Abstract
An introduction to a mini symposium on Jennifer Hirsch’s and Shamus Khan’s Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus
Keywords
The snow fell fast as I walked to an amphitheater in the Rack-ham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, which was already buzzing with conversation 30 minutes before an event. Small groups of undergraduate students entered the room, many knowing each other from class or their student organizations, and found seats together as they tossed their bags on the floor in front of them and continued their boisterous conversations. Graduate students tagged along with their mentors, and public health and medical school faculty greeted each other as they sat down in the quick-filling amphitheater. Those who did not find seats were ushered to another set of rooms to watch the event on closed circuit televisions. The discussion in the room leading up to the event on this early February 2020 day was not about the Democratic candidates for president who were jostling for the nomination to take on Donald Trump in the fall election. Nor was the conversation about a fast-spreading virus known as COVID-19 that would soon blanket the world like a typical winter snowfall in the Great Lakes State. Instead, the conversation and warmth of the gathering of over 250 people was around a topic treated coldly on many college campuses and in society as a whole: sexual assault.
Two reviews of Sexual Citizens are included in this issue of Contexts to provide a brief overview of the many takeaways of the book.
Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan, coauthors of Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus, were the featured speakers of the event and flanked by discussants Kamaria Porter, a doctoral candidate in higher education at the University of Michigan, and Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, physician, and community activist. As Hirsch and Khan discussed their main findings interwoven with detailed narratives of students’ sexual encounters and the frequent experience of sexual assault, many in attendance took notes, others nodded or lowered their heads, and some wiped tears from their eyes. College life is supposed to be a quintessentially happy moment in life for those lucky enough to attend; at least that is what we tell college-bound young adults and how it is dramatized on television and in the movies. Yet here was a conversation people sought out that ripped asunder the popular narrative to talk about how unhappy, confusing, and downright dangerous one often ignored part of college life is for many students. Hirsch and Khan’s book appeared seemingly at the right time to document the gravity of sexual experiences and the centrality of sexual assault on college campuses as the nation was still grappling with the continuing events of #MeToo. Including in the title “landmark study” was not missed on anyone that afternoon. Nor is it an overstatement of the importance of the conversation that Hirsch, Khan, and their team of researchers at Columbia University accomplished and brought to the masses.
Two reviews of Sexual Citizens are included in this issue of Contexts to provide a brief overview of the many takeaways of the book. Kelsey Drotning and Cierra Sorin guide readers through the interrelated findings of Sexual Citizens, and elaborate on the ways that power and our understanding of it on college campuses informs how sexual experiences generally and sexual assault particularly are not simply college students having a little fun on a Friday night in their dorms or at a local bar, but reflect the systemic inequality surrounding students’ lives and shapes how they navigate sexual encounters. The book and its reviews highlight an important mission of Contexts: to bring sociological insights on important social problems to classrooms, policy conversations, and broader audiences to improve our understanding of these problems and identify possible solutions. Hirsch and Khan’s Sexual Citizens offers an opportunity to capitalize on this mission and for the field of sociology. We hope readers sit with this extended conversation around a critical social issue and find ideas for change through their work and lives as we emerge out of dark, uncertain times.