are contested.

In Semiotics of Rape, Rupal Oza follows the social life of rape in rural northwest India to reveal how rape is not only a violation of the body but a language through which a range of issues—including caste and gender hierarchies, control over land and labor, and the shape of justice—are contested. Rather than focus on the laws governing rape, Oza closely examines rape charges to show how the victims and survivors of rape reclaim their autonomy by refusing to see themselves as defined entirely by the act of violation. Oza also shows how rape cases become arenas where bureaucrats, village council members, caste communities, and the police debate women’s sexual subjectivities and how those varied understandings impact the status and reputations of individuals and groups. In this way, rape gains meaning beyond the level of the survivor and victim to create a social category. By tracing the shifting meanings of sexual violence and justice, Oza offers insights into the social significance of rape in India and beyond.

The Semiotics of Rape in Renaissance English Literature traces the development of laws regarding rape in pre- and early modern England, including Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Tudor changes to the legal code and how legal code, societal expectations of virtuous women, and medical theory interact to coerce silence from early modern rape victims. These forces come to play in the literary texts under examination, including poetry from Sir Philip Sidney and George Gascoigne and drama by William Shakespeare and Thomas Heywood. By examining the narratorial slippage, the gaps between the original Roman myth and the Elizabethan retellings of the narrative, this study seeks to tease out the sites of particularly English forms of misogyny and discover how this misogyny affects all women, not just those who are rape victims.

Mieke Bal is one of Europe's leading theorists and critics. Her work within feminist art history and cultural studies provides a fascinating alternative to prevailing thinking in these fields. The essays in this collection include Bal's brilliant analyses of the: Myth of Rembrandt Imagery of Vermeer Baroque of Caravaggio Neo-Baroque of David Reed Culture of the museum Visual representation of rape Closet in Proust Bal brings a keen visual sense to these studies, as well as an understanding of how literature represents visuality and how the ethics and aesthetics present within museums affect the cultural artifacts displayed. In his engaging commentary, eminent art historian Norman Bryson shows how Bal's original approach to the interdisciplinary study of art and visual culture has had wide- reaching influence.

This book investigates the representation of rape in British and Irish theatre since the second wave of the Women’s Movement. Mainly focusing on the period from the 1990s to the present, it identifies key feminist debates on rape and gender, and introduces a set of ideas about the function of rape as a form of embodied, gendered violence to the analysis of dramaturgical and performance strategies used in a range of important and/or controversial works. The chapters explore the dramatic representation of consent; feminist performance strategies that interrogate common attitudes to rape and rape survivors; the use of rape as an allegory for political oppression; the relationships of vulnerability, eroticism and affect in the understanding and representation of sexual violence; and recent work that engages with anti-rape activism to present women’s personal experiences on stage.

This striking new contribution to gender studies demonstrates the essential role of Israelite and Near East law in the historical analysis of gender. The theme of these studies of Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian, and Israelite law is this: What is the significance of gender in the formulation of ancient law and custom? Feminist scholarship is enriched by these studies in family history and the status of women in antiquity. At the same time, conventional legal history is repositioned, as new and classical texts are interpreted from the vantage point of feminist theory and social history. Papers from SBL Biblical Law Section form the core of this collection.