Race, Rape Culture, and the Law is cross-listed between the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Albany Law School. The seminar will examine the extent to which law and social attitudes contribute to normalizing and/or trivializing sexual harassment and assault against women. The changing social landscape in which rape law in the United States has been defined and enforced exposes both hostility towards women's dignity and physical integrity, and fear and misunderstanding of black sexuality. This seminar is designed to familiarize students with the fundamentals of sexual harassment and sexual assault law and the ways in which race, gender, and identity are implicated in the legal treatment of these issues. Utilizing case studies and historical examples through the lens of intersectional analyses, this course will address the difficult questions of how to move toward an anti-racist and anti-rape society while also examining the social and cultural causes preventing this progression. This seminar is interdisciplinary and will approach the subject matter through slave narratives, novels, autobiographies, film, music, law review articles, legislation, and case law.
