Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media by Nickie D. Phillips--Release date: November 16, 2016

    NEW YORK, NY, November 02, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- From its origins in academic discourse in the 1970s to our collective imagination today, the concept of "rape culture" has resonated in a variety of spheres, including television, gaming, comic book culture, and college campuses. Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media, traces ways that sexual violence is collectively processed, mediated, negotiated, and contested by exploring public reactions to high-profile incidents and rape narratives in popular culture.

The concept of rape culture was initially embraced in popular media - mass media, social media, and popular culture - and contributed to a social understanding of sexual violence that mirrored feminist concerns about the persistence of rape myths and victim-blaming. However, it was later challenged by skeptics who framed the concept as a moral panic. Nickie D. Phillips documents how the conversation shifted from substantiating claims of a rape culture toward growing scrutiny of the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses. This, in turn, renewed attention toward false allegations, and away from how college enforcement policies fail victims to how they endanger accused young men.

Ultimately, she successfully lends insight into how the debates around rape culture, including microaggressions, gendered harassment and so-called political correctness, inform our collective imaginations and shape our attitudes toward criminal justice and policy responses to sexual violence.

Praise for Beyond Blurred Lines: Rape Culture in Popular Media
"This fascinating and erudite book traces the genealogy and resurgence of 'rape culture' as a popular but highly controversial concept in the collective imagination. Phillips expertly and impartially investigates opposing debates on issues such as "slut-shaming", statistics, political correctness, trigger warnings, censorship and false allegations."-- Nicola Henry, Phd, Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Australia

"A must read for feminist and cultural scholars who seek to understand how 'rape culture' has shifted from academic to popular discourse and how the concept has come to occupy part of a national, if not global, debate about sexual violence against women."--Anastasia Powell, Phd, Senior Research Fellow, Justice and Legal Studies, RMIT University Melbourne, Australia

Release date: November 16, 2016 | ISBN-10: 1442246278; ISBN-13: 978-1442246270

About the Author
Nickie D. Phillips is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminal Justice at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY and director of the college's Center for Crime & Popular Culture. Her research focuses on the intersection of crime, popular culture, and mass media. Phillips' book Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice, and the American Way (NYU Press), co-authored with Staci Strobl (University of Wisconsin-Platteville), is a cultural criminological analysis of themes of crime and justice in contemporary American comic books.

Follow Phillips on Twitter or visit her blog.

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