This panel examines how writers challenge dominant structures of authority in/through narratives of sexual violence. Legal and cultural frameworks often dictate how sexual violence is recognized, narrated, and believed, shaping whose stories are legible and whose are dismissed. This session explores how survivors and writers resist these constraints through alternative narrative strategies, fragmentation, silence, poetic form, visual storytelling and more. It attends to how narrative operates as a site of power, shaping not only representation but the conditions under which sexual violence is acknowledged, legitimized, or denied. By foregrounding counter-narratives that disrupt conventional expectations of testimony, this panel asks: who is authorized to speak about sexual violence, and what emerges when that authority is contested?   Description

Narratives of sexual violence are shaped by powerful institutional and cultural frameworks that determine how such experiences are recognized, represented, and believed. This panel invites papers that examine how these frameworks are reinforced, negotiated, or challenged across literary, visual, and cultural texts. Rather than treating narrative as a neutral medium, the session approaches storytelling as a site where authority is produced, contested, and reimagined.

The urgency of these questions is underscored by the current cultural and political climate, in which public discourse around sexual violence remains highly contested. News has been dominated by survivors’ accounts of abuse at the hands of powerful men across all walks of life, and their testimonies continue to be mediated through legal systems, media representation, and public skepticism, raising persistent questions about credibility, visibility, and care. At a moment when the conditions of being heard are uneven and often precarious, examining how narratives of sexual violence circulate (and how they resist) remains critically important.

This panel could draw on and bring into conversation multiple strands of scholarship, from feminist studies, queer studies, post-colonial studies, comparative literatures, graphic studies, film studies, and more. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: testimony and credibility; silence, refusal, and opacity; narrative form and fragmentation; visual, digital, or hybrid storytelling; legal and institutional narratives; media representations; and the ethics of listening and witnessing. At the core, we aim to examine how writers and cultural producers challenge dominant structures of authority through narratives of sexual violence.

In alignment with PAMLA’s theme, Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict, this session considers how legal, medical, and cultural institutions function as “ruling” frameworks that regulate narrative authority and shape public understandings of sexual violence. By bringing together diverse perspectives, the panel highlights the political and ethical stakes of storytelling in contexts where credibility, recognition, and care are unevenly distributed, and explores how counter-narratives might not only critique existing hierarchies but also imagine more just forms of listening and response. Apply here: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/20164  Thank you!