Category: Books

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Jennifer Ann Drobac, Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination & Consent Law

Jennifer Ann Drobac, Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination and Consent Law (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2016). 

“In Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers, Jennifer Drobac explores the shockingly common problem of maturing adolescents who are harassed and exploited by adults in their lives. Reviewing the neuroscience and psychosocial evidence of adolescent development, she explains why teens are so vulnerable to adult harassers. Even today, in an age of increasing public awareness, criminal and civil law regarding the sexual abuse of minors remains tragically inept and irregular from state to state. Drobac uses six recent cases of teens suffering sexual harassment to illuminate the flaws and contradictions of this system, skillfully showing how our current laws fail to protect youths, and offering an array of imaginative legal reforms that could achieve increased justice for adolescent victims of sexual coercion.”

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Catherine Hill and Holly Kearl, Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School (2011)

Catherine Hill & Holly Kearl, AAUW, Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School (2011)

“Based on a survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,965 students conducted in May and June 2011, Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School presents the most comprehensive research to date on sexual harassment in grades 7–12. The report reveals some sobering statistics about the prevalence of sexual harassment and the negative impact it has on students’ education. It concludes with concrete recommendations and promising practices for preventing sexual harassment directed at school administrators, educators, parents, students, and community members. We hope readers will be inspired to take new steps toward making schools free from sexual harassment.”

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Sexual Harassment on College Campuses: Abusing the Ivory Power, edited by Michele A. Paludi (1996)

Sexual Harassment on College Campuses: Abusing the Ivory Power, edited by Michele A. Paludi (1996)

An updated and expanded revision of the first edition, which received the Gustavus Myers Center Award for an outstanding book on Human Rights in the United States. Intended for administrators and faculty, it is also a resource book for individuals wanting to make changes in their campus’ policy and procedures with regard to sexual harassment.

Continue reading “Sexual Harassment on College Campuses: Abusing the Ivory Power, edited by Michele A. Paludi (1996)”

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Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, edited by Toni Morrison (1993)

Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality, edited by Toni Morrison (1993).

“It was perhaps the most wretchedly aspersive race and gender scandal of recent times: the dramatic testimony of Anita Hill at the Senate hearings on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Justice. Yet even as the televised proceedings shocked and galvanized viewers not only in this country but the world over, they cast a long shadow on essential issues that define America.

In Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, Toni Morrison contributes an introduction and brings together eighteen provocative essays, all but one written especially for this book, by prominent and distinguished academicians—black and white, male and female. These writings powerfully elucidate not only the racial and sexual but also the historical, political, cultural, legal, psychological, and linguistic aspects of a signal and revelatory moment in American history.

With contributions by:
Homi K. Bhabha, Margaret A. Burnham, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Paula Giddings, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Wahneema Lubiano, Manning Marable, Nellie Y. McKay, Toni Morrison, Nell Irvin Painter, Gayle Pemberton, Andrew Ross, Christine Stansell, Carol M. Swain, Michael Thelwell, Kendall Thomas, Cornel West, Patricia J. Williams”

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Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power (1998)

Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power (1998)

“After her astonishing testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearings, Anita Hill ceased to be a private citizen and became a public figure at the white-hot center of an intense national debate on how men and women relate to each other in the workplace. That debate led to ground-breaking court decisions and major shifts in corporate policies that have had a profound effect on our lives–and on Anita Hill’s life. Now, with remarkable insight and total candor, Anita Hill reflects on events before, during, and after the hearings, offering for the first time a complete account that sheds startling new light on this watershed event.

Only after reading her moving recollection of her childhood on her family’s Oklahoma farm can we fully appreciate the values that enabled her to withstand the harsh scrutiny she endured during the hearings and for years afterward. Only after reading her detailed narrative of the Senate Judiciary proceedings do we reach a new understanding of how Washington–and the media–rush to judgment. And only after discovering the personal toll of this wrenching ordeal, and how Hill copes, do we gain new respect for this extraordinary woman.

Here is a vitally important work that allows us to understand why Anita Hill did what she did, and thereby brings resolution to one of the most controversial episodes in our nation’s history.”

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The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment (Cambridge University Press)

The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment examines how a diverse grassroots social movement created public policy on sexual harassment in the 1970s and 1980s. The collaboration of women from varying racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds strengthened the movement by representing the perspectives and activism of a broad range of women. Based on interviews and voluminous original research, this book is the first to show how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally changed American life in ways that continue to advance women’s opportunities today.