Representations of Gendered Violence in Mainstream Media

This paper revisits three decades of research by Lisa Cuklanz on representations of gendered violence in mainstream media. In addition to documenting shifts in dominant ideology surrounding rape and sexual assault, Lisa Cuklanz’s work has provided evidence of the limitations of discursive and ideological shifts across genres and forms, both in the United States and beyond. This work is ever more relevant as the society gains an increasing awareness of the reality of such abuses of power and the ways in which how we talk about and represent these abuses can further enable or work to eliminate them.